The chemical industry would have you believe that organic farming takes a “do nothing” approach. If you've ever planted a garden, you know that doing nothing doesn't work. Doing nothing is not the foundation of organic farming—just the opposite, in fact. Thanks to the Rodale Institute's work, as well as that of many organic farmers and researchers around the world, we now have a much better understanding of how to successfully grow food organically. Not just “sustainably,” but regeneratively, focusing on building soil and ecosystems that are healthier than when we began and able to heal the damage we have caused.
The Farming Systems Trial (FST) study at the Rodale Institute began in 1981 as a way to study the effects of transitioning a farm from chemical to organic methods. At that time, no university or business would conduct scientific research on organic farming—it was viewed as an inefficient, fringe method of farming.
In the early 1980s the plight of farmers felt dire. They were in the grip of a crisis, thanks to the Earl Butz farm policy. Farmers were growing too much food, so prices dropped sharply at the same time that the price of land dropped. Many farmers were overburdened by their debts and only the largest-scale farmers could survive. During this period, countless small family farmers were forced off their land. (The Farm Aid organization, which hosts a benefit concert series, was founded as a result of this crisis.) My father, a highly patriotic man whose value system was founded on the Jeffersonian respect for the American farmer, felt an urgent need to find solutions to these problems. He wanted to ensure that small farms in America would stay with the families that had cultivated the land for generations, and that they could earn a fair living from their work.
In the 3 decades since the FST began collecting data, the Rodale Institute has researched the best practices of organic farming and shared that information with farmers, who have trusted and applied it to cultivation on their land.
The FST has produced numerous valuable findings. Here are just a few.
Crop yields from organic and synthetic-chemical farms are similar in years of average precipitation. The idea that organic farms yield less comes from the chemical companies, who tested their products on degraded and damaged soil. Once the soil is restored organically, organic crop yields are comparable to the latest chemical yields.
Organic farm yields are higher than those of chemical farms in years of drought, due to organic plants’ stronger root systems and better moisture retention in the soil. Organic soil actually looks like a sponge when you see it under a microscope.
Organic yields are also higher than chemical yields in flood situations, again due to stronger root systems and the soil's ability to absorb more water and prevent runoff and erosion.
Organic production requires 30 percent less fossil fuel than chemical production when growing corn and soybeans (the two crops with the largest shares of farmland in the United States).
Labor inputs are approximately 15 percent higher in an organic farming system. In other words, organic farming creates jobs.
The net economic return for organic crops is equal to or higher than that for chemically produced crops because upfront costs are lower and organic foods typically bring higher prices in the marketplace. And that's without government subsidies.
Organically farmed soil has significantly greater carbon and nitrogen storage capacity than that of chemically treated farms.1 Mycorrhizal fungi that naturally occur in the soil are a sign of health, absorbing carbon from the air and storing it for decades. Nitrogen is also much more likely to stay in organic soil, where it can be utilized by the plants rather than running off and polluting groundwater.
When managed properly, nature finds a way to balance things out. When we collaborate with natural processes, an intricate chain of natural checks and balances leads to a very harmonious, beautiful, and happy environment. The natural controls go out of whack when we overmanage, overuse, and overcontrol nature. We overmanage nature when we try to grow a single crop on thousands of acres, when we try to squeeze thousands of cows into a space too small for even a few hundred, and when we try to kill just one type of bug and that throws three other bugs or the birds that feed on them into disorder.
Nature needs time to heal. Transitioning from a chemical farm to a certified organic farm takes 3 years, and during that time there may be more problems. Like a person going into rehab for substance addiction, it often feels worse before it feels better.
Organic farming is more labor-intensive than chemical farming, and therein lies an irony. The government is always seeking to create more jobs, but its actions actually emphasize the drive for “efficiency” for farmers, which means fewer human hands and more hours spent alone in giant tractors. Farmwork is hard work, there is no question about it. It's also satisfying, physical work that has sustained American families for 3 centuries. Just as important as the jobs is how we treat the people who do them. No food system can ever be good for us, says Eric Schlosser, author of Fast Food Nation, “if the people who harvest our food, process it, and prepare it for us are treated badly.”
