Organic has no health benefits
news.bbc.co.uk
news.bbc.co.uk
The study, according to the link above, did not conclude that 'Organic has no health benefits'.
"Among the 55 of 162 studies that were included in the final analysis, there were a small number of differences in nutrition between organic and conventionally produced food but not large enough to be of any public health relevance, said study leader Dr Alan Dangour.
Although the researchers say that the differences between organic and non-organic food are not 'important', due to the relatively few studies, they report in their analysis that there are higher levels of beneficial nutrients in organic compared to non-organic foods. "
PS: There is a difference between saying there is no significant effect vs. no effect.
I would check myself I were you. Disagreeing with research is fine, but calling a bunch of trained scientists liars is a pretty serious accusation, especially when you yourself are not trained in the field.
Note: not large enough to be of any public health relevance
It's like overclocking a 4Ghz CPU by 0.01 Ghz. It's measurably faster, but not noticeably faster in normal use. So you can say it's an insignificant change, but you can't say they are the same speed. So "Organic has no health benefits" would not be a true statement without significant qualifiers.
I checked Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organic_certification#North_Ame...) and it says that the Government has published a set of Guidelines but applying organic labels is up to "Private Sector"...
However, doing some more google-fu I found (http://www.inspection.gc.ca/english/fssa/orgbio/orgbioe.shtm...) which seems to imply that on June 30, 2009 the Canadian Government finally got it's Organic ducks-in-a-row.
So, that seems to imply that only within the last month did Canada actually gain an Organic label that is regulated and trustworthy: http://www.inspection.gc.ca/english/fssa/orgbio/stainte.shtm...
http://www.manyhands.com/articles/story.cfm?id_no=6010024200...
For example, "products labeled 'Made With Organic Ingredients', which contain at least 70 percent organic ingredients, but can contain up to 30 percent non-organic ingredients"
And the Massai (and Inuit) referred to in your link are hardly good examples. They have short lifespans (as low as in the 40s), suffer from atherosclerosis and thickening of the arteries. The Inuit are also not long lived and have a high rate of osteoporosis. These groups' "adaptation" to a high protein meat diet is hardly desirable. They are forced to eat a high meat diet out of circumstances, not as a chosen optimal way of life.
http://aje.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/95/1/26
American Journal of Epidemiology Vol. 95, No. 1: 26-37
ATHEROSCLEROSIS IN THE MASAI
Exercise, exercise, exercise.
In the absence of 'textbook' science citations, I'm going to have to rely on 'pop' science that does provide citations to respected scientists at accredited institutions who have performed actual studies.
http://www.marksdailyapple.com/saturated-fat-healthy/ provides another copious set of links to refutations (based on citations, not appeals) of traditional saturated fat studies and other indications of its overly maligned status.
I'll also note the penultimate sentence of the abstract you link: "The Masai vessels enlarge with age to more than compensate for this disease."
Exercise or not, it's worth noting that the study does not draw any strong correlation between saturated fat and a decreased health.
"Organic farmers build soil.
Soil is the foundation of the food chain and the primary focus of organic farming. We’re facing the worst topsoil erosion in history due to our current agricultural practice of chemical intensive, mono-crop farming."
http://nutiva.com/nutrition/organic.php
That site gives a lot of -interesting?- reasons to eat organic. But that reason in particular stands out to me. Anyone seen pictures of the dust bowl? Here you go~
http://www.paranormalknowledge.com/articles/wp-content/uploa...
I don't know if that's because the plant varieties are different, or the method or whatever, but I've blind tested myself (no, it's not scientific, more like Mythbusters's level science) and I can easily tell the produce apart.
That it tastes better may just be in my head, but I can definitely tell them apart just by taste.
Also, organic farmers manage the soil differently. Intensive industrial farming depletes soils and relies on extensive use of refined fertilizers to make up forthe deficit. The soil at organic farms is often richer and plants can pick up more minerals, which can have a real impact on flavor.
I'm not sure about that when you factor in that in the US (and Canada?) antibiotics and recombinant bovine growth hormone are commonly given to cattle. The side effects of rGBH include puss in the milk.
This goes doubly for eggs - organic & free-range eggs are just a world apart from regular farm eggs.
It would be interesting to do a blind taste-test between organic and non-organic produce ... Pepsi Challenge style.
And the rats preferred organic.
