Applied Mythology at 100,000 All Time Pageviews

I started posting on this blog 3 years ago this month.  I had been frustrated with all the disinformation out there about agriculture, farmers, and about the technologies they employ to keep the world fed.  As of today (5/25/13) the site had its 100,000th view.  I just want to take the chance to thank some of the folks that have encouraged me along the way:

• My lovely wife who is my much-needed editor
• My various readers
• Friends in the ag-defense community who have provided links, tweets and mentions
• Grower groups that have responded with speaking invitations
• Scientists who have provided feedback to make sure I get that part right
• All the folks who have taken the time to comment (all 576 of you), even those who disagree with my point of view
• Those who have sent me email responses
• The good folks over at Biofortified who let me guest post
• Hank at Science 2.0 who encouraged me to also post there 

Actually 72,636 of those pageviews were in the last 12 months.  I've posted 126 times on this site and 228 times total including other sites.  The most read blog posts have been:

Six Reasons Organic is Not The Most Environmentally Friendly Way to Farm (5,405)

She Shocking Carbon Footprint of Compost (5,309 views)

Do Your Really Need To Buy Organic To Avoid Pesticide Residues? (2,990)

Pesticides: Probably Less Scary Than You Imagine (2,519)

No, Cows Don't Make Fertilizer (2,435)

Counting The Cost of the Anti-GMO Movement (2,302)

A Note to Rachel Carson on the 50th Anniversary of Silent Spring (1,966)

6 More Reasons to Vote NO on California Proposition 37 (1864)

The Muddled Debate About Pesticide Use and GM Crops (1,461)

What I hope Will Be The Future of Sustainable Farming (1,455)

What Would Be "A Food Movement Worth of the Name?" (1,416)

How to Make Fresh Produce More Sustainable.  Actually Eat It! (1,219)

The Frustrating Lot of American Sweet Corn Growers (1,097)

When Increased Pesticide Use Is A Good Thing (1,094)

Updated List of Posts By Steve Savage (1,025 - has links to the other sites where I used to post, needs to be updated again)

savage.sd@gmail.com,   @grapedoc

Gorillas And The Future of Crop Biotechnology

There are some really cool improvements coming along in several crops that have been developed using the tools of biotechnology - GMOs if you will.  Some of these innovations have consumer health benefits. Some expand ways to encourage greater produce consumption.  Some reduce food waste. Some prevent crop losses through disease and reduce the need for copper sprays.  These traits represent an expansion of biotech beyond the major row crops primarily grown for animal feed or for fiber to crops like apples, oranges, tomatoes, pineapples and potatoes.  Whether these new options actually make it to consumers depends a great deal on decisions that will be made by gorillas.  I don't mean the kind of gorillas that Jane Goodall studied.  I mean the kind in the expression "eight hundred pound gorilla."

The Eight Hundred Pound Gorillas of the Food Industry

In many industries, there are players with disproportionate economic leverage who are often referred to as the eight hundred pound gorillas for their sector. In the food/beverage industry, there are huge entities from importers (e.g. Dole, Chiquita), to manufacturers (e.g. Mars or Frito-Lay), to food service retailers (e.g. MacDonalds or Starbucks), to grocery retailers (e.g. Safeway, Wal-Mart...) who have an out-sized influence on not only their market segment, but on their supply chain. In the early years of crop genetic engineering, entities like these used their influence to to slow or stop the commercialization of biotech crops. The question is what role these gorillas will play for the next generation of potential crop improvements.

When the Gorillas Embraced Biotech

When genetically engineered crops were first being commercialized in the mid-1990s, several of the gorillas were supportive. Frito-lay was funding its own potato genetic engineering effort focused on storage life and chip quality. Dole and Chiquita were both in discussions with biotech companies about potential solutions to their biggest disease challenge ( Black Sigatoka disease) and about the potential to make a banana with longer counter-life at optimal ripeness. Forward-thinking folks at Starbucks were  looking into whether they might need to get involved in helping their small coffee bean producers through horticultural research and extension. Genetic engineering was one of the topics on the table.  Meanwhile, farmers in the 1990s who grew crops with biotech options were very happy with what these options offered them (soybeans, corn, sweet corn, cotton, canola, squash, potatoes, papayas).

