Organic vs Conventional Farming: The Bogus Debate

I am a plant geneticist and I care about agriculture and food production however, after watching a highly biased and un-nuanced video clip from the New Scientist which painted organic farming as dangerous and environmentally damaging, I have become sick and tired of the organic vs ‘conventional’ farming debate; it’s a bogus debate. The debate has two vocal extremes with (for entertainment purposes only) the hippie tree-hugger on one side who distrusts science, big business and regularly uses the phrase 'mother-earth' (the ‘organic’s’) while on the other side you have the sterile white coat wearing, condescending scientist who scoffs at claims based on ‘feelings’ (the ‘conventionals’). Both loathe each other and ultimately have very different philosophies and approaches to life and are likely to never see eye to eye. While obviously few people fit these descriptions, the point in that the debate has long been highly polarised and quite damaging, in my opinion, to progress in agriculture and food production. It is my view, and I hope to convince more to think like this group, that both sides of the debate have merit and that food production requires a mix of ideas and technologies promoted by both sides to achieve sustainable agriculture. I suspect, however, that a Buddha approved ‘middle-way’ will be scorned by many on both sides, so toxic the debate has become.

    I’d first like to highlight some of the technologies, concepts and beliefs at the heart of both sides. For the conventional’s, science and industry have saved the world as technologies like plant breeding, GM, intensive animal rearing, industrially produced pesticides, herbicides and fertilisers have allowed the feeding of the 9 billion. This industrial/scientific package is what people generally refer to as ‘conventional’ farming which is a PR win for this side immediately branding the other side unconventional or abnormal. For the organic’s, ‘conventional’ farming is killing mother-nature and more ‘natural’ methods are favoured like free-range (although my caricature is of course likely to be a vegan), mixed farming (smaller to medium scale animal and crop farms), inter-cropping/polyculture, ecosystem services and composting. To summarise the debate, the conventional’s claim their approach to be the only way to feed our burgeoning population and, as in the New Scientist video, claim organic farming would never achieve this resulting in famine and/or further deforestation and they push an agenda of continued chemical use and increased use of GMOs and genetics led plant breeding as a way of squeezing greater yields out of the same land (key word: efficiency). The organics claim that conventional farming is damaging and unsustainable, that GMOs are poisoning us and nature and that organic farming can be as or indeed more productive (key word: sustainable) and even tastes better! Hopefully we can see that some claims stand and fall on both sides.

    Now rather than treat these as two sides of an apartheid, I would like you to think of the concepts and technologies from both sides as part of a technological buffet. This buffet can be carefully chosen from by individual farmers and indeed governments or policy makers to meet local needs and conditions. Indeed there is a science which concerns itself with this buffet selection process; agroecology. The point is that both sides have validity and I’ll highlight some winning ideas from both sides. Let’s face it, intensive, industrial farming requires huge energy inputs primarily in the form of fossil fuels, has created a range of environmental issues (such as nitrogen run-off and biodiversity loss), animal welfare issues and is ultimately unsustainable (although there is the term ‘sustainable intensification’ being bandied about). I am a firm believer, however, that technology and science have an important role to play in the future of agriculture. Take GMOs, the hate-symbols for the organic's, for example. Up until now, the GM plants in use have primarily brought benefits to some larger scale farmers, a little to us consumers but especially to the big agrotech companies through products such as Roundup ready crops (Roundup being Monsanto’s trademark herbicide then sold to the farmer whose just bought your seeds! One of the best business models I've come across). GM crops have become associated with big business, deforestation (e.g. GM soy) and farmer suicides which is a shame because they are nutritionally ‘safe’ and are eaten daily by a large proportion of the world right now; knowingly or not. While the first generations of GM crops have arguably been principally about making money, the research I know is going on in plant science promises to be more about boosting yields to benefit consumers (you!) by, for example, improving plants nitrogen use efficiency (reducing fertiliser requirements which will certainly hurt some businesses pockets), improving photosynthesis efficiency (so plants can convert a higher proportion of sunlight into biomass) and improving drought tolerance (improving productivity in marginal areas and reducing drought induced crop failures). The obvious problems remain that while opposition to GM exists, the only financially viable way such plants would ever make it to the fields is through the big companies who are able to fund the trials and safety tests leaving such plants in a PR limbo although this is where governments could step in to help fund these stages removing the big business connection. These, and other similar approaches (like genetics led plant breeding), can not be achieved by organic farming but by no means exclude organic farming associated concepts. It is not hard to envision such potential future plants being part of, for example, a mixed farming environment with minimal fertiliser or pesticides that employed inter-cropping. The acceptance of GM’s is unlikely to occur any time soon given the inability for many to disentangle the science with the arguable darker economic/business/social aspects and there is a general mistrust that keeps feeding this (a similar mistrust that leads to aid workers being killed for administering polio vaccines). Other promising technological examples from the organic’s camp are inter-cropping and polyculture in which multiple plants are grown in the same space such that they can be mutually beneficial or maximise the available resources and minimise the need for chemical inputs. One example is the use of the push-pull method where one plant acts to push pests away from the main crop towards the attractant (pull) plants so minimising the need for pesticides. Another example is the ancient 'Three Sisters' crop system of the native Americans in which corn was grown to provide a structure for the creeper-like beans (which in turn strengthen the corn stalks and, as legumes, return nitrogen to the soil) while squash occupied the ground level shading the soil to reduce evaporation and block out any weeds. This happy trinity demonstrates the concept well however it is not favourable to the heavily mechanised harvesting techniques widely employed in modern farming and so also demonstrates some of the limitations to many of these approaches; namely scale and labour.

