Jennifer Marohasy

a forum for the discussion of issues concerning the natural environment

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Organic Toilet Paper: For the Intelligent Consumer

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Question: when is a tomato not a tomato? Answer: When it’s an organic tomato. Those who are into organics say it’s superior to anything you can get that has been grown using conventional production methods. They will tell you that an organic tomato tastes better, is better for you and is grown in away that causes less harm to the environment. It may be more expensive, but you get what you pay for, don’t you?

Thats accoring to an article on organics titled It’s only natural published over the weekend in the Sunday [colour] Magazine of the Sydney and Melbourne tabloid newspapers. I didn’t see the magazine, but Detribe kindly sent these snippets for the blog:

Critics, however, say it’s a rip-off. Nothing more than a load of marketing hogwash aimed at people with more money than sense, which plays on fears about the misuse of pesticides and is supported through a series of far-fetched claims. Weighing up the pros and cons can be confusing, but one thing that’s New Age crystal clear is just how popular organic products have become in recent years.

In 1990, just 372,000 ha were farmed organically in Australia. Today, the total land area given to organic production is around 10 million hectares and Australia now accounts for nearly half the world’s organic farmland. Staggering as that increase may seem, organic food production still represents less than two per cent of the total value of agricultural production in this country.

The Australian organic food industry, estimated to be worth between $250-$500 rnillion, remains a minor player in the agricultural sector But, according to the government’s Rural Industries Research and Development Corporation (RIRDC), domestic demand for organic products significantly outstrips supply, despite an estimated growth in organic production of at least 15-25 per cent per annum, every year for the past five years.

… “Our market is intelligent consumer” says Pierce Cody founder of Macro Whole foods, a new chain of organic supermarkets sprouting up in Sydney and Melbourne. The stores sell everything from organic toilet paper and toothpaste, to cleaning products and pet food. Cody believes the key to growth is treating the consumer with respect.

“I can’t see us advertising on a billboard, ‘Macro: You’ll love us’ because people don’t buy organic just because you tell them to. It’s a choice they arrive at themselves” he says.

Cody’s background is in advertising, he confesses he only got, into organics because he could see there was “monstrous scope for growth”. “It’s the thing,” he says. “The concept is very simple to understand. It’s clean, original food, made the way it used to be made. We are taking food back to the future.”

Cody admits that “our market tends to be more white collar than blue collar”, but he, denies the higher cost associated with organics makes it elitist.

“It is more expensive, yes, but it’s the real cost of food prior to industrialised farming, which cuts comers.”

[But]… by not using artificial fertilizers -like nitrogen, organic farmers have smaller yields – typically around 30 to 50 percent less than crops grown on conventional farms. This is the main reason why organic products are more expensive.

…In 1994; Trina Karstrom took over the Botobolar vineyard in scenic Mudgee, NSW. The 22 ha vineyard was the first organic one to be planted in Australia. That was in 1971 and the vines have always been grown without the use of pesticides, herbicides or chemical fertilizers. She is in no doubt about the health benefits of organically grown produce.

“I shudder to think what residual spray is in [conventional] wines,” she says, “Grapes don’t get washed before they’re processed and the chemicals growers are allowed to spray are quite scary.” Or are they?

Not according to Microbiologist Dr David Tribe, Senior lecturer at the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at the University of Melbourne. “The organic lot make all these claims about better nutrition and health benefits but, overall, the hard evidence simply doesn’t support it” he says.

A review of more than 100 studies that looked at differences between organic and conventional food, conducted in 2002 at New Zealand’s University of Otago found there was “no convincing evidence to back claims that organically grown foods were healthier or tastier than those grown using chemicals”. The review found that nutritional value had more to do with freshness and methods of storage than whether artificial inputs, such as pesticides, were used during production.

Strictly speaking; professional bodies outside the organic movement, such as the Dietitians Association of Australia (DAA) and the Australian Medical Association (AMA), do not share the view that organic food is necessarily healthier than food grown conventionally.

Sunday Magazine (News Ltd Herald/Sun), page 23.
February 19 2006 Craig Scutt

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Thanks Detribe.

Lift Ban on GM Food Crops: Peter Corish

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The federal government’s Agriculture and Food Reference Group handed down its report last week titled ‘Creating Our Future: Agriculture and food policy for the next generation’ (4,700 kbs). It is very long, over 200 pages, and covers a range of issues including GM food crops. I haven’t had a proper read yet, but received the following note from Roger Kalla:

Jennifer,

You might be interested to know that the Agriculture and Food Policy Reference Group (that called for submissions to its review of Agriculture and Food policy in August) has delivered its report to the Minister for Agriculture.

It was reported in Friday’s The Age under the heading ‘Call for ban to GM crops to end’.

I had a conversation with the Gene Technology Regulator, Sue Meek, about it on Wednesday at the launch of the Victorian Agribiosciences Centre.

Sue was very encouraged by the findings of the review led by the leader of the National Farmers Federation, Peter Corish, which put the emphasis on the lifting of the GM crop moratoria so that the Australian farmers could catch up with the rest of the world.

