Asked whether organic is marketing hype, the audience in attendance at the Intelligence Squared April 13^th debate in New York City, voted against the claim, 69% to 21% in favor of it. The remaining 10% were undecided by the end of the evening.

Six panelists debated the merits of conventional agriculture versus organic agriculture. Speaking against organic, John Krebs, former chairman of the Food Standards Agency in the UK, Dennis Avery, director of the Hudson Institute’s Center for Global Justice Issues and Blake Hurst, a Missouri farmer and food writer most well known for his article “The Omnivore’s Delusion,” challenged the notion that organic food is more healthful than conventional farming. They also asserted that organic food production cannot end world hunger, when the cost for organic is too expensive to make it accessible to all economic backgrounds.

On behalf of organic, food writer, Jeffrey Steingarten, director of Technical Policy for Consumers Union, Urvashi Rangan, and chief scientist of The Organic Center, Charles Benbrook, argued that organic is indeed a healthier practice for the earth, which in turn, proves to be a better solution for raising animals and providing healthier production of food for humans.

The tone of the debate was “bitterly partisan,” as stated by ABC News Nightline correspondent and the Intelligence Squared monitor, John Donovan. But politics aside, when we ask the question “Is Organic Marketing Hype,” we need to address the market—organic or conventional—to question whether big agriculture food companies are focusing on sustainable measures at their core.

Without effectively addressing the market, the opposing sides did form pro-consumer arguments. For conventional, John Krebs spoke to science and statistics, claiming that organic has no proven nutritional benefit. His mention of pesticides—that there is no evidence that the small amounts found in food products are harmful—furthered Blake Hurst’s support of big agriculture as the world’s solution to hunger. Calling the organic movement elitist and fashionable, Hurst relayed a cynical image of the organic consumer: “Organic food is fashionable, cool, an attitude, a chance to identify yourself with beautiful actresses instead of old farmers in overalls.  But mostly, organic food is marketing hype.” His argument for higher yields was seconded by Avery’s call for agricultural expansion in the face of a quickly growing population.

Pro-consumer arguments for organic called for verification of standards, ultimately defining organic by what conventional farming is not: a practice free of fecal matter in feed, free of antibiotics, free of sewage sludge, and free of synthetic pesticide use. Steingarten furthered organic support by stating that “To say that organic agriculture could never feed the world is sidestepping the fact that…conventional agriculture is not feeding the world.” But how do we judge these claims? How does a consumer evaluate and quantify misleading information? Benbrook returned to the cause of the organic movement to answer this question: we must advocate for and study a system that has the health of the earth as its founding principle. The direct relation to the health and care of livestock and humans naturally follows. Consider that biodiversity, a farming method that produces a variety of crops on a single plot of land, involves many farm hands and help of livestock to naturally fertilize acres and keep the soil healthy, argued Benbrook.

Rangan effectively touched upon the debate’s focus when she stated in her closing argument that the night’s resolution was not about yield or hunger but rather the question of hype surrounding organic farming production:

“It turns out there are some inadvertent benefits about being healthier to the environment.  And that’s what (organic production) was designed for.  And it turns out when we’re better to the environment, and we’re better to the animals that we raise, and we don’t soak these animals and the ground they’re on with drugs and chemicals and heavy metals, it turns out that might be better for us too.”

For the majority of the audience, statements like this one proved convincing enough to vote yes for the legitimacy of organic. But healthful food is not just about organic versus conventional on the industrial level. We’re debating large-scale versus small-scale, local exchange versus global trade, food waste, food access and a variety of other measures that demand that we rethink how best to use our resources for the benefit of the earth and the creatures living on it. Our conversation about agriculture cannot just be rooted in extreme language of “good or bad,” “hype or truth.” When we critically analyze the larger food system and the problems with it, we must look beyond regulatory terms to question the motives and pitfalls of industrial agriculture.

On Monday, April 19th at 9pm, Bloomberg TV will re-broadcast the debate, along with hundreds of NPR stations. Watch the entire debate below:

ORGANIC FOOD IS MARKETING HYPE from Intelligence Squared US on Vimeo.

Photo: Intelligence Squared

You may have noticed an uptick this year in news reporting that organic food isn’t really better for you, opinion pieces by conventional farmers saying that they are tired of being demonized by “agri-intellectuals”, and guilt-inducing ads by Monsanto in highbrow publications like the New Yorker touting the company’s ability to feed the world through technology.

Though all of this could be disturbing to those of us committed to sustainable agriculture and food that is fair to eaters, animals, workers and farmers, I’m choosing to see this as a good sign. I think it means we might be winning.