When Gorillas Are Weak

However, by the later 1990s and early 2000s, the efforts of anti-GMO groups to demonize the technology were beginning to take effect. They used dramatically misleading imagery (great big hypodermic needles full of mysterious colored liquids, fruit and vegetables with faces...) and anti-corporate conspiracy theory rhetoric to alarm consumers.  For all their protestation, there was no change in the scientific assessment of the intrinsic safety of the technology, nor were there real cases of health or environmental problems.  However, the manipulated trend in consumer thinking began to worry the gorillas. The large players in the food system have tremendous power and influence, but they also have great vulnerability to anything that could tarnish their consumer brand.  Activists of all stripes have taken advantage of this for many causes, and the anti-GMO forces began to do the same.  Most of the continuing GMO crops are sold into non-branded animal feed and food manufacturing ingredient channels, so they were little effected by brand protectionism.  For crops that do flow to consumer-branded companies, the story was different.

Round One Didn't Go So Well

Starbucks was one of the first companies to come out with a pledge not to use GM (even though there were no GMO options for coffee anywhere close to the market).  Unfortunately they also dropped the whole supply line horticultural support idea as well. The big banana companies backed away from any GMO projects.  The major candy companies used their influence to delay for many years the introduction of herbicide tolerant sugar-beets.  Even though the corn hybrids grown for the chip market were not generally GMO, the marketing side of Frito-lay reactively pledged that they would not use GMO corn for their chips.  The company then quietly dismantled their GMO potato effort.  At one point, MacDonalds made three phone calls to their major frozen fry suppliers asking if they could get only non-GMO potatoes. That effectively ended the growing of biotech potatoes - an improvement which required far less insecticide use.  In the conspiratorial narrative of the anti-GMO movement, Monsanto is portrayed as being so powerful that it is able to "control the food supply."  In reality, neither Monsanto or the entire potato growing and processing industry could do anything once the 800 pound gorilla of spuds decided it didn't want to risk brand-tainting protests.  The gorillas were subdued by the activists in the first round of biotech innovation.

What About Round Two?

So, its been at least 10 years since that first round of gorilla influence.  Why should anything be different with this next round of technology offerings?  It is not as if the anti-GMO movement has become any less intent on its mission or any more honest about the science.  Brand sensitive companies are still basically risk-averse.  The general public is probably no better informed about the actual science or about the ever stronger scientific consensus supporting the safety and utility of these technologies. Some factors remain the same, but not everything.

What Has Changed

News Sourcing:  people don't get their "news" the way they did in the 90s.  Most have chosen the sources that fit their world-view, so something like an anti-GMO protest is going to be covered, or not covered differently for segments of the public.  Indeed for those who get their information from websites like Grist or Mother Jones, there is some sort of anti-food industry or anti-GMO diatribe almost every day.  It is hard to imagine how some new development will stand out against that background.  For the rest of society that hasn't drifted into full-blown conspiracy theory thinking about biotechnology there may be some fatigue from the fear-mongering.  There must eventually be a statute-of-limitations for saying that the sky is falling.

Communication by Scientists:  overall, scientists have not communicated that well with the broader public, but that has been changing to some degree.  There are a number of websites that do a much better job than what was around in the late 90s.  Meanwhile, the collected body of independent, peer reviewed publications supporting the safety of biotech has grown.

Communication from the Farming Community:  the ag community has increasingly begun to use the internet and social media to tell its story.  They are understandably tired of being demonized and falsely represented by the "food movement." This response includes everything from farmer bloggers to farming organizations.

Real Food Supply Issues:  In the 90s it certainly seemed that food was in abundant supply - even in over-abundance.  Since then there have been some shocks to the global food trade balance that are hard to ignore and there is some reason to believe that we are in a new paradigm between population growth, expanding Asian middle classes, and climate change.  This has meant a bit of food budget stress for the rich world, but it has already had a major political role in events like the "Arab Spring."

Calling People Out About The Science:  A number of voices have pointed out the fact that neither the political Right or Left has been consistent in respecting the scientific consensus.  Those who embrace the consensus on climate change tend not to on biotechnology and visa versa. Mark Lynas, a past anti-GMO campaigner, articulates this extremely well as have some in the mainstream press and in  Books.

A California Surprise:  The voters of California soundly defeated a deeply flawed GMO labeling initiative in the 2012 election.  This was completely unexpected since the "just label it" message originally sounded logical to 90% of them.  The GMO labeling forces blamed this loss entirely on the level of spending by the food and biotech industry, but like Sheldon Adelson, they might need to acknowledge that votes are not simply for sale and that voters might actually have some independent, critical thinking abilities once they get the facts.

Can We Support Courage On the Part of the Gorillas?