     One key area of the debate is the yield gap which generally puts organic farming at 80% that of ‘conventional’ farming. This number is vaguely useful but it doesn’t tell the full story of the variation in this number which is large and significant for this discussion. One key point is that there are many experiments that have demonstrated negligible differences between the two approaches for certain crops in certain environments. There is no shortage of anecdotal evidence (always taken with a large pinch of salt) from farmers who claim they have experienced an overall yield boost after switching to organic farming. It is interesting to read that such gains are often only achieved after a few growing seasons which likely reflects not only an adaptation by the farmer but the gradual improvement in soil quality over time. A key aspect of organic farming, while shunning chemicals (unless they fall under a strangely arbitrary list of ‘natural’ chemicals, much to the mirth of many scientists, such as the insecticide pyrethin which, while industrially made, is naturally occurring in Pyrethrum’s – so is organic!?), aims to maintain soil quality through crop rotations (cycling through nitrogen fixing plants like legumes), cover cropping and minimal tillage/ploughing. Such techniques could be more widely applied to help remedy and reverse the degradation in soil quality in many conventionally farmed areas. Some conventional farmers are aware enough to employ crop rotations and lay fields to fallow (the EU even funded this before), however, perhaps not enough and degraded soils lead to more fertilizer being required to maintain those high yields keeping farmers on an unsustainable treadmill. Much evidence for the yield gaps have come from experiments where either chemicals were added (i.e. fertilizer) or not of course resulting in clear differences however, it is bad science to relate this to the debate as it ignores all the other approaches organic farming employs to boost yields like composting (check the source of your claims!). Another key aspect of the yield gap is just how much research and development has gone into each approach with billions being spent developing and optimizing many crops for intensive farming while a fraction of the money has been spent optimizing organic farming methods. I for one think far more funding and research is required to optimize, not necessarily organic farming in stricto but its associated approaches to boost its yields and minimize the requirement for inputs. The closer we can afford to move towards organic farming, the better.

    Another side of organic farming, very different to agriculture and often ignored in the debate, is how it's applied to livestock. While regional rules vary, organic meat and milk must generally be free from antibiotics (unless the animal is actually sick after which it requires a quarantine period before it becomes organic again and is especially banned for the ludicrous purpose of growth promotion) and hormones and must be fed on non-GM feed. While I am personally comfortable with a GM diet, one concern is that meat and milk are reared on crops (principally soy) in the first place which could have fed us more efficiently (whole other story here). While there is nothing saying organic meat can’t have been reared on non-GM crops, the rules surrounding organic meat and milk mean that animals generally receive far more pasture (often being free-range) than their intensive counterparts which reduces their dependency on feed. This stems not only from the overall ethos of raising animals more naturally, but from the ban on antibiotics which makes indoor crowded rearing infeasible as infections spread rapidly (often helped by the animals being stressed and unhealthy). Current intensive livestock farming has brought with it a suite of animal welfare and human health issues most people are not aware of as few of us ever visit a farm (you’d be hard pressed to even see most livestock which can spend their whole lives in sheds), however, the negative health effects from antibiotic use both in its contribution to growing antibiotic resistance and the potential effects on consumers (along with hormones) are rightly receiving considerable attention. Whether it’s on welfare or health grounds, organic meat and milk have potential benefits but these are not guaranteed by the label alone (get informed!). Some argue that intensive livestock farming can be done to high welfare standards and as the culture of ubiquitous antibiotic and hormone use is decreasing is some parts of the world (indeed banned in many) it means that, like with agriculture, ‘conventional’ approaches can be viable options in many parts of the world when weighed up against other factors.