The turning point was when First Lady Michelle Obama planted an organic garden on the White House lawn only to receive a letter from The American CropLife Association telling her that they hoped she recognized the value of conventional agriculture in American life. The letter can be read here. Then, there were false allegations that the garden was contaminated with lead. In the face of all this, the first lady stuck with her commitment to keeping the garden organic.

Why is this happening now? For many years, organic food was a marginal market and the big players were content to let it either exist on the sidelines or hedge their bets and buy into it themselves.

But due to the excellent work by many writers and activists like Michael Pollan, Eric Schlosser, Marion Nestle, Robert Kenner and others too numerous to mention, more of us are starting to pay attention to where our food comes from and how it is produced. This market is now a force for change. And individuals and companies that benefit from the status quo don’t want change.

Let’s take a closer look at the people and ideology behind some of the more recent high profile examples of the attacks against sustainable food.

The aforementioned study by London’s School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine on the nutrient values of organic foods looked at various studies on the subject and compiled them to reach its conclusions. No new study was conducted. The meta review ignored some recent studies on nutrients, including one focused on antioxidants.

Not only that, the conductors of the survey only looked at a narrow set of very specific nutrients. They did not consider factors of taste, environmental impact, or pesticide residues in the food – all factors that most consumers I know consider when buying organic foods.

Beyond the obvious limitations of the subject matter, it’s instructive to take a closer look at how the study was covered in the media, who conducted the study and who funded it.

So let’s pull back the curtain, shall we?

Media Coverage: Though the study looked at only 8 different nutrients and concluded there was no evidence of a difference in nutrient quality between organically- and conventionally-produced foodstuffs, it went on to say that there were other reasons to buy organic food. Headline writers like tension so all the headlines were some variation on “organic foods not really better for you” or worse yet, “the organic foods hoax”.

What is the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine? The London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine is a respected college within the University of London, so all would seem to be on the up and up. But, this is the same school that published a hateful and not at all scientifically-rigorous study blaming fat people for global warming. I’d love to get into the problems with this study but that’s another post.

Who Funded the Study? The study was commissioned by the UK’s Food Standards Agency. The agency is an independent part of government set up by Parliament in response to food contamination issues and the resulting lack of consumer confidence.

The FSA is supposed to serve consumers, and it does in many cases, but like our very own USDA and FDA, the agency can be influenced by the food industry. Their slogan says it all: “safer food, better business.” And a quick look at the profiles of FSA staffers reveals more than a few food industry folk.

And then there’s Missouri farmer, Blake Hurst, in his article for The American Enterprise Institute. He attacks Pollan and other “agri-intellectuals” and city folk in general for making all kinds of assumptions about farmers and for presuming that they know the “messy, dirty” business of farming much better than farmers.

Throughout the piece Hurst erodes his credibility by making his own unfounded assumptions about his opponents, including the guy on the plane behind him, with whom he opens the story. He also says that he won’t change until the consumer forces his hand, ignoring the real lack of consumer power inherent in a food system that uses taxpayer dollars to subsidize the production of commodity crops that are then used to produce the unhealthy foods that fill the shelves of our grocery stores.

Foods (or food products) whose sheer volume and variety of brightly-colored packaging, flavors, colors and sizes are supposed to convince us of the abundance of our choices as consumers, when in fact all we’re really buying is agricultural surplus dressed up with chemicals, technology and marketing.

Then he brilliantly skewers his own argument by using a false urban (or rural?) legend about a flock of turkeys so stupid they drowned themselves in a rainstorm to make his point that conventional farmers who pack the sentient beings we raise for food into crowded, filthy sheds are really protecting the animals from their own stupidity.

Oh, and by the way, what is this American Enterprise Institute that published Hurst’s article?

I’m glad you asked. The AEI is a neoconservative think tank devoted to free enterprise capitalism. According to Sourcewatch, AEI has funded studies that debunk climate change research, refutes studies showing the social costs of tobacco use, and has even worked to promote the Iraq war. The AEI staff listing includes Lynne Cheney, Newt Gingrich and Richard Perle.

As for Monsanto’s advertisements attempting to influence the very people who are most likely to read writers like Michael Pollan, don’t be fooled. We’ve done enough work here, here, and here that gets to the truth about Monsanto. And here’s an excellent piece from Grist detailing exactly why those specific ads are so bogus.

According to a recent survey, consumers are confused about and skeptical of green marketing claims, and misinformed about terms like natural and organic. That’s exactly how some would like it to be.

But there’s another side to this story: The status-quoers will eventually have to acknowledge that the system as it stands now will not serve anyone’s needs much longer, even theirs. As global warming accelerates and fuel costs rise, we need to figure out how to produce food differently. Maybe consumer power won’t ever be enough to force farmers like Blake Hurst to start to look at farming differently but the limiting characteristics of our unsustainable system will.