Last year, Seminis Seeds (a Monsanto subsidiary) commercialized some new insect resistant sweet corn hybrids.  Even though Syngenta's Bt sweet corn had already been on the market for many years, the major grocery retailers and processors had quietly suppressed its use and it was mainly grown for the roadside market. Thus few of the mostly local sweet corn growers ever got to take advantage of that technology which could have saved them many insecticide sprays each season. The anti-GMO crowd tried to make a big issue of the new hybrids and threatened to sponsor a boycott of Wal-Mart if they carried the product.  Wal-Mart (an eight hundred pound gorilla if there ever was one) was bold enough to say that they saw no reason not to carry Bt sweet corn. Whether they actually did isn't clear.  Still, the controversy faded.

Perhaps scientists, farmers and reasonable people in general can encourage the gorillas to take a different stand this time.  For instance, I'd like to be first in line to buy "Arctic Apple"  from some brave retailer and then pass them out to friends and family. With social networking organizing something like that with lots of supporters is certainly possible.  Maybe things could start small with deliveries to a few distribution points in people's garages.  How about coming together to enjoy some fries from whatever restaurant is first willing to talk about using a healthier oil to cook low acrylamide potatoes?  How about writing campaigns to encourage gorilla companies to stand up to the purveyors of fear.


Gorilla image from Brocken Inaglory.  A good article on this topic in Delta Farm Press from 2003

How Wrong Is The Latest Dirty Dozen List?

The Environmental Working Group (EWG) says that it "helps protect your family from pesticides." The purpose of this Applied Mythology post is to "help protect your family from dangerously misleading information from the EWG." Each year since 1991, the USDA has been publishing the results from a large-scale pesticide residue monitoring program called the PDP.  Each year, a different set of crops is chosen and samples are purchased from regular stores and tested. Year after year, the results of those studies confirm the safety of the food supply. Year after year the EWG misrepresents the data to say otherwise. To understand what that is like for the people who farm those crops, consider this analogy.

What if you were taking a college course that was critical for your graduation, but your entire grade was going to be based on a giant group project involving thousands of other students you didn't even know and with whom you could not even communicate.  Some of those student's test results would be chosen at random and the grade for everyone in the class would depend on how they did. When the grading is done, you find out that the class score was over 99% - a clear A+!  Then,  someone who doesn't really understand the topic of the class, or chooses not to,  re-grades the test and tells your potential future employers that you got a D, and many of them believe the incorrect grade.

This is much like what farmers have been experiencing for years. They grow a crop as best they can, and use pesticides only as necessary and within the strict rules established by the EPA. Much of what they use are pesticides with very low toxicity.  In years that their crop is selected for the PDP, random samples of their commodity are purchased in stores, including examples coming from other countries.  They are taken to federal and state laboratories and scrutinized for trace residues of hundreds of different chemical pesticides. When the data is finally published (usually two years later), the highly qualified experts of the USDA, EPA and FDA conclude that the system is working and that consumers should confidently purchase and eat the crop without concerns about residues.  In fact, studies show that the anti-cancer benefits of eating things like fruits and vegetable far, far outweigh and minuscule risk associated with pesticides.

Then each year, the EWG takes advantage of the transparent availability of the USDA-PDP data, but then performs their own "analysis" which experts have rejected as utterly anti-scientific.  They generate an incorrect "grade" for the crop and post it as part of their "Shopper's Guide," and on their notorious "Dirty Dozen List."  The grower's virtually perfect grade gets forgotten and what is passed along by an un-critical press and blogosphere is the distortion that the crop is "dirty." Many consumers believe this and heed the EWG's suggestion that they need to buy organic versions of that crop (the actual agenda of the EWG is the promotion of organic and also their own fundraising). Worse still, there is some evidence that this disinformation causes consumers to purchase and eat less produce. At a minimum, many consumers feel guilty for not buying organic.

As you can imagine, this is very frustrating for farmers. Some have joined in groups which are trying to get out a much more accurate interpretation of the data which is to say that the PDP confirms the that pesticides are well regulated and that the farming industry is doing a very good job.  They want to reclaim their rightful A+!

What Does The Data Really Say?

I decided to do an independent analysis of the latest PDP data (for growing year 2011, released earlier this year). The information is freely available from a USDA web site, but using it is a non trivial exercise. The zipped file expands to 92MB because it contains 2.2 million rows of information covering each of the hundreds of pesticides or metabolites looked for in each of the thousands of food samples. 1.75 million of those are for fruits and vegetables. Fortunately, even using the extremely sensitive analytical techniques available today, less than 1% of these rows are cases where some detectable residue was found.  I'd be happy to email you the 15,450 row Excel table left after eliminating all the non-detects.