It is a puzzler that he mentions one small sample of rats
http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html
that doesn't show the same result (indifference to whether or not food is "organic") shown in many human studies he mentions in his article. This kind of study needs a bigger sample size and a great deal more replication.
Here's another problem: how do we know that either human beings or rats prefer what is best for them? Preferences for smells and tastes may have evolutionary origins that are then exploited by adaptations of food organisms in ways that are not beneficial to the eater.
Weird that they chose rats and haven't (that we know of) done a study with humans. After all, it's not as if such a study has any inherent danger.
We were however capable of telling the difference between organic and non-organic chicken tough.
I would think that lack of thorough testing before releasing is a good start, in addition to cooking some of the test results to see what was desired and ignore what was detrimental to the test subjects.
Isn't it currently illegal in the US to label a food as containing GMO's? Some of the same politicians that were instrumental in getting HMOs introduced into food markets (and the aforementioned ban on wording) were previous or became employees of Monsanto. Not the most disinterested of parties...
Then there is the speculative links to species decline. Gene-modded soy is grown with the intention of being dowsed in pesticides, which are having negative impacts on surrounding plant and animal cultures.
Fields in South America are now allegedly only capable of producing GMO corn, as cross pollination occurs, more bizarre plant reproduction ensues, until the line dies relatively prematurely (as it is designed to do) so that more seed _must_ be bought from Monsanto.
And then there are the legal issues of Monsanto suing any farmer who complains that their fields have become contaminated for using Monsanto seed without paying for it.
All I have read and heard so far is despicable behaviour on Monsanto's part, so I distrust their products, since I can not trust the corporation.
Again: whats wrong with GMO food?
I guess I have yet to learn of a GMO product that I want to consume. Breeding for traits, as I understand has been done for many, many years would seem to offer natural selection a way of killing of the inappropriate strains, in addition to giving humans time to consume, then observe any possible negative reactions (Don't eat the mushrooms with the red tops - bad!)
Having a food factory produce vast quantities of recent experiments that overwhelm other sources of non-experiment strains gives me pause for concern. I understand from general consensus that we were told DDT was perfectly safe, and I vaguely remember seeing a promotional video showing children being sprayed with it, to show how "safe it was." I now understand that it is not safe at all.
I guess it again circles around to whom do I trust? And is the information I am receiving accurate?
I guess I am being a bit of a food Luddite...
Before 'monocrops' were engineered, nations went to war over food because it was scarce. Disease killed entire crops. Since Borlaug bred disease resistant rice and wheat - war is down. Way down. We make enough food.
Except - to keep up with growing populations, we have to use GMO technology to increase our agricultural output. Organic food is a first world nice to have. GMO food is a whole world MUST have.
Here's two facts that may change your attitude - or at least make you question what you think you know.
1) The father of the monocrop, Norman Borlaug won the Nobel prize for saving a billion lives by increasing agricultural output enormously... and yet most people have never heard of him. Bizarre, isn't it?
2) During the famine and widespread starvation in Africa in the 80s, Greenpeace successfully opposed the export of 'chemical' fertilizers from Europe to Africa. They were banned. Bizarre, isn't it?
The GMO fears are luddite. There is widespread misinformation. The FDA is incredibly strict here.
...One year later...
Oh, you say your crop failed? We didn't mention they needed twice as much water? That maybe they weren't as resistant to disease as we said? That there's another disease we hadn't engineered against? That the pesticides they were engineered to work in conjunction with will ruin your soil for everything else? Now you have no money left? Hmm, well... that sucks for you. Thank your government for our lucrative subsidies, though. When you commit suicide, I'm sure we'll be able to find a large corporate farming operation to come in and take over.
GMO isn't the problem (that we know of). Abuse of GMO, for the purpose of locking farmers in, that's the problem.
GMO For the People.
As to what I sound like, my uncle is a successful independent farmer in North Dakota. He's not organic, but he strongly opposes GMOs in their current form strictly because of the lock-in issue.
I have been taking the easy (read lazy) way out with my two acres: I have been telling my neighbors that having many types of ground cover keeps my ground cover healthier by promoting a healthy ecosystem of insects (and birds), in addition to the plants themselves. While the neighbors keep the RoundUp nearby for the "undesirables"and reach for Scotts TurfBuilder every year, I just mow once in awhile... :)
Come to think of it, I water a whole lot less then they do, as well.
