I have been live-blogging at the Eco-Farm Conference, at Asilomar State Park in beautiful Pacific Grove, California all week (Jan 22-26). I spent another week in California visiting family and not looking at my computer. Now I’m home, and here’s the wrap up on Eco-Farm…
Friday night, the banquet featured great food, wine at every table and the awards ceremony. We ended up in the back room sitting with a great couple from Fresno, Dr. and Ms Poss. We visited well into the evening and totally missed the awards ceremony happening in the other room.
Friday night banquet
Saturday, the last day of the conference, the weather finally broke and was clear and warm. Good thing it wasn’t so nice during the other days or I would have caught even fewer of the sessions. This place is just too beautiful.
For years now there’s been no scientific evidence that organically grown food is better for people. The research that has been done (mostly showing no nutritional effect) has been poorly done, never taking into account the myriad of factors affecting nutrient content. Critics of organic food love to point to these and wonder aloud why people are willing to pay extra for something that is not demonstrably better. Those actually paying for and eating organic food have an intuitive sense that the food is better for them and their families.
The panel session on food safety and nutrition featuring Chuck Benbrook, Alyson Mitchel and Klaas Martens was one of the best sessions I attended all week. The highlight was Dr. Mitchell’s powerful presentation of some fascinating research results, published in June in the Journal of Food and Agricultural Chemistry. Finally, someone has gone to the trouble to at least try and unravel the complex connection between production and nutrition. Take tomatoes. There is vast nutritional variation just between different varieties. Add to that growing conditions — soil, climate, pests, etc. — and the question becomes almost impossible to answer. Alyson Mitchell (UC Davis) research does just that. There’s so much to it, but the bottom line is organic practices, and higher organic matter in soil seems to lead to an increase in flavonoids, secondary metabolites (read nutrients) in tomatoes. Freshness and processing are also very important factors. I’m greatly over-simplifying here. Read the paper for yourself. It can be found on Dr. Mitchell’s site.
The conference ended with a closing plenary session given by Andrew Kimbrell, Executive Director of the Center for Food Safety. Andrew is a public interest attorney, activist and author. He’s a great speaker as well, and provided the perfect ending to a good conference. He made an incredible claim — GMOs will go down as the biggest failure in agricultural history. He ticked off a long list of victories recently won by those opposing biotechnology, many of which were lawsuits brought by the Center for Food Safety. His message was upbeat and funny, full of hope and encouragement for a healthy, profitable (for the farmer) food system. The Center for Food Safety is, among other things, a watch dog for the organic community, working to keep the standards strong, and protecting the integrity of organic food.