To understand the significance of each detection it is necessary to know what the chemical is and what "tolerance" the EPA has established for it on each crop.  The tolerance is a very conservative threshold for how much residue represents an acceptable margin away from any health risk.  It is based on the best data and risk assessment tools available to EPA.  Not surprisingly, the tolerances for different chemicals are very different based on the details of their toxicological profile.  I've plotted the distribution of all the detections relative to crop/chemical-specific tolerance in the graph below.

For all 20 commodities tested from 2011, there were only 0.18% of residues found which were higher than the EPA tolerance.  In fact fully 1/2 of the detections were of levels more than 100 times lower than the already conservative tolerance.

There are differences between crops and between country of origin, but they are only between good and very good.  Snap peas were the "worst" example, particularly those imported from Central America (see above), but they still had 94% of detections below tolerance.  The few that were above are not particularly scary either (you can see the detail in the complete analysis I posted on SCRIBD).  Many crops had a "perfect score" of keeping all the residues below the tolerance (see graph to the right)




Quite appropriately, one of the "cleanest" crops was pear baby food.  When EPA sets the tolerance for baby food it is even more conservative than ever.  In this case all the detections were below tolerance and more than 99% of them were 10 times or more lower than the tolerance (graph below).

The people collecting samples for the PDP  do track whether the sample had an organic claim.  For most crops the number of organic samples is too low to make a meaningful comparison, but for pear baby food, 11.5% were organic.  Interestingly, among those 67 samples, there were 101 pesticide residues detected, only 33 of which are for the organically approved insecticide, Spinosad. The rest were for synthetic pesticides including some that are applied after harvest (such as DPA which prevents scald in storage). As with the conventional samples, these residues were at such tiny levels as to be of no concern, but for this and other crops, choosing organic does not guarantee "no pesticide residues,"  instead the same risk assessment process suggests safety for both the organic and conventional options.

How Does The EWG Ranking Compare to One Based on Science?

What I have been presenting is an analysis that pays attention to what the chemical is, what levels are found, and what the EPA has concluded from its risk assessment process.  The EWG's ranking ignores all of those factors.  I've taken the EWG's ranking (higher numbers are supposedly "cleaner") and  compared it with a tolerance-based measure which is the percent of the detections that are not even as much as 1/10th of the tolerance (again, high number = cleaner).  Not surprisingly, there is really no correlation between these two approaches (see below).

Again, none of these examples are really problematic, but cauliflower, which EWG calls part of the "clean 15" and ranks as number 34 in their list has the has more detections over 1/10th of the tolerance than other crops.  Apples, which are the worst according to EWG have 92% detections below 1/10th of tolerance - more than a great many other crops. Canned beets, for which not even one detection was noted among 756 samples from 2011, doesn't appear on EWG's "Clean 15" list or in the list at all. Again, the real "grades" are all "A's," just to different degrees.  It's like Lake Wobegon - all the crops are above average.

What is the take home message from all of this? Eat more fruit and vegetables! And don't worry about whether it is organic or not. The fact is that we know less about what is on organic produce than on conventional.

Full analysis posted as An Independent Analysis of the 2011 PDP Data on SCRIBD.  If you would like to look through the 15K row Excel table of detections, email me at savage.sd@gmail.com

Feel free to comment here or to email me.

Is It OK To Eat Cloned Fruit?

Cloned fruit is widely sold in grocery stores.  Some of it is cloned mutant fruit. None of these fruits are labeled as such. They aren't even regulated. You can't avoid this kind of fruit by going to Whole Foods or Trader Joe's.  Should you be concerned?

Actually, almost all fruit is cloned for good reasons that I will describe below.  I like to use this question as a way to show people how emotive language can be used to make something ordinary sound scary. That is why a healthy dose of skepticism is needed as we encounter so many alarmist allegations about our food supply. The danger is getting drawn into a conspiracy-theory mindset which leaves people unable to listen to reasoned explanation.

The Advance of the Clones

Yes, virtually all fruit is technically "cloned" because it is not grown from seed. Cloning means the genetics of the offspring are identical to the parent. For fruit, this has been the means of propagation for centuries.

If you plant the seeds from an apple variety that you particularly enjoy - several years later you will be disappointed to find that the fruit is not at all like the one you originally ate. It will probably be more like a crab apple. People long ago discovered that desirable specimens must be propagated by rooting, grafting, or budding onto some other root stock, and all of those are means of cloning. And yes, some fruit varieties were developed using mutation breeding. The Ruby Red Grapefruit is an example I enjoy on a regular basis. Nectarines are a spontaneous mutant of a peach which lacked the fuzz.

But What About Johnny Apple Seed?

