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May 18
I lost a small battle in a big war PDF Print E-mail
Written by Blake Hurst   
Monday, 04 October 2010 19:10

A foxhole view in the debate between organic and conventional agriculture

 
This spring I was in a debate in New York City.  The topic of the debate was: "Is Organic Food Marketing Hype." I was arguing the affirmative. That's the way we debaters talk. 
 
The venue was about two blocks off Broadway. Yes, I've been booed off-Broadway. My debating career closed after opening night. I knew I was in trouble before the debate started, when they led me from the "green room" (that's the way we TV personalities talk) to makeup. I've never worn makeup before. They spray it on with a little applicator. I refused to wipe it off after the debate-I wanted the experience to last as long as it could. Anyway, the two makeup women proceeded to tell me why they purchased organic food. According to my makeup sprayer, it just made her body feel better. One of my opponents, Charles Benbrook, who works for something called the Organic Center,  was in the neighboring chair during this conversation. He seemed pleased. The evening went downhill from there.
 
The debate was held at New York University, in Manhattan. There were several hundred people in attendance, a shortened version of the debate appeared on many public TV stations and on the Bloomberg channel. You can watch it via webcast at intelligencesquaredus.org. At the beginning of the evening, the folks in attendance voted on the question. After 90 minutes of back and forth, they voted again. The winner of the debate was the side that changed the most minds. At the beginning, about 20 percent of the people there agreed with my side, with a fairly large number undecided. By the end of the evening, the undecideds broke solidly for the other side. We were soundly defeated. To rub salt in the wound, we all went out for dinner after the event-an organic restaurant. My body felt fine after the meal, but I can't really say it felt better. 
 

I've had conversations with people who've seen the debate. They bring it up by saying, "I saw you on television." I say, "We really got beat, didn't we?" There is a period of silence, followed by an uncomfortable smile. Then they'll say something like, "Well, that was a tough crowd." Except for my friend Stan, who said, "Well, yeah, but not as bad as the voting results!" That makes me feel better, I guess.

 
The most accomplished debater for the other side was Urvashi Rangan, a scientist for Consumer Reports. She was immediately on the attack in her opening statement, and although throughout the debate there were the expected worries about cancer causing chemicals and endocrine disrupters leading to sexually confused frogs, I felt the audience responded most to her concentration on farm animals. Animal care and animal waste. 
 
I'm embarrassed to say that I wasn't really prepared for livestock farming to be such an emphasis of our opponents. Organic, to me, means the absence of chemical fertilizers and pesticides, and that's where I spent my preparation time. Organic to a New York audience is a process, whereby all that is bad is prohibited and all that is good is allowed, or more correctly, consecrated.
 
The most telling question of the evening came when an audience member asked if scientific testing showed a difference between organic and conventional foods. The organic side quickly remarked that testing did not necessarily show a difference, and furthermore, wasn't really relevant because of the strict processes organic farmers follow. The important thing is not the results but the process. I found this quite telling. 
 
My team member John Krebs pointed out that testing could indeed show a difference, as recently developed tests can detect isotopes in food that has been grown with commercial fertilizers. Krebs, who is British, and had been in charge of the British agency that regulates food, went on to tell a story. 
 
While he was in office, he met with all the leaders of the various organic groups in Britain. He proposed a system of testing that would guarantee that organic food was, in fact, organic. The organic groups declined his offer. They seem satisfied with the present system of self-certification of organic food. Inspectors do visit farms, but mainly to make sure that the paperwork is correct. The question we were debating was about the claims made by the organic industry-are they, in fact, hype.
 
The proponents of organic food here, as in Britain, show no interest in the kind of testing that could scientifically verify their claims. As far as I was concerned, we could have all gone home at the end of that exchange. If there is no scientific difference that matters, and if the organic industry isn't interested in scientific verification of their claims, then hype would seem to be a pretty good description of the organic market. Their product is more a religious sacrament than an actual improvement for the consumer. 
 
This belief explains the difficulty that conventional farming faces. We tend to talk about the costs and benefits of a particular way of doing things. There may be risks to genetically modified seeds, for example, but the use of Roundup and genetically engineered seed allows no-till and minimum-till farming. These methods decrease erosion, which is an environmental benefit from using the technology. The question to farmers like me is whether the benefits from the technology outweigh the risks. In a faith-based system, costs and benefits, indeed science altogether, make no difference. Genetically modified seeds aren't natural, hence risky, so the prudent thing to do is to ban them, no matter what the cost. You can't win this argument by arguing on the basis of science. That's my takeaway from my experience in New York, and it presents conventional farming with a challenge that we haven't been able to answer.
 
New York is the world's leading financial center, the nation's first city and home of the hated Yankees, Broadway, and all the major networks. It was all a bit intimidating to country folks from Missouri. Maybe that intimidation helps explain my poor performance in the debate. I was arguing against the accepted wisdom of the best and the brightest. Every restaurant in the city advertises organic food, with the only exception being the street vendors patronized by the detectives in Law and Order.   
 
Not all ideas exported from New York have merit. We could have done without collateralized mortgage obligations. If Wall Street is the financial center of the world, and upper Manhattan the media center (and even if the Bronx is where the best baseball is played), it doesn't mean that Manhattan knows from farming. We farmers have to do better than I did if we want to keep doing what we're doing. We better figure out a way of telling our story, a way that is attractive to the networks on 42nd street, and Manhattanites in Greenwich Village.
 
Monsanto recently donated hundreds of tons of seed to farmers in Haiti. The seed, none of which was genetically modified, caused a minor firestorm in blogs here in the U.S. and among "peasant" groups in Haiti. The Haitian groups threatened to burn the seed, objecting to the fact that the seeds were hybrid, and that they were produced by a multinational corporation. Makeup artists in Manhattan can afford to pay a premium to "make their body feel better." Peasants in Haiti don't have that luxury. If we fail to make the case for the kind of farming we do, we'll have to settle for reduced yields and thousands more farm laborers swinging hoes here in the United States. We'll have to forget the pleasure of a steak or a pork chop. I don't want that kind of future, but it doesn't threaten my fellow citizens with starvation. The citizens of Haiti, and places like Haiti, aren't that fortunate. This argument will affect their very survival. That's why its so important that we get it right. That is why my failure as a debater on a small New York stage can't be repeated on the worldwide stage.