Until then, I won’t allow myself to be swayed by the propaganda of the resisters; I’ll put my money where the facts are – with the visionary, hopeful, innovative farmers who are doing things differently. Because, even though small-scale organic farming may not be the only answer, it can be part of a whole systemic change toward feeding ourselves without ruining the planet. And it tastes a lot better!

Originally published on EcoSalon

The article, entitled Omnivore’s Delusion: Against the Agri-Intellectuals, goes after the whole local food movement as a kind of effete endeavor by people who don’t know what they are talking about. And since the New York Times alerted its online readers to the article without digging much deeper, I will attempt to do so here.

Christopher Cook’s (Author, Diet for a Dead Planet: How the Food Industry Is Killing Us) response on the listserv Comfood to the Omnivore’s Delusion skillfully frames many problems with Blake Hurst’s letter.

Cook points out that Hurst conflates and confuses the personal with the systemic – mis-identifying his family’s hard work and integrity with an industrial food system that is blatantly unsustainable, exploitative, unfair, and without integrity.

Corporate disinformation and public relations campaigns have used this media relations strategy since the tobacco Industry’s pushback against anti-smoking campaigns of the late 1960s. The strategy attempts to demonize the debate by creating straw men to be knocked down by corporate messages.

Today such disinformation efforts easily deflect farmer attention away from global corporate monopoly control of the food system that dictates prices and production standards/procedures towards agri-intellectuals and supposedly “wacko” consumers who, in the recent words of a Michigan politician, want to give “chickens the right to drive.”

This reminds me of Dario Fo’s famous play “The Accidental Death of An Anarchist,” which ends with the police inspector saying something like, “Whenever we get too close to the truth, a good scandal can distract our attention.”

Again, as Cook has so wisely pointed out, Farm Bureau official Blake is acting rationally, given the public subsidies, monopoly corporate control and general power relationships of the current global food system. (And Tom Philpott over at Grist has done the digging, check out his response to the article.) In other words, he is not “crazy.” But neither are we.

So what do we do in response to this carefully crafted industrial food corporate counterattack of which this letter is just a part? Blake’s own words offer some clues.

Blake wrote, “Farmers can raise food in different ways, if that is what the market wants.” This acknowledgment should be at the heart of our discussion with conventional farmers who are trapped in a kind of Stockholm Syndrome relationship with the industrial food system. They have literally bet “the farm” on oil intensive, water intensive mono-crop production techniques dictated to them by global monopoly food corporations.

Today, consumers increasingly want food raised in ways that reflect and respect their values: local food production, humane treatment of animals, no antibiotics or hormones, and based on building healthy living soil.

These consumers choices are not a conspiracy, are not wacko acts, but a simple expression of the free market system dictum, “the customer is always right.” It is simply good business for farmers to change the way they farm. Wal-Mart stopped purchasing fluid milk produced with rBGH (a Monsanto developed hormone to boast milk production) simply because their customers demanded it.

Blake also wrote, “[Bill] McKibben is certain that the contracts these (CAFO) farmers sign with companies like Tyson are unfair, and the farmers might agree.” The words, “farmers might agree” is an understatement. Poultry and swine confinement farmers have repeatedly sued their “integrators” (the corporations that vertically control the industrial animal system) over the last decade.

At issue are confiscatory producer contracts that make the small family farmers virtual serfs on their own farms. For instance, small contract poultry producers actually supply over 50 percent of the capital necessary to keep Tysons and Perdue and their like operating – yet have no ownership stake in the corporation and face “blacklisting” if they don’t do as they are told.

I propose we stand with small farmers, now trapped in CAFO industrial contracts, who are fighting back and help them move to sustainable, humane, local food production.

Local seed laws and local animal treatment laws offer one path for consumers and farmers to cooperate in a community-effort to reform the food system. That is why industrial food corporations push so hard for state pre-emption of local control over these issues (the Monsanto laws).

One final point deals with farmer access to alternative information.

Blake’s letter contains a number of fundamental mistakes about the nature and effectiveness of “organic” farming processes and results. Unless farmers can have access to the truth about ecologically intelligent farming, they will remain captives of the industrial system.

The Rodale Institute, with its New Farm publication and extensive website, offers information about effective, science-based alternatives to industrial farming processes. We need to support outreach campaigns by institutions like Rodale to help farmers and consumers alike.

As Fred Kirschenmann points out, “a food system based on cheap oil, surplus water, and stable climate is not sustainable. We all are going to have change or relationship to food production, whether we want to or not.”

Let’s help small and mid-size farmers like Blake Hurst escape the industrial system – rewarding their courage and hard work, offering them informational and policy support for a transition to sustainable agriculture, and making fun of AEI’s attempts to demonize the debate.