Organic farms have better fruit, soil, environment...

[treegod]

Like the sound of this

Organic farms have better fruit, soil, environment, study finds

Sept. 2, 2010
Courtesy of Public Library of Science
and World Science staff

Com­pared to con­ven­tion­al straw­ber­ry farms, or­gan­ic ones con­sist­ently pro­duce fruit that's equal or bet­ter in taste and nu­tri­tion, while leaving health­i­er and more ge­net­ic­ally di­verse soil, a study has found.

Soil sci­ent­ist John Reganold of Wash­ing­ton State Uni­vers­ity and col­leagues con­ducted the ana­lysis com­par­ing con­ven­tion­al and or­gan­ic farms in Cal­i­for­nia.

“Our find­ings have glob­al im­plica­t­ions and ad­vance what we know about the sus­tain­abil­ity ben­e­fits of or­gan­ic farm­ing sys­tems,” said Reganold, whose find­ings were pub­lished Tues­day in the re­search jour­nal PLoS One. “We al­so show you can have high qual­ity, healthy pro­duce with­out re­sort­ing to an ar­se­nal of pes­ti­cides.”

The study is among the most com­pre­hen­sive of its kind, he said. His group an­a­lyzed 31 chem­i­cal and bi­o­log­i­cal soil char­ac­ter­is­tics, soil DNA, and the taste, nu­tri­tion and qual­ity of three straw­ber­ry va­ri­eties on more than two doz­en com­mer­cial field­s—13 con­ven­tion­al and 13 or­gan­ic.

Cal­i­for­nia is home to 90 per­cent of the na­tion's straw­ber­ries and the cen­ter of an on­go­ing de­bate about the use of soil fu­mi­gants. Con­ven­tion­al farms in the study used me­thyl bro­mide, an ozone-depleting com­pound. Me­thyl bro­mide is slat­ed to be re­placed soon by me­thyl io­dide, over the protests of a bevy of health ad­vo­cates, en­vi­ron­men­tal­ists and sci­ent­ists, in­clud­ing more than 50 No­bel lau­re­ates, who call the chem­i­cal highly to­xic.

In Ju­ly, Cal­i­for­nia Sen. Di­anne Fe­in­stein asked the U.S. En­vi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion Agen­cy to re­con­sid­er its ap­prov­al of me­thyl io­dide.

On al­most eve­ry ma­jor in­di­ca­tor, Reganold said his team found the or­gan­ic fields and fruit were equal to or bet­ter than their con­ven­tion­al coun­ter­parts. The or­gan­ic straw­ber­ries al­so had a long­er shelf life, ac­cord­ing to the sci­ent­ists, who used anon­y­mous testers who eval­u­ate the berries. A DNA anal­y­sis found the or­gan­ic­ally man­aged soils had dra­mat­ic­ally more ge­net­ic di­vers­ity, a meas­ure of re­sil­ience to stress and abil­ity to car­ry out es­sen­tial pro­cesses.

[DaRC]

yep - it's a whole ecological cycle thing.
There was an interesting section on BBC's Countryfile on Sunday with someone who is studying the effect of various chemicals/medicines etc... given to cattle on dung beetles. Which thus affects it's break down and incorporation back into the land.

[DJ Droood]

Cal­i­for­nia is home to 90 per­cent of the na­tion's straw­ber­ries and the cen­ter of an on­go­ing de­bate about the use of soil fu­mi­gants.

I dont buy stawberries...ours come from California and are cheap and about the size of cricket balls...they are watery (not juicy) and have 0 flavour...they have the "appearance" of strawberries only....big cartoon strawberries like a child might imagine....don't know if it is the soil fumigants or frankenberries, but I don't touch them.....kiwis either...we get these rock-hard, tastless kiwis from NZ (and I know it is a totally different issue, buying food flown across oceans)...and these things don't really ripen..they stay rock hard at room temperature, sometimes for weeks, then one morning you find them desiccated, but not "spoiled". They have the "appearance" of kiwis, but are nothing like the fruit I used to enjoy.

[treegod]

Saw a little street experiment on Countryfile once, a few years ago.

People were shown two lots of apples, one shiny and aesthetically pleasing, the other a little rough. They were asked "Which one do you think will taste better?" and most of them went for the shiny one. But it was the rough one, which I think was also organic and the other not.

[Huathe]

Here in Western North Carolina and Upstate South Carolina, we have a fair amount of strawberry growers, the largest being Strawberry Hill in Upstate SC.

http://www.strawberryhillusa.com/

I myself would prefer organic grown produce but it will never be very popular with the general public as long as the price is so high. It costs here at least twice as much as conventually grown produce. Organic milk is nearly three times the price! The price must be brought down for it to be practical. I would pay a somewhat higher price for a safer and better product, but three times more? Nope?

Have any of you heard the Amy Grant song " Big Yellow Taxi ". It sends a good environmental message and thiis conversation reminds me of it. " Give me spots on my apples and leave me the birds and the bees "

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oiJWwWP1g7w