This Debate Grows Tiresome
August 16th, 2009 · 4 Comments · Posted in food news, Sustainability
Sustainable agriculture under attack
Is organic food more nutritious than industrial food?
This shameful canard proved that it can still light a fire in the food policy realm when a British “study” concluded that organic food has no special merit nutrition-wise. The Washington Post’s new food wonk, Ezra Klein, chirped that the study was probably right. Plus, organic food is too expensive. The Pollanistas (followers of food prophet Michael Pollan) rushed to debunk the study and its sponsors. The ensuing argument over which study proves the merits of this flavenoid or that vitamin on a molecular level looks more and more like a fruitless attempt to count the number of angels on the head of a pin.
Lots of heat, no fire. Shame on The Washington Post for stoking this spectacle. Lets get back to the big picture: industrial food, with its overreliance on fossil fuels, chemical fertilizers and noxious pesticides–its enormous pollution footprint across the land and into the air and seas–simply is not sustainable. Period. Whether the food it produces is of nutritional merit is besides the point. Humankind needs to return to a means of food production that does not destroy the planet. Whether you call it “organic” or “natural” or food by some other name, we desperately need policies on a national level that embrace a system that serves people and not the corporate interests that profit from Big Ag.
The one good thing that rises above the din is the voice of Tom Philpott, the writer for online magazine Grist who has emerged as a clear-eyed champion of sensible agriculture. A farmer himself, Philpott moves about the food policy field with lightning speed and an admirable command of facts. I don’t agree with all that he says, or with all of his positions, but he is always fair and level-headed, even when he is making mincemeat of mass-media opinionaters.
We are lucky to Philpott on our team.
Along with his defense of sustainable agriculture, Philpott this week also took on a specious attack on “agri-intellectuals” (meaning folks like us) published by the right-wing American Enterprise Institute. The author of this foul-smelling essay poses as a simple Missouri soy farmer. But Philpott, using some nifty internet tools, exposes him and his kin as major benefactors of federal subsidies, to the tune of $1.4 million in taxpayer dollars over a 12-year period. Along the way, Philpott shines light on all the holes in the “anti-intellectual” argument and reminds us of the corporate interests lurking behind the industrial food system that the American Enterprise Instute and its ilk would defend.
It’s worth a read.
Yes, Ed, this constant “nay-saying” about the content of nutrients and other components of organically raised foods only serves as a distraction to the many and much more important issues you have described.
Great new look to your blog!
Diana Dyer, MS, RD
Diana, so good to hear from you. Yes, I think this battle of studies over nutritional value gets us nowhere. No one even knows what “organic” means any more. But anyone who’s tasted fresh, locally grown food knows the difference from the industrial stuff you get in the typical supermarket. And I think anyone who things about knows instinctually that food grown naturally is better all around–for people and the environment–than stuff that’s grown with chemicals that destroy the soil, require huge inputs of petrolium products, and pollute the landscape. We want our food the way nature intended.
Pollanistas?! LOVE IT. I normally hate labels, but will proudly embrace this one!
Melissa, it seems to roll off the tongue much more easily than “foodorati.”