Switching to all organic food production is the single most critical (and most doable) action we can take right now to stop our climate crisis. Organic farming can pull, on an annual basis, thousands of pounds of carbon dioxide per acre right out of the air and keep it in the soil, adding to its carbon stores year after year. We can go from being carbon polluters straight to being carbon savers, bypassing “carbon neutral” phase. We are only beginning to understand just how powerful our soil can be.
Suspend all the chemical propaganda you've heard over the years and follow along as I explain how modern organic farming really works.
Organic farming is about more than not using chemical products. Organic farmers employ a variety of techniques to keep their fields productive and healthy.
The practice of tilling the soil began back in the earliest farming days, based on the fairly logical idea that by breaking up the crust of the soil you make it easier for seeds to take root and grow and to keep weeds under control.
However, repeated tilling breaks down the structure of soil, causing erosion and runoff, and disturbs the microbes and fungi in the soil that support healthy plant growth. Studies show that tilling combined with chemicals results in little or no carbon sequestration.2 Organic methods, on the other hand, can sequester lots of carbon in the soil—even with a bit of tilling. A 9-year study done by John Teasdale, PhD, a plant physiologist at the Agricultural Research Service (ARS), which is the USDA's chief scientific research agency, confirms the findings of the FST. In a separate 3-year follow-up study, “Teasdale grew corn with no-till practices on all plots to see which ones had the most productive soils. Those turned out to be the organic plots. They had more carbon and nitrogen and yielded 18 percent more corn than the other plots did,” according to an article in Agricultural Research.3
“Tillage is a root cause of agricultural land degradation—one of the most serious environmental problems worldwide—which poses a threat to food production and rural livelihoods, particularly in poor and densely populated areas of the developing world,” reported the authors of an article in Scientific American magazine.4
Tilling impacts climate change in other ways as well. Each time farmers operate their tractors, they compact the soil, harm the microbes in it, and burn fuel, spewing even more carbon dioxide and other pollutants into the air.
Masanobu Fukuoka, an organic pioneer from Japan and author of The One-Straw Revolution, saw the threat of tilling back in the 1970s. He developed a method of coating seeds in clay so they could be sowed on top of the soil. “That which was viewed as primitive and backward,” he observed, “is now unexpectedly seen to be far ahead of modern science.”
Not tilling does not make a farm organic, but it is a key to being successful at organic farming and reducing the carbon impact and increasing its sequestration. An unintended consequence of no-till farming is that it encourages chemical farmers to use more chemicals. The conservation regulations in the farm bill now require farmers to use no-till practices for erosion control. But weeds still grow. and instead of tilling or managing weeds organically, chemical farmers add a few more rounds of herbicide5 rather than planting cover crops or applying mulch, methods that are both more effective and better for people and the planet. Chemical farmers may plant cover crops, but then use herbicides to kill the plants before planting their cash crop. Many of the chemical farmers I spoke with felt that requiring them to use no-till practices put them in a bind that forced them into using more chemicals, and they blamed the government for the problem. The real problem lies in the approach of picking one or two techniques of organic farming and not recognizing that it works as an integrated system. That system may vary for each farm, each region, each country, and each continent. However, the fundamental principles of organic farming are the same.
Compost once was just a smart way for people to handle their waste. It was a virtuous cycle of producing food, consuming food, and then putting the leftovers back into the earth for the next cycle of growth.
This is how nature grows trees, for instance. In the spring, the leaves grow and the tree draws nutrition from the earth. In the fall, the fruit and leaves fall. The fruit is consumed by animals (and people), who pass it on in the form of waste. Waste is nature's ultimate fertilizer. The leaves decompose naturally over the winter and provide a fresh batch of fertilizer for the tree in the spring. It's efficient, it's effortless, and it's entirely free.
On chemical farms, the whole cycle has been smashed apart and now, like Humpty Dumpty, it's hard to put it back together again. Farmers today, and many home owners for that matter, remove and dispose of leaves and other natural wastes and then buy fertilizer. For instance, dairy farmers have a lot of cow manure. Organic dairy farmers spread composted manure on fields and manage their pastures organically. They remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and sequester it. Chemical dairy farmers typically do not grow their own feed or have pasture for animals to graze on, so they don't have fields where they can spread the waste. Instead, they use large giant vats to contain and process all the methane gas that concentrated piles of animal waste produce. Chemical dairy farmers add carbon dioxide to the atmosphere (and, worse, lots of methane). Same basic activity, much different outcome.