And as to the last sentence in your previous paragraph, I have the distinct feeling that the FDA (we are talking the USA's Food and Drug Administration, right?) might have been helpful in its early years, but it is now not only a hindrance but an outright danger. Similar to the human tendency to assume the existence of traffic lights means they do not have to examine a road intersection for themselves, the idea that the FDA is a good watchdog seems to me to be luring people into yet another false sense of security about their food and drugs.
I seem to recall (pun intended) increasing news stories about how little I can trust our current food system in providing safe items for my table if I am not mimicking a Consumer Reports-style monitoring of FDA alerts about bad food in the delivery system. Oops, that was shipped how many months ago? What alert color are we at now for spinach, orange? :)
Maybe I am assuming too much, but isn't the FDA overwhelmed with the job it is currently doing, and only spot sampling at that? Aren't we suffering from too many companies taking advantage of low to no oversight and shipping whatever they need to keep their bottom line healthy?
Charles Murray had an interesting idea about allowing a second market to arise that was caveat emptor, in return for lower costs to introduce food and drugs into the marketplace. Of course, it requires more responsibility on the part of the consumer, so we leave the existing FDA market in place beside it for those who desire their safety "government approved"...
1) Imported food where raw animal and human waste are used outside of FDA guidelines (i.e. no uncomposted manures used in fields within 120 days of harvest if the vegetable touches the ground, 90 days if it doesn't).
Look at #1. Its actually totally consistent with organic practice, other than the safety violation ;)
2) Rat and other animal feces in processing facilities - a la peanuts.
The FDA is not overwhelmed at testing GMO foods. They're overwhelmed in testing imports, and inspecting production facilities. Think of the scope of those two problems. The FDA sits at a chokepoint of GMO, and not at imports.
The current applications of it are however completely uninteresting to me. They center around higher yields. That's achieved through pesticide resistance and pest resistance. There's also some for other properties like shipability.
None of those features interest me. And despite the fact that the risk from them is arbitrarily close to zero, I chose not consume them, simply because again I don't see anything I care about.
Lower prices don't tempt me because I can easily afford food. Additionally I am quite upset about agricultural subsidies and protectionism and would like to see those go away. Thus price reductions not related to the elimination of farm subsidies only serve to remind me of my anger at this policy.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1082559/Th...
http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/rough/2005/07/seeds_of_sui...
Too many eggs in a single basket is always a dangerous strategy, it will work perfectly for a long time and then one day you lose all your eggs. That's only a matter of time.
But we do have examples of such crop failures due to monocultures in 'regular' agriculture. All we have with regards to a GMO problem is speculation and a hope that it will never happen.
The only instance that I'm familiar with that shows a little bit of what the risks are is a south african incident where farmers lost up to 80% of their GMO corn crops.
Usually, if we look only at the ones who are actually available on the market, is to enable the use of mass herbicide or resists specific pests. A lot of them look more motivated by marketing factors to create vendor lock-in.
I see GMOs in food as a temporary escape for monocultures. Ultimately I think we'll need to abandon this practice.
It would seem that the introduction of species that are in many ways genetically identical would lead to similar problems that are found in the monoculture crop production of industrial farming, i.e. greater susceptibility to pests and disease.
I also get the feeling that potential risks are not properly accounted for in the current system where wealth is often seen as arbitrary fiat capital and not as the health of our environment, the real wealth as it allows human beings to flourish and fuels the wealth of our ideas and actions.
Say there were detrimental effects of gmo food consumption how long would it take the public to become informed? There is still widespread use of plastics and chemicals with documented scientifically evidenced deleterious health effects. I suspect more people are 'marketed to' than read scientific reports.
There are the classic 'case study accomplishments' of gmo like the modified rice that provided vitamin A to a malnourished population. Counterpoint to this is that we live on an abundantly productive planet and the obstacles to proper nourishment of the members of our species are typically political.
We don't see large percentages of other species that are under-nourished, we also don't see other species that have developed lopsided and convoluted systems as ours have.
Regarding Monsanto et al. -
" Big Biotech with Monsanto leading the pack wants to replace those millions of years with seeds like the Terminator (named for the action hero governor of California) which goes sterile after one growing cycle and obligates farmers (they sign binding contracts with Monsanto) to buy more, a process Mexican investigator Silvia Ribiero tags "bio-slavery". " - http://www.counterpunch.org/ross02142007.html
" Farmers are forced to sign contracts, agreeing to buy GMO seed at a company-fixed price. Monsanto's super-duper "Terminator" seed, named after California's action hero governor, goes sterile after one growing cycle and the campesinos are obligated to buy more. By getting hooked on Monsanto, Mexican farmers, once seed savers and repositories themselves of the knowledge of their inner workings, become consumers of seed, an arrangement that augurs poorly for the survival of Mexico's many native corns. "
If the number of corn species declines what happens if something like Panama disease that affects bananas were to strike corn crops? Ever more genetic modification, beholden to just a few large corporations for the solution?