As children we all heard the mythologized story of Johnny Apple Seed who supposedly planted apple trees across the US for the benefit of little children.  As Michael Pollan so nicely explains in his book "The Botany of Desire," Johnny was just opportunistically starting apple tree nurseries at the front of Western settlement because of a provision in the Homestead Act which required each land recipient to cultivate 40 apple trees.  Johnny was there sell them what they needed.  The actual goal was to insure that the settlers would be able to make their own alcohol supply in the form of hard cider (how's that for a "nanny state!"). For cider, it didn't much matter what sort of fruit was produced, so the variable seedling trees were acceptable.  If the settler wanted a good eating apple they could graft a branch of it onto Johnny's seedlings.  Today, the rootstocks for most fruit trees are selected for specific dwarfing and/or pest resistance traits and also clonally propagated.

Nature Also Clones

Cloning sounds creepy to us because it isn't something that happens naturally in mammals.  Among animals like insects, worms and some amphibians there is a fair amount of non-sexual reproduction we typically call parthenogenesis - but it is a form of cloning because the offspring are genetically identical to the parent.  Plants use clonal reproduction widely.  Bananas generate "sons" that bud off at the base of an existing trunk.  Grapevine canes on the ground or which get buried will sprout roots and generate a new, independent plant.  Whole groves of aspen trees can be clones that arise from the root system.

There is desert shrub called Guayule, which is being developed as a new, sustainable source of natural rubber.  It produces seed both through regular sexual reproduction and also through a process called apomixis.  The seed looks normal, but it is genetically identical to the mother plant (thus technically a clone).  Plant breeders would like to find a way to generate apomictic seed of major crops to avoid either expensive hybrid seed production or to avoid the extensive back-crossing needed to develop a line that will "breed true."

Cloning Does Limit Genetic Diversity

While cloning provides us with high quality fruit, it limits the germplasm in use for some crops. There may be plenty of genetic diversity where a crop originated, but breeding diversity into elite lines is a very slow process for perennial plants.  It would be far more efficient to move selected genes, such as those for disease resistance. Genes for disease resistance were moved from wild potatoes into commercial potatoes by a famous European public institution using genetic engineering.

Examples of landrace potatoes from Peru which were the source of the resistance genes

This trait could be extremely helpful for European farmers, but it has predictably been opposed by anti-GMO activists. Yet, strangely, no one seems to worry about the crops developed decades ago by very clumsy methods of mutation breeding involving the use of radiation or toxic chemicals.  Although the track record of such crop improvements has been positive, there is a far more reasonable basis for concern with that method than with genetic engineering.

So, what is the purpose of this botany lesson?  I guess I'm trying to make the point that not everything that can be made to sound scary about food is really scary. Think about that the next time you enjoy some cloned fruit!

You are welcome to comment here and/or to email me as savage dot sd at gmail dot com

Cloned apple image started from Ala_z via Wikimedia.  Apple seed image from Artotem.  Andean potato image from Wikimedia commons

Six Reasons Organic is NOT The Most Environmentally Friendly Way To Farm

Contrary to widespread consumer belief, organic farming is not the best way to farm from an environmental point if view. The guiding principal of organic is to rely exclusively on natural inputs.  That was decided early in the 20th century, decades before before the scientific disciplines of toxicology, environmental studies and climate science emerged to inform our understanding of how farming practices impact the environment.  As both farming and science have progressed, there are now several cutting edge agricultural practices which are good for the environment, but difficult or impossible for organic farmers to implement within the constraints of their pre-scientific rules.

There was one window during which the rules for organic might have been adjusted to reflect a more modern understanding.  In 1990 the US Congress charged the USDA with the task of setting a national standard for what products could be legally sold as Organic.  That agency was inclined to include more science in a definition of “what is safest for us and for the environment,” but the organic community of that day was adamant that the rule should only reflect the purely natural definition embraced by their existing customer base.  Long before the final Organic Standards were published in 2002, it was clear that the industry preference had prevailed and that the rules of organic would still reflect their pre-scientific origins.  That is why the following six environmental issues exist for organic farming. 

1. Less Than Optimal Fungicides

Copper Sulfate

Organic farmers use pesticides, but only those qualified as sufficiently natural.  Thus, copper-based fungicides are among the few options available to an organic grower for the control of fungal plant diseases.  These are high-use rate products that require frequent re-application and which are quite toxic to aquatic invertebrates.  There are much more effective, and far less toxic, synthetic fungicide options without environmental issues, and which, unlike copper, break down into completely innocuous materials. Organic growers can't use those fungicides.  Similarly there are many environmentally benign, synthetic insecticides and herbicides which cannot be used.