Organic plant waste also can and should be composted. It is just as important as animal manure to rebuilding the fertility of the soil each year. One of the drawbacks of the biofuels industry is that it diverts plant waste from use as natural fertilizer for the soil. Removing that waste from farms takes the carbon away and burns it as fuel, creating even more carbon dioxide, rather than sequestering it in the soil where it belongs.
If every farmer—make that every person—composted his or her food and yard waste (kitchen scraps, leaves, grass clippings, etc.) and added it back to their land, we might be able to stop all climate change right now.
Plants grown to nourish the soil and prevent weeds, known as cover crops, are essential elements in the carbon-sequestering capability of an organic farm. They also prevent soil erosion over the winter months, functioning as a warm, green blanket for the land. Many different types of cover crops are used in different regions and for different purposes. Some are planted in the spring specifically for weed control or to benefit later crops. Many of them are legumes, which pull nitrogen from the air to enrich the soil for the next crop.
The Farming Systems Trial found another reason to use cover crops. Our new best friends, mycorrhizal fungi, which grow on the roots of plants and have a symbiotic relationship with them, thrive on cover crops. At the same time that cover crops are protecting the winter soil from erosion, giving farmers free nitrogen from the air, and preventing the growth of weeds, they are also providing homes for carbon-eating mycorrhizal fungi.
Synthetic-chemical farms (and the equipment it takes to farm that way) have become so big and specialized that their ability to rotate and diversify their crops is extremely limited. The most successful farms include animals, which are pastured on one area, then rotated to another—long before the pasture is over-grazed and turns to mud. These pastures are tilled once every 3 years to incorporate the animal manure, a key fertilizer, into the soil, to feed a diverse array of crops for the next few years. Rotating the crops among the fields from year to year breaks the cycle of disease and confuses the insects enough that chemical pesticides, herbicides, and fungicides are not necessary.
If the evidence that organic is better for the environment is so clear, and the research has shown that organic farming is more profitable and productive over the long term, why hasn't every farmer switched to organic methods? Especially if farming organically can also stop the climate crisis, save the finite supply of petroleum oil for other uses, and eliminate the majority of the toxins from our soil and water and thus from our bodies?
Attitudes can and must change. Chemical companies must not be allowed to exert undue influence over the agricultural research conducted on our nation's campuses, and the government must revisit and rethink the incentives they offer farmers to produce chemical crops. Farmers must work together to help each other transition to organic and become successful modern organic farmers—not only supplying the world with healthy food, but also healing the planet in the process.
But how do we begin to untangle the mess, begin to work ourselves out of our chemical dependency and into a world that truly is organic, regenerative, and, most important, healthy for all? We need to end the confusion once and for all and unite over what really matters.
Well, let this be your cocktail party guide to global organic conversion, no spin included—just the facts, and maybe a few opinions thrown in for good measure.
Chemicals are not necessary to grow food. Synthetic fertilizers, pesticides, fungicides, and GMOs are substitutes for thinking, understanding, and effort. They are necessary only to generate large profits for businesses and to dispose of our toxic industrial wastes. Virtually every food in the world has been successfully grown and made organically in modern, productive, and regenerative ways—from fine wines to white flour, apples, cherries, the most delicious gourmet beef, olive oil, and yes, even lard.
Chemicals make food, soil, water, and air dirty, toxic, and poisoned. The manufacturing, transportation, and use of chemicals for agriculture are energy-intensive and poisonous to all things that come in contact with them. Most chemicals don't biodegrade within a few months. Like nuclear waste, some toxins last forever, and many of the impacts are known to be horrible. Already, dead zones in the ocean are starting to spread, wells are contaminated, and we suffer increasingly from infections and diseases such as asthma, diabetes, methicillin-resistant Staphylo-coccus aureus, Parkinson's, and cancers associated with chemicals.
Agricultural chemicals destroy the soil's natural ability to store and process carbon, thereby leading to our gradual suffocation and a global climate crisis. Mycorrhizal fungi in the soil are our greatest allies in the fight for our survival on this planet. They are the hidden heroes beneath us. Chemicals kill them. Chemicals kill us.
