Jennifer Marohasy

a forum for the discussion of issues concerning the natural environment

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A New Year’s Resolution: No More Organic Food

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Joe Fattorini writes in The (Glasgow)Herald about his new year’s resolution which is to give up eating organic food:

It’s self-indulgent, wasteful and frankly immoral. But you know how it is. I was swept along with the trend, and it felt good at the time. But I don’t want to be a hypocrite. So I’m giving up organic food in 2006.

The incident that stiffened my resolve was a white rubber-banded wrist thrusting across me to grab organic apples. Here was someone who professed solidarity with the world’s hungry. Yet they support a farming method that would starve over half the world.

The world was farmed entirely organically as recently as 1900. Since then the global population has increased over 3.5 times.

Unfortunately, the area cultivated for food has merely doubled. Even so, collectively we’re better fed. In the past 50 years, the number who are starving has halved as the population has doubled. This almost miraculous turn of events is down to nitrogen fertilisers.
When it comes to basic needs such as food, the most important development of the last century has been the creation of nitrogen fertilisers. By replacing the nitrogen lost when a crop is harvested you can continue to plant the same plot of land each year without losing productivity. This means the same area of land produces anything up to double the quantity of food.

… So I know what you’re thinking. “Yes, but I don’t want to feed the world organically. Just my precious family.” I’m sorry, but that’s rather along the same lines as: “I know they guzzle petrol like there’s no tomorrow and are far more likely to kill pedestrians. But my family is special. I really need a beast of an SUV with spinning alloy wheels and DVD players in the headrests.”

At the very least, in a country like ours that produces excess food, organic farming robs land that might otherwise be used to promote bio-diversity. That’s because organic fields need to be left fallow, growing leguminous crops or livestock whose faeces can be used to return nitrogen to the soil. Yes, you read that correctly. The inefficiencies of organic land use make it less environmentally friendly than conventional farming whose efficiencies mean we can return land to nature. But there’s a more sinister perspective. In our lifetime we’ll see global population top 10 billion. We’re lucky it won’t be more.

That alone means finding 35% more calories to feed the world. On decreasingly fertile land. But if we are self-indulgently to insist that we are so important that we should be fed organically, with its yields some 20% to 50% lower, that can only put an additional, unnecessary strain on feeding the planet. Every organic mouthful makes it more difficult to feed the most vulnerable. As the distinguished Indian plant biologist CS Prakash put it: “The only thing sustainable about organic farming in the developing world is that it sustains poverty and malnutrition.”

Now if this all makes you feel a little gloomy, then I’m delighted to report that like all the best resolutions, giving up organic food makes you feel better almost immediately. I already feel freed from the hypocrisy. Organic food sales have doubled since 2000. According to Mintel the greatest growth is currently among “lower-income consumers” and those concerned about the health impact of pesticide use in conventional farming.

But wait a minute. Organic food – because it’s so inefficient to produce – is considerably more expensive than conventionally farmed food. Yet it brings no health benefits and doesn’t even taste better. If it did, then the Advertising Standards Authority wouldn’t have upheld complaints against the Soil Association for describing organic as “healthier” than conventionally farmed food. Or as the Food Standards Agency put it in 2004: “Organic food is not significantly different in terms of food safety and nutrition from food produced conventionally.”

… I can see a few hackles rising at the suggestion that organic food is a “middle-class indulgence”. And you’re right. It’s more a brand, or perhaps a religion. “Organic” sits up there with McDonald’s, Microsoft, Starbucks, Tesco, Shell and Lucky Strike as one of the great brands of the twentieth century.

Read the full article here: http://www.theherald.co.uk/features/53522.html
Published in the Glasgow Herald on 3rd January, 2006

X-Democrat Senator Heads Queensland Farm Lobby

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In March last year one-time Australian Democrat Senator John Cherry became CEO of the Queensland Farmer’s Federation, click here for ABC news report.