    While not exhaustive, I hope to have at least highlighted the ridiculous nature this bogus debate has descended to. It is not one or the other. There will always be those on both sides who think exactly this, will not be reasoned with and will refuse to meet somewhere in the middle and reach not what I’d call a compromise but a solution. Food production is a complex business with many components small and large and vested interests pushing their agendas. Food production is also the cornerstone of all of our existence and its safeguarding is too important to get caught up in ideological squabbles although of course its importance means that it almost inevitably does. All too often, the embracing of ‘conventional’ farming has been the easy option of politicians with its ready made package of proven technologies and products that promises to feed the masses. The problem is it is largely unsustainable and the hard path needs to be taken to transition to sustainable food production that adopts technologies and concepts from the buffet on offer helping feed people for generations to come.

Can Coca-cola Stop the Tide?

There has been a growing consensus over the years that our ever increasing sugar intake is strongly linked to obesity, type II diabetes and heart disease. Sugar is everywhere being an almost ubiquitous component of processed foods (just check the ingredients of almost anything in your cupboard) and a major constituent of fizzy drinks, supposed ‘sports drinks’ (e.g. lucozade) and fruit juices. Standard coke contains a whopping 11% sugar which amounts to 35g in a single 330ml can which is already over the recommended daily allowances of the NHS (30g), the WHO (25g) and the American Heart Association (AHA) (37.5g). This all before you've consumed anything else that contains sugar or indeed is broken down into sugar like starch. Studies suggest that UK children and teenagers are on average consuming closer to 70g per day with adults only cutting down to around 55g. Those guidelines are even a little conservative (especially the AHA!) and many experts believe the guidelines could be slashed further and avoiding sugar completely is a perfectly reasonable approach.

    I don’t want to go much into the science behind why sugar is bad for you here, maybe in another post, but I’ll summarise two principal mechanisms by which it causes harm. First it's important to know that what we know of as table sugar is sucrose. This is the most common sugar in plants found in fruits, sugar cane and sugar beet and is a composite made up of equal parts glucose and fructose. Glucose is the primary energy source of our body and is also derived from breaking down complex carbohydrates such as starch as found in bread, pasta and other grains like rice. Too much glucose in our blood causes spikes in insulin. Insulins job is to mediate the uptake of glucose from our blood into tissues and to convert it into glycogen in the liver for storage. Abusing this system by flooding ourselves with sugar over years can lead to insulin resistance whereby insulin becomes less and less effective meaning you lose control of blood sugar levels leading to type II diabetes. The other dark side of our sugar addiction is the harmful effects of fructose. The thing with fructose is our bodies do not treat it like glucose. It can only be metabolised in the liver where it, for example, feeds into fat synthesis, is associated with what is known as metabolic syndrome and does not induce leptin production which tells our brains we have eaten. It is not particularly good stuff. Check out this website for more information.

     So given this little background, I wanted to talk a little about the ways some big players in the sugar world have been trying to hide these things from us. Diet and health are complex fields with so many external factors such as lifestyle and our genetic predispositions playing big roles. This complexity gives wriggle room for countless diet fads and questionable claims. Getting reliable data either supporting or rejecting various claims can often take a long time which also means a lot of money. The situation with sugar is in many ways similar to climate change where the science is complex and, while a consensus has emerged in both situations among experts, powerful vested interests exert their influences to muddle the debate by spreading doubt and confusion. You only need to look at the list of climate deniers and where their funding comes from to see how clear this conflict of interest is. Like oil, sugar is huge business and the big companies can flex their financial muscles to exert significant influence. For example, Coca-cola have been shown to have influenced research by funding work that seeks to blame lifestyle rather than diet. You can see from this paper an example of research biased by funding from the Coca-cola company and as such sugar is not discussed, only lifestyle and exercise. This is bad scientific practice and flies in the face of genuine unbiased research which should ideally be free from such blatant conflicts of interest. See this interesting article which gives some insight into the authors of the paper in which they defend their work. 