Smaller doses of chemicals can be just as dangerous as large doses. Most of the government regulations on chemicals are based on estimated safe amounts of exposure. Doctors and researchers are finding, however, that small doses, and cumulative small doses, can be just as toxic as large doses. There really are no safe limits.
Organic foods are healthier.
Growing foods organically prevents thousands of highly toxic chemicals from entering our environment and poisoning our soils, our wells, our wildlife, our children, and ourselves.
Growing foods organically restores the earth's ability to process and store carbon and thereby significantly reduces the atmospheric problems that are causing the climate crisis (whether you believe in it or not!). Even more important, restoring the earth's ability to store carbon will help us all keep breathing.
Studies have shown that some organic foods are higher in antioxidants and powerful cancer-fighting nutrients such as conjugated linoleic acid. And, when you eat them, you are ingesting much cleaner, purer food.
In one study published in Environmental Health Perspectives, researchers analyzed the urine samples of children when they ate a chemical-food diet and then again after eating an organic diet (before returning to a chemical diet again). The researchers documented a significant decrease in agricultural chemicals detected in their urine on the same day they switched to an organic diet—and a return to higher levels when they went back to a chemical diet.6
Organic foods are safer. No food system will be ever 100 percent safe because processing factories and home kitchens can be unsanitary, but organic foods are safer because they are produced without dangerous chemicals, antibiotics, and risky (to say nothing of disgusting) but cheap practices like feeding dead cows to living cows and applying contaminated sewage sludge to farm fields. Certified organic products are the only foods available that have a government-backed guarantee that no chemicals, antibiotics, sewage sludge, or GMOs were used in growing or processing the foods.
That said, wash all foods (even prepackaged organic produce) and handle them carefully before eating them.
Organic foods are natural, but natural foods aren't organic. No official standards define “natural” for producers or consumers, but it tends to denote foods that contain no preservatives or artificial ingredients. There is no independent confirmation that products meet that definition—it's just a word on label that any food producer can use. Organic foods, by the standards defined by the USDA and independently verified by inspectors, must be natural.
Organic foods taste better. There may not be any scientific proof to back this up, but anecdotal evidence demonstrates that organic produce has overcome its once-negative reputation as being bland or tasting bad. Now organic foods are thought of as fresh, vibrant, and flavorful. The bad press about the poor taste of organic foods has its roots in two things. First, since the “organic” movement started with the health movement, it was often combined with no-salt, no-fat, no-flavor, no-thanks cooking, which truly was less tasty. Second, when organic foods originally became available in the marketplace, farmers were just relearning how to grow without chemicals, so the fruits and vegetables were often unappealing to look at and therefore less appealing to eat. Today, organic fruits and vegetables look just as good if not better than produce from chemical farms, and they taste even better—especially if they are grown locally and purchased ripe and fresh.
In an unscientific study, my kids confirmed that organic foods taste better. And frankly, isn't that the group that matters most?
Choosing to eat organic foods does not condemn you to a diet of nuts, berries, and tofu. Today, you can find organic versions of the most popular foods, including such favorites as Hidden Valley Ranch dressing and Heinz ketchup. It is possible to produce any food organically, even Cap'n Crunch cereal and American cheese.
Eating organic doesn't make you a vegetarian. Both meat and dairy products are now produced organically. Environmental concerns about eating meat center primarily on the amount of methane produced by raising animals in concentrated animal feeding operations, which are also inhumane, wasteful, and rife with diseases, necessitating the overuse of antibiotics. Studies have shown that eating too much meat is not healthy, but farm animals are an important component of farm fertility and human nutrition.
A vegan versus meat-eating fight diverts our attention from the key goal of producing and eating only organic food. We need to unite for the planet right now. Vegetarians and vegans especially need to demand organic because they often depend on soy foods for protein. Most nonorganic soy is GMO.
Organic foods aren't just for hippies. Seriously, all sorts of people eat organic foods. Poor people, rich people, liberal Democrats, evangelical Republicans, celebrities, and non-celebrities eat organic foods. The Obamas eat organic foods. Even the CEO of Monsanto, Hugh Grant, eats organic food!7
Organic farming over time is more productive than chemical farming. During times of drought and floods, organic farms consistently produce more than chemical farms. During ideal weather, chemical farms can produce more than organic farms. But there has never been a guarantee (governmental or otherwise) of ideal weather.
