Is Organic Agriculture Healthier for the Environment and the Consumer?

This deceptively simple question is difficult to prove.  In a widely-read science blog post, Dr. Christie Wilcox (her PhD is in marine biology, not agriculture) argues that the supposed benefits of organic farming are all myths.

While some of her specific claims, such as that organic farmers are allowed to use the incredibly toxic natural compound rotenone, are off-mark, much of her critique appears to stand.  The reasons are various, but telling:  there are costs and benefits to different agricultural systems, and organic farms face many of the same challenges of conventional farming.  For example, herbicides allow no-till farming, with myriad benefits for soil structure and water quality.  It is extremely difficult to practice no-till without some means of removing weeds.

Certified organic farms may not use synthetic pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, etc.  But if organic farmers choose to use a natural compound to kill weeds or pests there is nothing to guarantee that such a compound would be less toxic to the ecosystem and to humans. Natural compounds on organic farms may be more toxic than their synthetic analogues!

Unfortunately, while there are comprehensive databases of the type and amount of pesticides found on conventional food (see the Environmental Working Group's annual Dirty Dozen list), no such testing of natural compounds on organic produce is conducted.  Apparently synthetic compounds are investigated more than natural compounds, perhaps due to an unstated belief in the Naturalistic Fallacy, i.e. that natural chemicals must be healthier than synthetic chemicals.  But many plants (for example, nightshades) contain totally natural compounds... that are totally toxic as well.

A good take-home message would be to wash all of your fruit and veggies, whether they are organic or not.  And learn which plants are poisonous.  I'm not even going to get into all of the (natural and synthetic) chemicals and preservatives in grains, let alone refined flours, etc.

Don't Spike Your Blood Sugar

There have been a number of scientific papers in the last couple years, and now a number of high-profile articles (like last week's Time Magazine article "Ending the War on Fat") that have found no correlation between fat -- even saturated fat -- and Alzheimer's, diabetes, cancer, or heart disease. The idea that cholesterol and saturated fat are the cause of heart disease is no longer supported by the best available science.

However, there is still broad consensus among health professionals that we need to avoid processed, sugary, and high-glycemic foods. High-glycemic foods are energizing for an hour or two but then cause sleepiness and craving for more (usually high-glycemic) snack foods. These foods are dangerous because they raise blood sugar, leading to a crash afterwards, a "roller-coaster" blood sugar dynamic that promotes over-eating and a variety of diseases.

Gary Taubes, in Good Caloreis Bad Calories, explains how sugar metabolism makes you fat:

"Glycerol phosphate is produced from glucose when it is used for fuel in the fat calls and the liver, and it, too, can be burned as fuel in the cells. But glycerol phosphate is also an essential component of the process that binds three fatty acids into a triglyceride. It provides the glycerol molecule that links the fatty acids together. In other words, a product of carbohydrate metabolism --i.e. burning glucose for fuel-- is an essential component in the regulation of fat metabolism: storing fat in the fat tissue. In fact, the rate at which fatty acids are assembled into triglycerides, and so the rate at which fat accumulates in the fat tissue, depend primarily on the availability of glycerol phosphate. The more glucose that is transported into the fat cells and used to generate energy, the more glycerol phosphate will be produced. The the more glycerol phosphate produced, the more fatty acids will be assembled into triglycerides. Thus, anything that works to transport more glucose in the fat cells -- insulin, for example or rising blood sugar, will lead to the conversion of more fatty acids into triglycerides, and the storage of more calories as fat."

"So yes, dietary fat is responsible for fat accumulation, but it is carbohydrates that mediate the accumulation, and the energy balance of the body as a whole. Don't spike your blood sugar, and your body will continue burning fat, not storing it."

What if "Integrative Medicine" and "Alternative Therapies" Are Full of .... ?

What if the most valuable thing to come out of the vast torrents of nutrition bloggers and comments on those blogs and alternative medicine conferences, etc, is this chart of dookie? That's what the authors of the Science Based Medicine blog seem to think.

At least this chart presents an actual, observable, measurable observation of the world!

Contrast this chart with the endlessly proposed and promulgated (without testing) navel-gazing "syndromes" that could be any disease or no disease at all.  While I don't necessarily think alternative medical treatments are completely bogus, I have noticed that most alternative therapy information is heavy on the factoids, but very light on actual testable theories or metrics.

But maybe.... instead of criticizing scientifically-untested therapies, we should make an effort to test them!  When it comes to health the line between objective science and subjective experience blurs and I'm never sure which source of information to trust.  Maybe, in the end, after all the scientific and unscientific hypotheses, we just have to follow our gut-instincts!

If you do, this Bristol Stool Chart may be a helpful metric!

Two views on global warming "standstill"

A flash animation from wattsupwiththat:

The view from from Skeptical Science:

Can we stop megafires before they start?