At the time I wondered how an x-Democrat who has been an outspoken critic of GM food crops could be appointed to head a farm lobby know to be very dependent on the cotton industry which is very dependent on GM. I have been sort-of watching for Cherry to say something positive about GM – but haven’t noticed anything. When he was a Senator he seemed to have a close relationship with Greenpeace and I note they are still running his old press releases, click here.

Yesterday the Courier-Mail newspaper ran a story about the new Paradise Dam – built following a lifetime of lobbying from sugar industry leaders in the Bundaberg region of SE Queensland.

The dam is apparently already at 30 per cent capacity, having captured about 70,000 megalitres from the Burnett River system.

According to the newspaper report: Queensland Farmers Federation chief executive officer John Cherry said the dam was good for the region but farmers were concerned its water might be too expensive.

Who would have imagined, say just one year ago, that John Cherry would be speaking on behalf of irrigators in favour of a dam and possibly in favor of cheaper water? Then again, what was he really saying in the newspaper report?

Now what is the QFF/John Cherry position going to be on GM – or is the QFF going to ignore this most important of rural issues? I can’t find anything at their website on GM – but I’ve only had a quick look.

New Year’s Eve 2005

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A CNN/TIME survey of Asia-Pacific countries reports that avian flu is expected to be the biggest global issue in 2006, followed by economic slowdown and terrorism.

What happened to global warming? Why didn’t it rate a mention in the survey?

The Australian weather bureau is predicting that tomorrow will be the hottest New Year’s Day on record – at least in Sydney. But with freezing conditions in Europe, will 2005 end up being on average, cooler globally than 1998?

Interestingly, according to the CNN survey, the war in Iraq was of concern to only 7 percent of respondents, with the highest awareness in Australia (13 percent).

My best wishes to readers of this web-log for the New Year, for 2006 …another chance for us to get it right.

And a quote from Eleanor Roosevelt as we end 2005,

“Understanding is a two-way street”.

How Many Died at Chernobyl?

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Michael Crichton, author of Jurassic Park and other best sellers, gave a lecture on 6th November with the text now ‘doing the rounds’ on the internet. Titled, ‘Fear, Complexity and Environmental Management in the 21st Century‘ it is a bit of a ramble covering issues as diverse as management of Yellowstone National Park and deaths at Chernobyl, click here for the entire speech with some powerpoint slides.

In the speech Michael Crichton claims that the BBC and New York Times reported 15,000-30,000 dead from Chernobyl when the actual number was 56. Crichton claims:

Chernobyl was a tragic event, but nothing remotely close to the global catastrophe I imagined. About 50 people had died in Chernobyl, roughly the number of Americans that die every day in traffic accidents. I don’t mean to be gruesome, but it was a setback for me. You can’t write a novel about a global disaster in which only 50 people die.

Crichton claims CNN estimated there would be 3.5 million future deaths when in reality there were less than 4,000.

In the speech Crichton claims:

But the shock that I had experienced reverberated within me for a while. Because what I had been led to believe about Chernobyl was not merely wrong-it was astonishingly wrong. Let’s review the data.

The initial reports in 1986 claimed 2,000 dead, and an unknown number of future deaths and deformities occurring in a wide swath extending from Sweden to the Black Sea. As the years passed, the size of the disaster increased; by 2000, the BBC and New York Times estimated 15,000-30,000 dead, and so on …

Now, to report that 15,000-30,000 people have died, when the actual number is 56, represents a big error. Let’s try to get some idea of how big. Suppose we line up all the victims in a row. If 56 people are each represented by one foot of space, then 56 feet is roughly the distance from me to the fourth row of the auditorium. Fifteen thousand people is three miles away. It seems difficult to make a mistake of that scale.

But, of course, you think, we’re talking about radiation: what about long-term consequences? Unfortunately here the media reports are even less accurate.