We can feed the world with organic foods and farming. Despite the propaganda churned out by biotech and chemical companies, organic farming is the only way to feed the world. Transferring our toxic agricultural system to other countries is sure to bring about a global environmental collapse. The energy required, the toxicity of the chemicals, and the degradation to the soil will be fatal. Instead, we need to export the knowledge we have gained about successful modern organic farming and then help others adapt these practices to their climates, regions, and cultures.
Organic is more important than local, but local is also important. Numerous studies have shown that organic is much more critical when it comes to carbon than local. In one study commissioned by PepsiCo, an independent researcher determined that the most significant component of the carbon footprint for Tropicana orange juice (a PepsiCo product) wasn't transportation or manufacturing, but “the production and application of fertilizer”8 required to grow oranges.
The local food movement has been very important in revitalizing small farms and communities and bringing fresh, seasonal foods to many more people. However, as a means of saving the planet and improving our health, it only goes so far. Local chemical farming contaminates local communities and actually increases residents’ carbon footprints and energy use. Local organic farming cleans up communities and decreases their carbon footprint and energy use.
International trade is essential. Coffee will always be grown in places other than North America. Cacao, too, which is what chocolate is made from. Are we willing to give those up? No. Nor should we. The glorious and devastating history of our planet is filled with people fulfilling the primal urge to trade, to explore, to exchange—from the Silk Road to Route 66. And in those exchanges we learn. We learn about people who are different from us. Different religions. Different ways of healing. Different foods. Without trade, Italians wouldn't have pasta, Irish wouldn't have potatoes, and Americans wouldn't have pizza or sushi. (Even Alice Waters wouldn't have become the revolutionary chef without her famous trip to France, where she first tasted real food.)
But we also learn what is the same. We love the same. Our bodies, while they are different shapes and colors, all work the same. We all are born and we all die. And we all like to eat!
Fair trade is the best way to help people in other countries. There are 1.1 billion people around the world who make less than $1 a day9 and live in desperate poverty. Their best hope for improving their plight is creating organic products to sell to other countries. And frankly, it's the best and most respectful way we can aid them.
Trade often has negative consequences—intentional and not. Weeds, rodents, diseases, and insects are just as likely to travel as humans. And our culture of fast food and violent entertainment has contaminated countries that were much healthier before we “exposed” them to our poor habits. Melamine and lead contamination have taught us that greed and corruption are universal. And now we are exporting our chemical-agriculture addiction. Trying to overcontrol trade—whether of food or information—can lead to isolationism and dangerous political climates. Under-controlling trade can be just as devastating.
Organic farming increases and protects the planet's biodiversity. If you are an animal lover of any kind, organic is for you. A recent report by the International Union for Conservation of Nature documents that “life on earth is under serious threat.” The report found that one-third of amphibians, at least one in eight birds, and a quarter of mammals are on the verge of extinction. Half of all plant groups are threatened.10 Development and logging are responsible, but agriculture is as much, if not more, to blame. As I have explained, the toxic effects of chemicals have reduced all species’ abilities to survive and reproduce.
Growing organic is not going backward. When I proposed to chemical farmers that they switch to organic methods, they frequently replied, “Do you mean going back to the old way?” No! I believe in applying the best of modern science, technology, and resources to constantly improve our understanding of nature and our ways of growing and producing food. I also believe we cannot let corporations profit from killing us.
Chemical farming eliminates jobs. Many farmers use chemicals to make their jobs “easier” by allowing them to farm more land with less labor. That means fewer jobs. Whenever you hear a politician promising more “jobs,” think twice. There are lots of different kinds of jobs. Which job do you prefer: working in a coal mine or on a farm? Working in a chemical factory, knowing that you are likely to die from cancer and are contributing to causing it in others, or hard physical labor outdoors that is likely to prolong your life? We have traded good, healthy, and hard jobs for easier, unhealthy, and more deadly jobs—all in the name of “production efficiency.”