The Pacific Northwest Research Station has a huge index of "Science Findings" written by science writers. Many of the articles champion fuel-reduction treatments (thinning) to alleviate the risk of extreme fires. But there is a controversy not evident in any USFS document: environmental groups such as the Pacific Rivers Council have questioned the impact of these treatments and whether it is even possible to stop extreme fires. It seems the "torching" and "crowning" indices the USFS uses to measure the effectiveness of fuel-reduction treatments are models that are not directly applicable to real forests. Further, it is clear the fuel-reduction alone will not provide long-term solutions without a return to natural fire frequencies or intensively-managed prescribed fire. Worst of all, thinning has most of the negative impacts associated with logging, such as soil disturbance and compaction, increased road building and use, and, ultimately, increased erosion. The controversial "Beschta Report", which makes these and other arguments, has been used by many to argue against the type of research presented in "Science Findings". The authors of this report, such as the Oregon hydrologist Jonathan Rhodes, have continued to argue that catastrophic wildfire is a natural disturbance than humans should not (and cannot) control. However, recent research from the Ponderosa Pine forests of Arizona and New Mexico does seem to indicate that thinning can decrease burn severity: Cram DS, Baker TT, Boren JC. Wildland fire effects in silviculturally treated vs. untreated stands of New Mexico and Arizona. 2006. Available from: http://www.treesearch.fs.fed.us/pubs/21792

The NRDC has also come out against thinning for biomass energy, based on their analysis of total carbon sequestration.

Can biotechnology feed the world?

Some discussions recently have been inspired by the recent visit of Ms. Revathi, a schoolteacher-turned-organic farming advocate from India. Ms. Revathi visited the School of Environment and Natural Resources at OSU last week, bringing stories of widespread suffering from the Green Revolution and ongoing injustices from free trade, industrialization, capitalism, and corporations. She argues that ecologically- and traditionally-minded development can create healthy, prosperous farmers, while the American model has brought environmental, social, and economic ruination.

from Diaz, Robert J. and Rosenberg, Rutger. Spreading Dead Zones and Consequences for Marine Ecosystems. Science 15 August 2008: Vol. 321. no. 5891, pp. 926 - 929

Her viewpoint is uniquely different from that of main-stream American discourse about globalization, free markets, and the benefits of technology. Her years of experience growing sustainable farms in India seems similar to the experience of independent American local organic farmers, but leads her to make conclusions almost opposite to beliefs so accepted they are almost obvious to most Americans; for example, that the world has become better: wealthier, healthier, happier, etc because of technology, corporations, and development.

In some ways, the arguments of those who speak for the establishment, pass right through and do not apply to those who see the world differently. One of the best examples of this is a Congressional meeting held almost exactly 10 years ago. For the most part, these issues about biotechnology and aid, are still unresolved. This meeting was notable because it brought together some of the biggest hitters from both camps, who proceeded to talk right past each other, thoroughly confusing the moderater. Can there be a middle ground?

Climate Change: Outside Natural Variation?

Basically, the question is whether the climate has changed sufficiently to push some ecosystems beyond resilience into active adaptation, ie change in vegetation type. Variation has increased, but many stop short of saying that the climate has actually changed. I have included a number of papers to peruse, none of which makes a complete argument in favor of climate over biological factors. Obviously both occur, and grazing and fire-suppression have exacerbated climate-driven changes. The hard question is to what extent each factor has "driven" the observed changes.

The old school of thought on climate change (which is still prevalent among scientists today) argues that climate change is happening but isn't here yet. In other words, that we are still within natural ranges of variability. However, my recent research has convinced me that the changes that are being predicted are already here, all around us.


Large forest die-offs have occurred in old-growth Amazonian and Indonesian rainforest, in addition to other undisturbed forests around the world (Allen 2010) and in the Western US (van Mantgem 2009). Here in the Southwest, Pinon die-off has been linked to an increase in temperature that increased the severity of an otherwise normal drought (Breshears 2005). Dr. Gutzler here at UNM has created a map showing what a 3 degree increase in temperature would do if precipitation variability remains unchanged (see below; Gutzler 2010). The trend is, indeed, toward unprecedented warming (Kaufman 2009). This kind of increased ET could also explain the increase in stand-replacing Ponderosa forest fires, which have occurred without 20th century overgrazing and fire supression (Meyer and Pierce 2003). Indeed, Dr. Archer at University of Arizona, an authority on shrub invasion of grasslands, also points out situations where differing grazing and fire regimes fail to modify climate-driven shrub encroachment (Fensham 2005). Dr Fredrickson (Fredrickson 2006) has shown that climate change can explain loss of Black grama grasslands on the Jornada in the absence of grazing pressure.


In a particularly interesting rebuttal to a long-held 'sacred-cow', Dr. Meyer at UNM recently used stratigraphy to show that beaver have not significantly affected hydrologic processes during the Holocene, but instead, that climate determined beaver abundance (Meyer 2008). I could include other papers, but I particularly like several of these. I intentionally saved papers on historic arroyo cutting for another time, but could have cited Leopold, Shumm, and many others to argue for climate-driven processes.

Bill McKibben has written a new book with essential the same argument: "Most accounts terrifically underplay what’s actually going on already. " Tim Flannery's book The Weather Makers makes a similar argument, even though it was published in 2006: "the first victims of climate change have already died".