A cynic might point out a certain degree of environmental havoc might work to the benefit of gmo companies as far as the short-sighted goals of a fiat currency profit are concerned.
" Moreover, as farmers from other climes who have resisted Monsanto and refused to buy into the GMO blitz, have learned only too traumatically, pollen blowing off contaminated fields will spread to non-GMO crops. Even more egregiously, Monsanto will then send "inspectors" (often off-duty cops) to your farm and detect their patented strains in your fields and charge you with stealing the corporation's property. "
" Mexican corn is, of course, not the only native crop that is being disappeared by global capitalism. Native seeds are under siege from pole to pole. In Iraq, where the Tigris and Euphrates rivers come together to form the birthplace of agriculture, one of the very first acts of George Bush's neo-colonial satrap L. Paul Brenner was to issue the notorious Order 81 criminalizing the possession of native seeds. The U.S. military spread out throughout the land distributing little packets of GMO seeds, the euphemistically dubbed Operation "Amber Waves." To make sure that Iraq would no longer have a native agriculture, the national seed bank, located at Abu Ghraib, was looted and set afire. " - http://www.counterpunch.org/ross11212007.html
To see a company attempting to become an arbiter of food supply by claiming property rights over plants that have evolved to the benefit of all the species on this planet naturally raises some questions and opposition.
The study found that organically- and non-organically-grown foods showed no difference in nutrition. To assume that the food's nutrition is the only health-affecting factor between organic and petrochemical farming is silly.
What do you suggest would be a verifiable health-affecting factor that would differ between the two forms of farming?
• The environmental effects of different methods of farming and food production.
• Are toxins more or less present in the food produced by different methods?
• Is the food more or less pleasurable to eat?
This is a good question to ask, because most plants contain phytotoxins adapted to keep microbes or animals from eating them. Human selective breeding of plants already has made plants less toxic as human foods, and human bioengineering of plants could help some kinds of plants become still less toxic to human eaters.
http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/109862182/abstrac...
But if I were to give it a shot, I might investigate the effects of pesticide runoff on the farming environment, and those who live around it. Or animal farms' antibiotic carpet-bombing's effect on drug-resistance of pathogens. Or the effects of farming chemical production on those who live near the factories.
Really though, part of the point of organic food is that it dumps less crap in the environment. Even if the direct impact on human health is non existent, less fertilizer runoff means fewer low oxygen deadzones at the mouth of major rivers, which means more fish, etc.
http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/wrangham/wrangham_index.html
The rest of your comment seems irrelevant. I'm not disputing in any way that plants have toxins or that we had to develop various practices to make us safer. I don't dispute that many man-made chemicals are safe and useful. I don't even dispute that pesticides could conceivably improve safety from a hypothetical insect-born contagion.
However genetically modified mono-crops sprayed with heavy loads of pesticides simply to increase yields does not strike me as something that goes towards food safety at all. It goes towards short-term profit, and you can bet the cost of any long term health effects is simply ignored until 30-40 years down the line when the soil is depleted and the effects of various pesticides have time to show up in the human population. At that point the industry will throw its hands up in the air and say "how could we have known?" while pushing the new and improved fertilizers and pesticides with a new batch of as-of-yet-unknown problems.
That's why I think it's a good idea to eat more traditionally raised food. It's not because I'm some hippie idealogue or because I don't believe in science or progress, it just strikes me as a safer bet given the severe holes in nutrition science, and in many ways, the intractability of solving the health "equation".
ETA: DDT was dusted directly on people for flea and lice control and typhus prevention and was primarily sprayed indoors for malaria prevention so there was a lot more direct human contact than even production plant workers have with insecticides currently.
Where is the evidence of direct DDT harm to human beings? I don't recall that ever being mentioned when DDT was banned in the United States (within my lifetime, so I remember the contemporary news reports on the issue). If there is a harm, how does it compare to the harm of insect-borne diseases?
To add to your point, "no evidence of any extra health benefits" is different from "evidence that there are no extra health benefits".