Government subsidies are the primary reason for the low prices of chemical foods. Without government subsidies, chemical food would not be less expensive, but rather much more expensive. Without government subsidies, farmers would not find it cost-effective to increase the amount of land they have in cultivation, buy larger machinery, and farm more with less labor by using chemicals to artificially increase their yields. Organic foods have no hidden costs.
As a citizen, the minute you decide to stop using chemicals in your yard, you have gone organic. Chemical lawn fertilizers, herbicides, and pesticides used at home are just as dangerous, toxic, and threatening to our health and environment as chemicals used on farms. You can simply decline to use them. Home owners don't have to become certified organic because they aren't selling anything. Making the choice to eliminate chemicals from your home and life, on the other hand, is a powerful and important act that will benefit your family's health immediately. You can find many free resources to help you solve problems with your lawn and garden without chemicals. Rodale.com is a helpful place to start looking for resources.
Organic farming, gardening, lawn management, and living can stop the climate crisis—whether or not you believe it exists! When you combine the impacts of protecting the mycorrhizal fungi, eliminating all the toxic chemicals and their packaging and the amount of energy spent producing them, and reducing the amount of time you spend driving to the doctor with all the resulting health problems, the carbon problem in our atmosphere is practically solved. We still need to invest in renewable energy—but restoring the earth's ability to sequester carbon is a good place to start.
Regeneration is completely possible—we can make new soil. When my grandfather bought his farm and my father bought the “new farm,” both farms were degraded, eroded, and unfertile. Both farms are now paragons of fertility and filled with healthy, thriving plants and animals. In fact, for a study at the Rodale Institute on cutworms (chemical corn's greatest pest), the researchers could not find enough cutworms and had to get some shipped in!
The USDA's organic standards are good enough, but we need to make them better. The integrity of the organic label is more important than the scale of any farm. While it's lovely to contemplate a world where each of us purchases all of our food directly from the well-intentioned person who grew it, this simply is not realistic. The majority of the millions of people in America are shopping in supermarkets, Wal-Marts, gas station mini-marts, and inner-city bodegas. Those millions of people deserve a label they can trust, one they can understand and that is consistent over time. We must work together to create the best definition of what organic means: humanely raised and grass-fed animals, social justice and fair trade standards, and worker rights all make the label more credible. We can make it true. Remember, the government is us.
Our resistance to unification over the organic standards is what makes it easier for the chemical companies to succeed. The many labels consumers see today—grass-fed, humanely raised, free-range, locally grown—reflect important value choices, but they make it harder for people to understand what each choice means and why it matters. Chemical companies know that most people make their decisions based on price, so they put all their energy and resources into keeping the price of food artificially low. As a result, many people give up trying to figure out all the labels and just buy the cheapest foods, especially in tough times.
Big business and industry are not inherently bad or evil. There are bad businesses and bad people, but scale doesn't necessarily make them that way. Big business, when focused on creating positive change, can make big changes happen fast. Big businesses can make more good things available to people more widely, quickly, and affordably.
The same people who invented and mass-produced chemical fertilizers and pesticides also developed aspirin and many other chemical products that have improved our lives. We need to sort out what is good from what is toxic and make the right decisions for the future. Demonizing those who don't see the world our way is a waste of precious time.
Furthermore, whether you trust the government or not, government regulation is essential. Thriving, healthy, growing economies and communities are built on trust, and on faith in that trust. But it is crazy to think that trust, without regulation, will suffice. When transactions go beyond one-on-one handshaking agreements, which they must in order for us all to survive, regulation becomes essential. And when trust fails, as it has in the past few years, our whole economy fails.
The same is true for organics. Regulations are essential to keep people honest, because there are so many steps in the food chain before products make their way to our tables. Unless you live totally self-sufficiently, you will never be able to control every aspect of your food, so we must find ways to trust in others to do as we would.
I am not suggesting that the government or anyone else should tell us what to eat. No one is perfect. Especially not me. I don't eat organic foods all the time. I wish I could, but I work full-time at multiple jobs, volunteer on the boards of several nonprofits, and have three kids between the ages of 28 and 3. We eat pizza, takeout, even fast food. When we travel, I sometimes pack snacks, but I am just as likely to pull over for Popeyes red beans and rice. Eating organic all the time, as others have discovered, is hard if not impossible. My dream is that one day it won't be.