2. A Surprisingly High Carbon Footprint for Compost

The greatest original contribution of the early organic movement was its focus on building soil health.  One of the main ways that organic farmers do this is by physically incorporating tons of organic matter into the soil in the form of composts.  Unfortunately, during the process of composting a substantial amount of methane is emitted which means that broad use of this soil-building approach would be problematic from a climate change point of view.

3. Practical Barriers to Implementing No-till Farming

No-Till Field

The best approach to building soil quality is minimizing soil disturbance (e.g. no plowing or tilling) combined with the use of cover crops.  Such farming systems have multiple environmental advantages, particularly with respect to limiting erosion and nutrient movement into water. Organic growers frequently do plant cover crops, but without effective herbicides, they tend to rely on tillage for weed control. There are efforts underway to find a way to do organic no-till, but they are not really scalable.

4. Difficulties Implementing Optimized Fertilization

Fertilizers are associated with many of the biggest environmental issues for agriculture because of the challenges in supplying all a crop needs without leading to movement of those nutrients into surface or ground water or to emissions of the highly potent greenhouse gas, nitrous oxide.  The best practice is to “spoon feed” the nutrients through the irrigation system at levels designed to closely track the changing demands of the crop throughout the season.  

Drip Irrigated and Fertilized Grapes

This requires water-soluble forms of the nutrients and that is very expensive to do for the natural fertilizer sources allowed in organic.  Since the plants absorb those nutrients in exactly the same molecular forms regardless of source, this cost barrier is a non-scientific impediment to doing the best thing from an environmental point of view. Organic fertilizers like composts or manures are also much less practical for variable rate application, an environmentally beneficial option for rain-fed crops in which different amounts of fertilizer are applied to different parts of the field based on geo-referenced soil and yield mapping data.  Finally, the organic avoidance of "synthetic fertilizers" would mean that these growers would not be able to use what appear to be promising small-scale, carbon-neutral, renewable energy-driven systems for making nitrogen fertilizers. 

5. Lower Land-Use-Efficiency

The per-acre yields of organic crops are significantly lower than those for conventional.  This has been well documented both by meta-analysis of published research comparisons and by public data generated through USDA commercial production surveys.  

The shortfall is driven by limited pesticide options, difficulties in meeting peak fertilizer demand, and in some cases by not being able to use biotech traits.  If organic production were used for a significant proportion of crop production, these lower yields would increase the pressure for new land-use-conversion - a serious environmental issue because of the biodiversity and greenhouse gas ramifications.

6. Lack of an Economic Model to Move Beyond Niche Status

Finally, agriculture needs to change in ways that accomplish both productivity and environmental goals.  That optimal farming approach must become the dominant system over time. Even if organic had maintained its growth trend from 1995 to 2008, organic acreage in 2050 would still have represented less than 3% of US cropland. 

Trend line for US organic cropland as of of 2008

Then, between 2008 and 2011, USDA survey data showed no net gain in US organic acreage.  Environmentally desirable "conventional" practices like no-till, cover cropping and a variety of other precision agriculture innovations are already practiced on a much broader scale and have the potential to be economically attractive for farmers without any price premium mechanisms.  Innovations in farmland leases could greatly accelerate the conversion process if growers could be guaranteed long-term control of fields so that they could profit from their investments in building soil quality.  

Consumers Who Want To Do The Right Thing

There are many consumers who are willing to spend more for organic food because they believe that they are making a positive difference for the environment.  While it is commendable that people are willing to do that, the pre-scientific basis for the organic rules means that the environmental superiority of organic cannot be assumed. While “only natural” is appealing as a marketing message, it is not the best guide for how to farm with minimal environmental impact. Between rigorous, science-based regulation, public and private investments in new technology development, and farmer innovation, modern agriculture has been making excellent environmental progress. That trend, not organic, is what we need to encourage.

You are encouraged to comment here and/or to email me at applied.mythology@gmail.com

Pennsylvania farm image from USDA Images.  Vineyard image Agne27.  Copper Sulfate image from Wikimedia commons.  Organic yield and acreage information from the USDA-NASS. 

The Livelihood of Small Coffee Growers Is Threatened By A Plant Disease

Some of the world's best coffee comes from the tropical highlands of Central and South America.  Recently these regions have experienced heavier rainfall.  This is probably due to climate change, but in any case it fosters severe epidemics of the Coffee Leaf Rust pathogen, Hemileia vastatrix.   This disease has a long history of disrupting coffee production around the world.  One reason the English drink tea is that the Ceylonese and Javan coffee plantations which once supplied them were devastated by this same fungus in the late 1800s.  Coffee production was moved to the Americas (among other places) and it wasn't until the 1970s that the rust pathogen made its way to the New World.  For the next several decades it remained a manageable disease in those areas, but in recent seasons, the disease has been severely affecting yields.