    Whether or not their work is good or bad science, this highlights the cynical approach by Coca-cola which funds anything that looks into alternate causes of obesity and diabetes besides sugar. The idea with this highly cynical approach is to say to people that lifestyle or other dietary factors (like fat) are to blame, not the sugar. Yes, people in general should exercise more and eat less in many parts of the world but exercise is not the main route to weight loss (diet is the key) and nor is simply eating less necessarily a solution – it’s what you eat less of. The different food types (e.g. sugar, fat and protein) are not equal and are not treated equally by our bodies and what has become clear is that it is in fact sugar, and in particular fructose, that is disproportionally to blame for obesity. The misdirection by vested interests has translated into the idea that all these ‘treats’ can be enjoyed as part of a healthy lifestyle. Think how often you see various big brands (like Coco-cola, McDonald's or Mars) sponsoring sports events which both serves to promote a brand image associated with active healthy lifestyles but this is also part of this multifaceted approach to distract from the real problem – diet. 

    The influence of the Coca-cola company is immense with millions spent on lobbying the American Government each year. Interestingly, this expenditure sky-rocketed in 2009 which was (not) coincidentally when the famous you-tube video, Sugar: The Bitter Truth, came out and more generally the spotlight was shifted to sugar and its harmful effects. Yes yes, we all know that companies lobby (and often more directly bribe) governments all round the world and it’s a largely accepted part of politics but the influence of Coca-cola also spread to charities. In 2010, the charity Save the Children were embarking on a sugar tax campaign in light of the fast emerging strong evidence that it was a leading cause of childhood obesity and health problems. This charity was then the beneficiary of multi-million dollar donations from Coca-cola and PepsiCo and low and behold, their campaigns shifted away from sugar tax and onto promoting healthy lifestyle and exercise (are you seeing a trend yet?)! Thankfully, however, the idea of a sugar tax has gained more traction in the intervening years and has come (or  will be very soon) into effect in many countries (South Africa, the UK, France, Denmark, Mexico (who have a huge sugar problem), Norway and the USA including others). The UK’s sugar tax, due to come in in 2018, is being fought tooth and nail by soft drinks companies who are now, rather than flat out denying the effects of sugar, are using the language of collective guilt (it’s not just the drinks fault, what about the chocolates!) and casting doubt on the effectiveness of a sugar tax in actually cutting obesity. Now these companies and pressure groups are not against this tax because it will hurt sales by increasing the cost of each drink although it might. A far more damaging side effect of this tax is the psychological effect a tax will have. Far more than simply being a financial disincentive, this tax legitimises the findings that sugar is generally bad for you. It is a major step to changing public opinion on sugar whereby the negative health effects will be more widely recognised as people think ‘well it’s being regulated, so it must be bad’. This is what the food and beverage companies are so afraid of happening and what will really harm sales.

    Even if the evidence behind an issue is confusing and not accessible for a non-expert (which most of us are), when a company with very clear vested/financial interests in one outcome or the other gets heavily involved to direct the argument, alarm bells should start ringing. For the same reason that the tobacco industry so blatantly denied, discredited and lied about the now obvious health impacts of smoking, the food and drink industries are throwing shadows across an important modern health issue that continues to wreck havoc on peoples health. Diabetes and obesity continue to rise with huge impacts on individuals lives as well as health services. Just like the bad effects of smoking became accepted, one day we will look back and think how naive we were about sugar. Just like tobacco is addictive, so too is sugar. Just like the tobacco industries were forced to pay out huge sums in lawsuits for lying about sending countless smokers to early graves following an undeniable body of evidence and shift in public opinion, so too will there be lawsuits against the food and beverages industry. However, just like the tobacco industry survived these ‘sticky’ patches, so too will Coca-cola, PepsiCo and the like as they are just too big to collapse and their delay tactics mean that public (i.e. consumer) opinion is slow to change allowing them time to adapt and probably tuck some money away for the rainy days to come. They cannot stop the tide, but they are doing a good job of slowing it.

    I’d recommend people to read up more on the effects of sugar and find the easiest way to cut it down in your diet. You don’t need it, we can get plenty of energy from other food sources, and too much is almost certainly doing you harm. Eating plenty of fibre with sugars and carbohydrates in general (including starch) helps moderate our bodies uptake of sugar reducing insulin spikes and reducing the chance of developing diabetes.

EXTRA READING: A longer but excellent article putting this subject into the wider context of our growing modern health epidemic relating to sugar. Crucially, it explains why obesity (and the related diabetes) is not an 'energy-balance disorder'.