The Anonymous Widower

Cynicism About Organic Foods

I should say before I continue, that I do buy organic foods.

But!

I am always suspicious that they don’t live up to the hype. 

Take my supper yesterday.  I ate several Jersey Royal potatoes, which were not organic.  But they are produced by farmers who care about the quality of their product. They were exquisite.

Take just before Christmas.  A farmer brought me some washed supermarket parsnips round, as a favour for his wife using a stable for a pony.  They were much better than those you get from Waitrose or Sainbury’s, but that is where they would have ended up.  However, that takes a couple of days, whereas they arrived from his field in a couple of hours.

So it seems that how the product is handled after picking is perhaps as important than what goes on before. 

I suspect that it is more true with something like meat. After all I’ve kept animals for years and know that the better you treat them the better they perform.  Or in the case of food animals, does that mean taste?

So where you know about the provenance of the animal and can trust the farmer are you getting a better and perhaps a more humanely kept product.  After all organic means that some drugs used for medicinal purposes are banned.  Is that humane?

So when I read this report in The Times yesterday, my cynicism was increased.

This says that a study by Professor Benton of Leeds University has shown that organic farms are not necessarily the best for wildlife.

The research found that organic farms had, on average, 12 per cent more biodiversity in terms of the number and variety of plants, birds, earthworms and insects. But the yield from organic fields was 55 per cent lower than from conventional fields growing similar crops in the same areas. While there were more plants and butterflies on organic farms, there was no difference in the number of bees and there were 30 per cent more hoverflies on conventional farms.

Organic fields contained more magpies and jays but 10 per cent fewer small birds such as yellowhammers, corn buntings, linnets, skylarks and lapwings. The researchers found that the larger birds, which were attracted to organic farms by their denser patches of woodland, were scaring away the smaller birds and preying on their nests.

It is all very interesting.

One point Professor Benton said was that greater benefits were detected where there were clusters of organic farms.  That I would understand as in the studlands of Newmarket, there appears to be a much greater diversity than on ordinary agricultural land.  That is also because horses are such inefficient grazers and leave lots for hares and deer.

May 6, 2010 - Posted by AnonW | Food | Animals, Birds, Environment, Farming, Shopping