Last week I had the opportunity to attend the fifth Symposium organized by the Specialty Coffee Association of America which was held in Boston. The coffee rust problem was a major topic of presentations and discussion.  What we heard is that after increasing losses for the last two years, yield losses as high as 40% are anticipated in the 2013/14 season.

Leaf infected with the Coffee Rust pathogen, Hemileia vasatrix

Diseases Happens

It is not unprecedented for a crop/industry to be faced with a new plant disease challenge, and there are a range of solutions. However, the high quality coffee industry of the Americas is largely dependent on small-holder farmers in relatively poor communities. There are logistical, informational and sociopolitical issues for those communities which leave its producers and their families economically vulnerable, particularly in a situation such as this. To make things worse, these farmers' reduced crop yields are coming at a time of low international coffee prices. There is a very real possibility that  many of the small producers will either shift to alternative crops/jobs or into unrecoverable poverty. Coffee grown by small farmers on mountainsides is a romantic narrative for those of us who consume coffee.  Things are not looking so romantic for the families fighting coffee rust.

Untapped Genetic Resources

Although there are diverse, wild sources of Coffea arabica, and there are scores of other Coffea species to broaden the germplasm-base, existing coffee plantings represent a very narrow spectrum of genetics.  This leaves the industry vulnerable to disruptive shifts in the weather or pest populations. Coffee is unusual among perennial crops in that it is propagated by seeds rather than by cuttings or grafting. These seeds are cheap and easily saved, so there has never been a commercial coffee breeding industry.  Instead there have only been modest and regionally focused, breeding efforts based on governmental support.  Having been warned about this situation several years ago, the Specialty Coffee Association of America began funding the World Coffee Research (WCR) organization to conduct basic research on coffee genetics and to institute multi-country variety trials.  Their goal is to develop pest resistant lines which can still achieve the desired quality. While this investment by downstream players is commendable, coffee has a complex genome and long time to reproductive maturity. That will mean that a WCR-generated solution to something like the rust issue won't reach farmers for something on the order of 15 years - even with the use of biotech advances like Marker Assisted Selection.  That is far too long from a grower point of view.  It might be possible to speed the process using a transgenic approach, but WCR has clearly stated that they will not pursue a "GMO solution." I'm sure that makes sense for the realities of marketing to many specialty coffee consumers in the rich world. However, taking that technology option off the table may significantly postpone the delivery of a scale-neutral solution for the coffee growers.

Near-Term Solutions- Spraying Safe Fungicides

For now, the only option is to control the rust with the use of fungicide sprays. Technically this is quite feasible. There are several families of fungicides which are highly effective, very low in toxicity, and without significant environmental issues. These same fungicides are widely employed in the European wheat/barley industry and the South American soybean industry, both of which deal constantly with rusts and other diseases. However, fungicide use in this coffee setting has the complication of needing to be applied using backpack sprayers on rough terrain. There are also economic and information-transfer limitations which make this a non-trivial solution. Under this intense disease pressure, it will also be paramount to practice mode-of-action rotation to avoid selecting for fungicide resistance in the rust population.  The possible may not translate to the actual.

Unintended Ramifications of Organic-Environmental Issues and Social Injustice

These challenges are daunting for "conventional" growers, but they are far more challenging for those growers who have been persuaded by their customers to become organically certified. For rust control, the organic growers are mainly limited to the use of copper-based fungicides.  These "natural" products are far less effective than synthetic options, require high use rates, and are easily washed off of the plant by rain so that they must be frequently re-applied. Copper fungicides are also far more problematic for the environment because of their mobility in water runoff and their detrimental effects on aquatic invertebrates. Yet, if the organic growers use the more potent and safe synthetic options, they lose their organic certification for three years. The consumers who buy organic coffee might be surprised to understand that they are driving an option which is less desirable from both an environmental and social justice perspective.

The Coffee Industry Response to the Crisis - Helping the Small Grower

The Boston meeting last week was my first opportunity to interact directly with the specialty coffee community composed of growers, brokers, roasters, equipment suppliers and retailers. I was impressed by the industry's commitment to both deliver a high quality coffee experience for consumers while attempting to address the needs of the people around the world who produce the beans. The people in this industry understand the complex socio-political-economic reasons why life is difficult for small-holder coffee farmers. They have tried to address that through various "fair trade" mechanisms. They also talked openly about the need to do more, particularly because of this disease challenge. There were positive examples described about collaborative efforts between commercially and NGO sponsored efforts to enhance the economic viability and food security of coffee farming families. It is a huge challenge, but there is no question that the coffee industry takes it seriously.