I also believe if people want to eat organic Twinkies, we should let them. There is too much judgment in this world already. Taste is personal and regional, and we don't need food police to govern it. I've seen that the more you try to control what people eat or what they do, the more likely they are to rebel. Our supermarkets and fast-food places can exist, and thrive, in an organic world. In fact, I think they have to. People eat what tastes good to them, not because they like or prefer the chemicals in the food. And people eat it because it's cheap, not because they wouldn't rather have a delightful organic meal at a fancy restaurant. We must make organic foods more widely available at reasonable costs to everyone, at every income level.
When I was a kid, I grew up in a house that never had a box of Pop-Tarts in it. I went to friends’ homes and stared longingly at the box with the beautiful, colorful, iced pastries on it. It just didn't seem fair that some kids were allowed to have that stuff and I wasn't. I felt deprived. Today, I am thankful for companies like Nature's Path, which makes organic toaster pastries—with icing! We don't eat them often, but they are there if we really want one. And as a result, my kids don't feel deprived in the same way I did (although I am sure they feel deprived in some other way).
It's not too late to change—and get healthier and happier! People who eat organic foods reduce their pesticide intake by as much as 90 percent, according to a study from the University of Washington.11 Further, research by University of Colorado neuroscientist Christopher Lowry, PhD, found that certain strains of soilborne bacteria not only stimulate the human immune system, but also boost serotonin levels in mice. Low levels of serotonin are tied to depression and drugs that inhibit its reuptake in the brain are used as antidepressants.12 Perhaps putting your hands in healthy organic soil can prevent depression! If we all farmed and gardened the organic way, we may not need the antidepressant drugs that we are finding in our water supply (and that have dangerous side effects).
A lot of people won't agree with these statements—money might even be spent trying to negate my message, like those “clean” coal commercials or the ridiculous pro-high-fructose corn syrup commercials. Such campaigns create doubt, play on people's insecurities, and perpetuate falsehoods in favor of corporate profit. We have to be prepared for desperate attempts to salvage profits.
Think for a minute about what the world could look like if we all worked together and made it organic. Let's take the leap in our minds. How would we make this audacious goal of going organic happen? And what would the world look and feel like?
First, like on the current organic farms, there would be a transition period. We wouldn't need more land for farming, but we would need more farmers farming differently. Fortunately, a lot of young people who currently can't afford the land are interested in farming. And a lot of people who are out of work may not mind working on a farm. But we would need to create a new model for farm employment, since we shouldn't just rely on farm families, illegal immigrants, and migrant workers.
Perhaps a required period of farm service could be a part of every public school education so teenagers could learn where their food comes from. Summer vacations from school were originally intended to ensure kids were available to help their families with the farming during the busy growing season. That work gave children important physical activity, lessons in responsibility, an understanding and respect for food and where it comes from, and an appreciation of the benefits of hard work.
The farms themselves would need to become more diverse—what a few chemical farmers in Iowa called “Old McDonald” farms, like the children's song. Instead of endless rows of corn and soybeans, the farms would have animals, vegetables, chickens and eggs, and a variety of crops sowed in an integrated rotation system that produces much more food and fertility over time.
We could convert all those corn and soybean fields into pasture to raise grass-fed cattle and hogs. The hogs would be freed from their tight cages, nutrients would be returned to the soil rather than festering in toxic vats, and we'd have cleaner, healthier, and happier meat to eat. Remember, organically managed pastures sequester a lot of carbon, and animals that eat their natural diets have fewer diseases. Turning corn and soybean fields into pastureland would reduce the supply of those commodities enough that the fewer farmers who still grew them would get a better price for their crops. And the meat produced would be much healthier and better tasting for all of us, not just those who can afford grass-fed diets now. Plus, instead of sitting in big tractors all day, becoming bored and overweight, farmers could get back in the saddle and become cowboys again.
Farmers will need help changing, since to most of them organic is a foreign way to farm. They are so used to relying on advice from chemical-company–funded consultants and universities that they'll need to get to know their land in a new way. They will need to relax their often rigid ideal of having totally “clean” and neat weed-free fields. Many farmers might even need emotional support. In the focus group I met with in Iowa, one older farmer was beginning to question his role in creating dead zones in the Gulf of Mexico. I could see fear and conflict in his face as he realized that maybe he hadn't been doing the right thing all his life after all.