By the way, during the launch Minister Brumby was unashamedly spruiking for a new comapny Gramina PL which has developed GM grass with new health and animal production traits. The GM rye grass is hypoallergenic and has got a superior herbage quality.

No sneeze (humans) and sweeter taste (cows) are the real benefits of these GM grasses.

The problem is that they can’t be grown in Australia and have had to be field evaluated in the US!

Regards,

Roger

The National Farmers Federation has so far been silent on GM issues. It is great to see Peter Corish calling for a lifting of the bans and to see The Age reporting this.

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You can read my submission to the Reference Group by clicking here.

Greenland Melting Faster Than, When it was Cooling?

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I reckon it is nearly impossible to keep up with the climate change literature particularly the latest climate change scare story. Working out whether a particular piece of information is invented, real, real but exaggerated, etcetera, certainly takes effort.

Brisbane’s newspaper, The Courier-Mail, has a story on page 19 of this weekend’s edition titled ‘Greenland ice sheets double melt rate’.

It begins:

“Global warming is melting Greenland’s glaciers much faster than previously believed, raising fears that sea levels will rise rapidly during the next century”

This is how it works according to a latest issue of Science magazine:

“The Greenland Ice Sheet gains mass through snowfall and loses it by surface melting and runoff to the sea, together with the production of icebergs and melting at the base of its floating ice tongues. The difference between these gains and losses is the mass balance; a negative balance contributes to global sea-level rise and vice versa. About half of the discharge from the ice sheet is through 12 fast-flowing outlet glaciers, most no more than 10 to 20 km across at their seaward margin, and each fed from a large interior basin of about 50,000 to 100,000 km2. As a result, the mass balance of the ice sheet depends quite sensitively on the behavior of these outlet glaciers.

Two changes to these glaciers have been observed recently. First, the floating tongues or ice shelves of several outlet glaciers, each several hundred meters thick and extending up to tens of kilometers beyond the grounded glaciers, have broken up in the past few years. Second, measurements of ice velocity made with satellite radar interferometric methods have demonstrated that flow rates of these glaciers have approximately doubled over the past 5 years or so.”

This article in Science (Vol. 31, pg 963-964) goes on to explain that 2002 and 2005 are records for “melt extent over the 27 years of observation” – which I assume refers to the last 27 years.

Contrast this information with an article titled “Recent cooling in coastal southern greenland and relation with the north atlantic oscillation” published in 2003 by Edward Hanna and John Cappelen (Geophysical research letters, VoL. 30, NO. 3, 1132).

This research paper which covers the period up until 2002 (the year there was record melting according to the new article in Science magazine)states:

“Analysis of new data for eight stations in coastal southern Greenland, 1958-2001, shows a significant cooling (trend-line change -1.29C for the 44 years), as do sea-surface temperatures in the adjacent part of the Labrador Sea, in contrast to global warming (+0.53C over the same period). The land and sea temperature series follow similar patterns and are strongly correlated but with no obvious lead/lag either way. This cooling is significantly inversely correlated with an increased phase of the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) over the past few decades (r = -0.76), and will probably have significantly affected the mass balance of the Greenland Ice Sheet.

This 2003 paper only refers to coastal southern Greenland, while the new Science paper refers to “several large glaciers” and the last 5 years or so.

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Thanks to Phil Done for alerting me to the new paper in Science and Benny Peiser for the link to 2003 paper.

More on Methane & Forests

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A paper published in Nature (Frank Keppler et.al., Vol 439, pgs. 187-191) some weeks ago indicating that tree emit methane, generated lots of media for a couple of days, and then nothing.

I wrote my last two columns for The Land on the issue, click here and here.

I received the following email in response:

Hello Jennifer,

It was with interest that I read your recent article on the effect of trees on the atmosphere. In my youth I worked in the timber industry as a faller and later as a dozer operator, here in this higher rainfall area the amount of termite activity in mature and maturing trees is amazing, almost every tree you would fall would have a nest in the butt and almost all stressed trees with a bit of dead wood in them will be ant infested, this does include quite small trees at times.

I noticed that the CSIRO tested methane in a young pinus radiata plantation I think they should be challenged to do their trials in a mature eucalypt forest, an old growth forest would be ideal, I’m sure the result would be a damn site different there.

Regards
Bruce Campbell

Thanks Bruce. I would also like to see some figures for mature tropical forests in Australia. And I was fascinated to read that termites emit 20 million tonnes of methane per year (Nature, Vol 439, pg. 148).

Politics, Religon and Those Cartoons

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Growing up, I aspired at different times, to be a florist, a marine biologist, an archaeologist and a botanist. I worked for many years as an entomologist. I never thought I would become a writer.

Now I am a writer I am very aware of the importance of ideas, evidence, and freedom of expression in particular as a counter to the power of propaganda. I have written about the five basic rules of propaganda as defined by Norman Davies in a blog post titled ‘Interest versus Propaganda’.

Propaganda is perhaps easier to define than ‘free speech’ and usually much more subtle.

Free speech can be very offensive.