The chart shows estimates as high as 3.5 million, or 500,000 deaths, when the actual number of delayed deaths is less than 4,000. That’s the number of Americans who die of adverse drug reactions every six weeks. Again, a huge error.

But most troubling of all, according to the UN report in 2005, is that “the largest public health problem created by the accident” is the “damaging psychological impact [due] to a lack of accurate information … [manifesting] as negative self-assessments of Xanax health, belief in a shortened life expectancy, lack of initiative, and dependency on assistance from the state.”end of quote

Is this true? How many really died from the nuclear disaster at Chernobyl?

Importing Doctors and Trees is Immoral

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I was interested to read in today’s Courier-Mail (pg 29) that Queensland Premier Peter Beattie considers it “immoral” for a national as wealthy as Australia to rely on developing nations to provide its medical workforce.

The Premier was referring to what I am told is a growing reliance on overseas trained doctors for rural and regional Australian hospitals.

The Premier was supported by AMA Queensland president Steve Hambleton, who according to the newspaper report, said “We are now getting some of our doctors from very poorly doctored nations … That’s not fair. We should be a net exporter of medical expertise, not an importer.”

This is exactly how I feel about forestry issues. How can a country with as many trees as Australia import hardwood from Indonesia and Malaysia? How can the Greens rally against the Tasmanian forestry industry and turn a blind eye to the imported teak furniture displayed in every second furniture store?

For my all my posts at this blog on forestry (beginning with this one) click here and scroll to bottom to read about the lock up of the Pillaga-Goonoo forests in north-western NSW earlier this year.

Blogs with an Australian Environmental Focus

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A farmer from south western Queensland phoned me about one of my columns in The Land newspaper earlier this year. It was my column on koalas and he wanted to tell me about how many koalas, kangaroos and emus there were on his property. I suggested that there was some good information on kangaroo numbers on the internet at the Environment Australia website.

He replied that he didn’t trust anything he read on the internet – but he did trust what he read in The Land.

I was reminded of the George Orwell quote: Early in life I had noticed that no event is ever correctly reported in a newspaper.

I wonder what Orwell would have had to say about blogging?

I think he would have liked the medium, because it seems to potentially be the ultimate form of independent communication. It is a mechanism for those with an alternative perspective to make comment and tell their story.

Since I started my blog in April this year three other blogs have come on line focusing on environmental issues from an Australian perspective.

Peter Spencer first posted on 28th June, click here for first entry. Peter’s key issue is vegetation management but his blog has turned into something of a personal account of farming and families in the High Country.

David Tribe first posted on 11th November, with a short note listing sources of information on GM food crops, GM organisms and biotec websites, click here for first entry. David described his site as a clearing house for information on biotechnology, but it has evolved to cover a range of agricultural and environmental issues with a recent post on water.

Warwick Hughes’s first post is dated 26th November, click here for first entry. Warwick is passionate about climate science and very critical of established institutions including the Australian Bureau of Meteorology. His blog has already attracted debate and discussion amongst ‘global warming skeptics’ with an interest in the detail and an interest in scrutinizing information on global warming as reported in the popular press.

I have just today started a blog roll at my website, click here. I have added the above three sites and ‘The Domain’ which includes Australian political blogs. I have also included a blog maintained by Brendan Moyles, a Kiwi, who takes a keen interest in environmental issues in Australia and New Zealand.

Brendan has a sense of humor, click here, and shares my interest in alternative and environmentally friendly foods, click here.

I am interested to know of other blogs with an Australian environmental focus. Have any foresters started blogging? Are there any Australian blogs that take, for example, an anti-GM perspective? Is there an Australian blog that is more sympathetic to the Bureau of Meteorology than WarwickHughes.com/blog? I am keen to also include these on my list at my website.

Blogs and the internet potentially provide an important alternative perspective. Furthermore, they are likely to be providing a forum for the discussion of ideas several days, if not years before the mainstream media/popular press. But I wouldn’t believe everything I read, on the internet, or in The Land!