Also, reductionist nutritional science makes it possible for Lucky Charms to tout health benefits on the front of their box by listing individual nutrients. This is profitable for the food industry.
For more I'd recommend "In Defense of Food" by Michael Pollan.
In Omnivore's Dilemma, he notes that there exists evidence that the old idea about nutrition being reduceable to just three basic components is likely to be wrong.
If you don't know where to look for evidence, it is quite likely you aren't going to find it.
I do limit myself to organic/all natural prepared foods though due to lack of preservatives. See In Defense of Food as to why. There's very little doubt that stuff is awful for your health.
I cook only for myself, and I often find my irradiated, preservative laced, genetically engineered food going bad. If I bought organic, I'd never get to eat anything. :/
They make lots of organic frozen prepared foods. You can get organic macaroni and cheese in a box that's just like the regular (but tastes better). There are organic canned soups, pasta sauce, frozen burritos, etc.
You name it you can buy it.
They can and sometimes do cheat, even though the fines are enormous, but reading labels won't help with that.
Locavorism also saves so little in shipping energy and cost that it's almost worthless in any health or environmental sense.
Finally, with respect to your energy/environmental argument: I am not advocating buying local as a way to save on energy costs; I am advocating buying local as a way to get significantly fresher produce. With that said, even if buying local saves a single cent per pound of produce (not unreasonable [1] at current gas prices) that could be savings of upwards of $5.4B per year if every american shopped local ($0.01/lb * ~300 million amercians * ~1800 lbs of food consumed/american/year).
1. http://fatknowledge.blogspot.com/2006/04/buy-local-vs-shop-l...
Spend 10 minutes to sort through a basket of tomatoes at the hippie organic market on Maui (the only store in the village) to find the four or five that aren't bruised to hell and back, then pay double price for the privilege.
And then there's the sustainability and economic problems. Can the farms near NYC produce enough organic produce to supply the whole city? How much will a head of lettuce cost if everyone is buying organic? Given the lower efficiency of organic farming, how much more land do we need to convert to farmland?
Apparently it's already too expensive for low-income people to get fresh food--at least, we hear so every couple weeks on slow news days. Increase the popularity of organic food; it's going to get even harder for these people to get fruit and veg.
Posting this on a Silicon Valley site... thank god for the -8 point limit, because I sense many a "downvote for disagreement" coming.
Don't talk about animal feed, either--we'd have to raise more cattle just for the manure if we didn't use chemical fertilizers.
An organic farming technique is always compared to one using those artificial methods. Once the benchmark is there and there is a market for organic, it's a good recipe for improving organic farming technology.
More info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organic_farming#Productivity_an...
http://www.cnr.berkeley.edu/~agroeco3/modern_agriculture.htm...
I would prefer whichever method is both efficient and environmentally-safe. I'm just annoyed by the currently fashionable knee-jerk reaction of people that assume organic farming is better.
Maybe a better question is why have we let so much farmland get repurposed for other, arguably trivial uses? I remember a time when large parts of Los Angeles were fruit trees, and are now strip malls and parking lots.
Easy, money and risk. Building a high-rise building with 200 units takes about as much land as two or three single-family homes. But it is much riskier to build the high-rise; it costs more, and all 200 units might not sell. So it's easier to just build the single-family homes; now you only have two things to sell instead of 200. Very inefficient use of space, but efficient use of space is not rewarded in any way. The fact that there is no longer any place to grow crops is Someone Else's Problem. You have money to make!
So, if you are willing to poison our planet to make high-fructose corn syrup slightly more profitable, conventional farming is great. If you want your kids' kids to have strawberries, though... maybe not so good.
(Remember, commercial farms in the US don't grow fruits and vegetables; they grow corn. The government pays them extra for that.)
But anyway, if people not having enough healthy food is a problem, the government should subsidize healthy food instead of corn. I would rather my tax money help a poor family eat well (balanced, nutrient-rich, sustainable whole foods) than to pay someone to dump toxins in our rivers so that we can have soda that's one cent cheaper per liter. Unfortunately, I am not a congressperson, and there's a lot of money to be made selling sugar (erm, corn) water to kids.
The deeper problem is that businesses and industries tend to only analyze their direct costs. They would be fined if they, as a single entity, killed off all the fish in a river. So they don't do that. They let just enough toxic waste run off their fields to not be doing anything illegal. The problem is that when all their neighbors do that, they end up killing off all the fish. But it's not anyone's fault, so they keep doing the same thing. Externalities are either going to be the death of capitalism, or the death of human life on earth. I am betting on the second one.