Explaining why e-journal Online Opinion did not publish the cartoons mocking Islam, but defending the right of others to publish the cartoons, Graham Young has written,

“If free speech defends only the right to be nice to others, then it is not worth defending itself. Free speech exists to protect the objectionable and the unreasonable, or it means virtually nothing.”

Today I read at Reporters without Borders that as a consequence of publishing those offending cartoons,

“At least eleven journalists are being prosecuted in five countries and six have been jailed. Some face long prison sentences if convicted. Two editors in Jordan have been charged with provocation and encouraging disorder. Four journalists have been jailed in Yemen and charged under article 103 of the press law, which bans publication of anything that “harms Islam, denigrates monotheistic religion or a humanitarian belief.”

I support the call from Reports without Borders for the imprisoned journalists to be released.

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The cartoons can be seen by linking to Tim Blair’s blog.

The last paragraphs of this blog post was changed and updated, following comment and advice from readers of this weblog including those offended by the cartoons, on the morning of 20th February and the cartoons and direct link removed.

Sun Bears (Part 1)

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I have previously written that more effort should be put into “saving sun bears”, click here for that blog post.

The international organisation that regulates trade in endangered species, CITES, lists sun bear as threatened with extinction and notes that there is a trade in sun bear ‘body parts’ including for traditional medicines.

Several readers have commented they would like to know more about sun bears. I have no expertise and I don’t know anyone with expertise, but here goes …

An adult male Malayan sun bear grows to about 1.2 m tall when standing on its hind legs and can weigh up to 65 kg making them the smallest bear species.

They live in the forests of south-east Asian and eat a varied diet of fruit, vegetables, meat and honey.

A study of the ecology of the bears in Sabah, Borneo, by S.T. Wong from 1999 to 2001 concluded that the low density of bears in lowland rainforests was a consequence of food shortages during “non-mass fruiting years”.

sunbear.jpg

The picture of this sun bear is from Indonesianfauna.com. There is some general information on the ecology of sun bears at the University of Michigan Museum of Zoology website, click here.

Many conservation groups claim that the greatest threat to the long term survival of sun bears in the wild is poaching of bears for the traditional Asian medicine trade which prescribes sun bear fat, gall, meat, paws, spinal cord, blood, and bones for complaints ranging from baldness to rheumatism.

Bears are also caught for food, with sun bear paw soup considered a delicacy in Taiwan.

According to the Bagheera website:

“The Chinese have developed a way to extract bile from the gallbladders of live bears. An estimated 5,000 bears are now farmed for their bile. Descended from wild-caught individuals, the farm bears are now captive-bred. This effort is driven more by economics than concern for the animals. More than 100 times the bile can be obtained by milking a live bear than by killing one. Government officials claim that farming has slowed the killing of wild bears, but critics contend it actually promotes the use of bear products and makes them available to more people.”

A 2004 CITES report indicated that some bladders traded [I assume illegally] as sun bear gall bladders were actually from pigs.

The same report noted that some laboratories can distinguish between bile from wild sun bears and bile from captive-bred bears. I assume trade in the wild sun bear bile is illegal while trade in bile from captive-bred bears is legal?

The report included the following snippets of information on trade in sun bears and conservation efforts:

“Indonesia reported that its wildlife law enforcement staff had established good working relations with the country’s Drugs and Food Administration Authority and that they organize joint inspections of relevant shops. The Secretariat has previously reported that working with such agencies seems highly effective.

Malaysia reported undertaking enforcement campaigns that specifically targeted trade in bear specimens. This had resulted in early 2003 in the seizure of 43 alleged bear gall bladders from shops. Six cases involving illicit trade in Malayan sun bear specimens had been prosecuted in 2003. Five of the cases involved bear parts, whilst the sixth involved a live bear.

The Republic of Korea confirmed that the use of a sniffer dog to detect illicit trade at border control points was highly successful, with such a dog in their country detecting 85 cases in just over two years. The Secretariat notes that a survey conducted by TRAFFIC, published in July 2003, found that the use of tiger, rhinoceros and bear specimens in traditional medicine in the Republic of Korea was decreasing, although further work remained to be done on this issue.

Singapore reported that it had produced a leaflet in Chinese, explaining CITES and the use of specimens of endangered species (including bears) in medicine, which it was using to build on work it has done with traditional medicine associations in Singapore.

Viet Nam reported that it is working with non-governmental organizations and captivebreeders of bears to address the issue of bear farms. It has found this issue to be complicated by the fact that bear farms have been established with animals taken from the wild prior to Viet Nam introducing legislation protecting the species. It recognizes that this has adversely affected wild populations.”

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Some information on CITES:

The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, known as CITES, is an international treaty designed to control and regulate international trade in certain animal and plant species that are now or potentially may become threatened with extinction.

Appendix I includes species threatened with extinction that are or may be affected by trade. Appendix II includes species that, although not necessarily now threatened with extinction, may become so unless trade in them is strictly controlled. Appendix III includes species that any Party country identifies as being subject to regulation within its jurisdiction for purposes of preventing or restricting exploitation and for which it needs the cooperation of other Parties to control trade.