This reeducation needs to start early—way before kids become farmers or consumers. The farm bill allocated more than $1 billion a year for the school lunch program. Instead of using that to feed kids leftover crap from farms and factories, we can use that money to get Edible Schoolyard organic gardens (or something similar) and curriculum into every public school. Kids can learn how to grow and make their own food, and as a result they will learn how to eat. Nothing is more likely to get kids to eat vegetables than to let them grow and pick them themselves.
Our whole landscape would change for the better. Cities would be surrounded by a wreath of small farms, greenhouses, and community gardens. Growing fruits and vegetables closest to where they are consumed just makes sense—food tastes best when it's fresh. Housing developments could become productive and fertile sources of food, like Prairie Crossing in Grayslake, Illinois. Edible landscaping would be part of how we all think. And it would taste good as well as look good!
Of course, the government would need to change, too.
In the business world, a farm-related reference is commonly used to describe an organization that is hierarchical, territorial, and, all too often, ineffective. The workers are said to be stuck in silos. On a farm, silos are used to store grains and silage (fermented plants that are fed to animals—but should really be made into compost). All government regulatory organizations are set up in silos, inhibiting cooperation and collaboration. We can't really afford that approach any more. And the last thing we need is another government bureaucracy to make producing food even more complicated and expensive. I urge President Obama and his successors to merge the EPA, USDA, FDA, and maybe even the National Institutes of Health, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Department of Energy into one single-integrated agency to create a strong, lean, and more effective system. An awful lot of money, time, and headaches could be saved and insights gained by having these groups work together, collaborating to find solutions that cross the divides.
If the chemical companies still want to stay in business, they can redirect their researchers to find ways of “harvesting” the plastic crap that they created and we have dumped into the oceans, and recycling it into something inert and useful.
How would the consumer experience change?
Supermarkets would still exist, thankfully. (I like supermarkets.) But they might be more like super-farmers’-markets, offering a combination of local and regional foods. The ridiculous segregation of organics that persists in our supermarkets—”hippie” zones—would go away. People could still get all their favorite products, but they would all be certified organic—even Doritos and Wonder bread.
Food prices might rise, but with heavy taxation and penalties on chemical companies, chemical foods would be much more expensive than organic. And of course, all chemical foods would have to have warning labels that list all the dangers of eating them, including death.
Health care costs, conversely, would decrease significantly. Slowly but surely, as we transitioned to organic, autism rates would decline; cancer rates would decline; diabetes rates would decline, obesity would decline (we'd all lose weight, thanks to removing all those hormone-disrupting, endocrine-disrupting chemicals from our lives!); allergy, asthma, and depression rates would go down. Infertility, miscarriages, genital deformities, and sexual dysfunction would decrease and babies would be born healthier.
People would start to feel better and be healthier. Ask any dairy farmer how things change after they go organic and they will tell you their cows are healthier and happier. Kids especially, with all the outdoor activity and farmwork, would become stronger and more vital. We'd see fewer behavioral problems and conditions such as ADHD.
There would be more frogs! More bees! More fireflies! More bats! (And therefore fewer mosquitoes!) Floods and droughts would be much less extreme and much less devastating.
While much would change, many things would feel the same. We would still have TVs, computers, and restaurants (though the food would taste a whole lot better). Our kids would still want to go shopping, only now all the cotton clothing they're begging for would be organic, which feels a lot softer against the skin (it's true!). There would still be fashion and fads. (Some things will never change.)
Doesn't that seem like a vision worth championing?
I know it's possible.
We all need to help and the first place to start is in our own lives and yards.
We need to plant more gardens. The beautiful thing about organic and nature and mycorrhizal fungi is that they make it not really matter what you plant. Plant tomatoes or zinnias, herbs or a forest. Stake a claim, mark your ground, and take a stand. Make your commitment to staying on this planet and on this earth. Make it with your own personal sense of style and freedom of taste. Plant foods you love to eat, and use that organic garden to help you learn about nature, not fight against it. You'll find something unexpected will grow in your garden—trust. Trust in yourself. Trust in nature. Trust in our future, and finally, trust in our ability to make our future good.