That's ridiculous. This shouldn't even be a debate. Even if you could use all the organic material that you have--the animal manures, the human waste, the plant residues--and get them back on the soil, you couldn't feed more than 4 billion people. In addition, if all agriculture were organic, you would have to increase cropland area dramatically, spreading out into marginal areas and cutting down millions of acres of forests.
At the present time, approximately 80 million tons of nitrogen nutrients are utilized each year. If you tried to produce this nitrogen organically, you would require an additional 5 or 6 billion head of cattle to supply the manure. How much wild land would you have to sacrifice just to produce the forage for these cows? There's a lot of nonsense going on here.
If people want to believe that the organic food has better nutritive value, it's up to them to make that foolish decision. But there's absolutely no research that shows that organic foods provide better nutrition. As far as plants are concerned, they can't tell whether that nitrate ion comes from artificial chemicals or from decomposed organic matter. If some consumers believe that it's better from the point of view of their health to have organic food, God bless them. Let them buy it. Let them pay a bit more. It's a free society. But don't tell the world that we can feed the present population without chemical fertilizer. That's when this misinformation becomes destructive.
http://www.reason.com/news/show/27665.html
I now say that the world has the technology – either available or well advanced in the research pipeline – to feed on a sustainable basis a population of 10 billion people. The more pertinent question today is whether farmers and ranchers will be permitted to use this new technology? While the affluent nations can certainly afford to adopt ultra low-risk positions, and pay more for food produced by the so-called “organic” methods, the one billion chronically undernourished people of the low income, food-deficit nations cannot.
--30th Anniversary Lecture, The Norwegian Nobel Institute, Oslo, September 8, 2000
Efficiency compared to what? Stripping of minerals? Loss of topsoil? Petroleum dependence? Water contamination? Yeah, it's true, conventional farming is more efficient at all those.
You're concerned about needing more farm land with "organic" practices, but in truth, "conventional" farming is destroying arable land at an alarming rate.
Edit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Livestock%27s_Long_Shadow
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/print/2008/09/soil/mann-te...
- Organic produce 'better for you': £12m study shows organic food contains more antioxidants and less fatty acids.
- Organic food 'better' for heart: 10 year study shows tomatoes contain more antioxidants.
- Organic veg given health boost: research shows soup made from organic veg contains six times more aspirin (?!)
Many of these kinds of stories seem to have the grubby handprints of PR companies all over them. Are antioxidants good or bad? I don't even know any more...
Until I know any better, I'll be sticking to my trusty two criteria:
1. Does it taste good?
2. Is the price in line with the taste?
Most of us reading HN are consumers in industrialized countries with thriving, free-market economies. For eaters in poor countries, every gain in efficiency in agriculture is a reduction in price of food for eaters who devote most of their income to food. There have to be seriously inexpensive ways to produce food in some countries for some people to eat at all.
You have a totally skewed way of thinking if you think we need free markets in order for people to avoid starving. People are perfectly capable of providing their own food given some land some seeds and some sun, and some water. The amount of land required isn't even all that high.
Indeed, it is probably their ability to produce a surplus that lead to markets in the first place and those markets made it possible to justify cutting people off from the ability to feed themselves. At this point, there are plenty of cities in the US where it isn't legal to store rain water that falls on your own land.
You need to take that up with the historians of economics. The last few major famines in my lifetime were all in countries that have adequate capacity to produce food, but had governments at those times that tried to impose Marxist socialism on their populations.
More to the point of this thread, will you allow the smallholders you mention to use whatever means they find economical or convenient to grow food on their own land, or will you insist that they grow only "organic" crops?
Sounds like the tobacco lobby of yesteryear.
Given the fact that cancer is on the rise and I have a choice between food treated with carcinogens and food not treated with carcinogens, I'll take the food not treated with carcinogens, thanks.
If the organic is grown in already marginal land, while the "standard" food is grown somewhere fertile, is it possible to get these results, or possibly results indicating organic food is less healthful?
Did they check trace mineral content? Did they check phyto-nutrient levels?
No, in fact, they checked nothing at all. This was not a study. It was a meta-study. Meta-analysis is a very poor tool. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meta-analysis#Weaknesses
Note in particular the File Drawer Problem.
As other posters note: Organic food tastes better. Now, why is that? Is the only difference between the two really a matter of trace-pesticide use?
How about you? ;)