Because of the geographically diversified production of coffee around the world, we who are the consumers of coffee are not at serious risk of losing access to a favorite, caffeinated beverage.  The current threat is to the livelihoods of the small-holder producers in Americas.  Think of them when you enjoy your coffee.

You are welcome to comment here and/or to email me at savage.sd@gmail.com

Coffee farmer image from USAID
Coffee Leaf Rust symptom image from Wikimedia Commons

Moving Towards Fossil-Energy-Independent Nitrogen Fertilizer

It takes about as much energy to make the nitrogen fertilizer for an acre of corn (150 lbs) as it takes to drive a car 600 miles, and because it is made using natural gas it has a carbon footprint equivalent to driving the car 650 miles.  Now imagine that for more than 90 million acres of corn.  That is a lot of energy.  But what if that energy and greenhouse gas footprint could disappear?  This might actually be possible.  

By way of background, nitrogen is one of the three most important minerals that plants need to grow, and the basis of the protein we require in our diets.  Some plants call legumes “fix” their own nitrogen with the help through a mutualistic relationship with a particular kind of bacteria.  From an environmental point of view, this sort of  biological nitrogen fixation is the best way to make nitrogen fertilizer.   US farmers already plant about 100 million acres of legume crops (soybeans, alfalfa...).  We could probably supply a fair amount of additional nitrogen if legume-containing winter cover crop mixes were more broadly used.  Still, to grow our conventional crops like corn, wheat, barley, fruits, most vegetables.... we need to make synthetic nitrogen.  Even organic is dependent on that flow (see previous post, Cows Don’t Make Fertilizer).

Large scale, crop-available nitrogen production became possible about 100 years ago when two German scientists named Haber and Bosch sequentially figured out how to turn the nearly 80% nitrogen in the atmosphere into plant available forms.  All it takes is a source of hydrogen, the air, and a catalyst to make ammonia. They got a Nobel Prize for this, but the big down-side has been that the most cost effective way to do the Haber-Bosch process has been to get the hydrogen from natural gas.  The question is whether there is an alternative to this major use of a fossil fuel (~5% of total natural gas use).

The Answer My Friend, Is Blowin' In The Wind

Bob Dylan was famously vague about what "the answer" actually was, but I'm guessing that he wasn't thinking about a solution to the fossil fuel dependency of crop fertilizers.  Even so, his reference to wind may actually be part of the answer to this real-world dilemma.   The Haber-Bosch process just requires hydrogen and that can easily be made using electricity and water (electrolysis).  The electricity could be from a renewable source like wind, solar, hydro etc.  I once wrote a blog post wondering if it might be possible for someone to develop a small-scale Haber-Bosch process that could be run using something like wind energy.  It turns out that at least three groups were already working on different approaches to just such an invention ( University of Minnesota, Electrogen Hydrofuels, Altmerge).  I am really excited about this possibility, particularly the later two because they are working on very small scale units.  For instance the one from Electrogen is designed to fit in a standard truck/rail container.

If any of these processes can be successfully commercialized, it could dramatically alter the fertilizer paradigm.  It would give farmers a way to locally and independently produce their own fertilizer and thus avoid the price fluctuations driven by the general energy market.  A farm could install a wind turbine and one of these units and let it make the next season’s fertilizer any day that the wind blew.  These companies are also working on ways to turn the ammonia generated into something easier to store like liquid ammonium nitrate (not the dry form that can be turned into a bomb).  

Such a system might also be able to provide village-level fertilizer generation in parts of the world where small-holder farmers don't have practical access to nitrogen fertilizer today.  

This nitrogen fertilizer would be "carbon neutral" from a manufacturing perspective.  Since the energy used to make fertilizer is a large part of the overall carbon footprint of agriculture (about 40% for a corn crop), this change would be highly significant.  Nitrogen fertilizers will still always have other environmental issues, but there are sustainable soil health management systems that best address those.

The irony is that this sort of carbon-neutral nitrogen fertilizer wouldn't qualify under the current rules for use in organic because it would still be “synthetic.”  Of course plants don’t care about this.  They can only absorb nitrogen in its nitrate or ammonium ion form which is the same whether it originated as synthetic or natural fertilizer.  

Wind turbine image from SustainableDevelopment's photostream

You are welcome to comment here and/or to email me at savage.sd@gmail.com