“On top of being a pro-farmer, ecologically-minded chef, Dan Barber is a masterful storyteller. The cool thing about the stories Dan tells is that…” Read Linley’s appeal to join our next book club discussing Third Plate by Dan in this week’s letter below:
“What we need now is a radically new conception of agriculture, one in which the food actually tastes good.
But for a lot people, that’s a bit too radical. We’re not realists, us foodies; we’re lovers. We love farmers’ markets, we love small family farms, we talk about local food, we eat organic.
And when you suggest these are the things that will ensure the future of good food, someone, somewhere stands up and says, ‘Hey guy, I love pink flamingos, but how are you going to feed the world?’
Can I be honest? I don’t love that question. No, not because we already produce enough calories to more than feed the world. One billion people will go hungry today. One billion — that’s more than ever before — because of gross inequalities in distribution, not tonnage. Now, I don’t love this question because it’s determined the logic of our food system for the last 50 years.
Want to feed the world? Let’s start by asking: How are we going to feed ourselves? Or better: How can we create conditions that enable every community to feed itself?”
– Dan Barber
Dear Friend,
We are beyond excited for our next Third Plate book club session with renowned chef Dan Barber.
Dan has embraced his unexpected fame as a chef to raise awareness about a failing food system. In our first podcast interview with him, he marvels about the fact that people list chef’s among the most trusted professions. He acknowledges that there is a great responsibility that comes with people’s confidence for the white coats (as he calls chefs). And in that sense, Dan Barber is a true leader.
Chefs like Dan are adored by farmers.
It is rare to find a chef who really plans their menu around the food in season and purchases in bulk from local farms. This is because he believes whole-heartedly that his purpose as a chef is to create food centered around whatever farmers need to sell so that we can be, well…better farmers.
Not sure what I mean by this? Dan is loaded with examples. Take Veal.
There is a humane way to raise it and every ecological dairy should be selling it for an additional income stream because dairies have no use for half the calves that are born (those that are male).
Every dairy should also be raising pigs who love to eat the leftover whey from cheesemaking.
Who says small diverse farms aren’t efficient?
Or, how about buckwheat?
Buckwheat is an important, quick-to-mature, warm season cover crop that farmers use to suppress weeds, attract beneficial insects, and help hold fertility for future crops.
It is especially useful on low fertility soils.
Enter the Soba Noodle (made out of buckwheat).
Looking at the crops that make up traditional diets, these are examples of how crops are always part of a puzzle that fits together to produce soil, animal, and human health.
We interviewed Dan Barber at Stone Barnes with Eliot Coleman. Watch Here.
Our first interview with Dan Barber discussed ideas from his book, The Third Plate. Watch here or above.
On top of being a pro-farmer, ecologically-minded chef, Dan Barber is a masterful storyteller.
The cool thing about the stories Dan tells is that so many of them are based on information that humanity used to know, but that we have since lost in our mad, single-minded, rush for greater yields (at the expense of human and planetary health).
His two Ted Talks have both received hundreds of thousands of views:
I highly recommend you watch both of them. He is funny and inspiring.
His book, the Third Plate tells stories of how culture and healthy, ethical food (that happens to also taste good) are intimately connected.
When we celebrate diverse cultures we preserve the good food that comes with them. You actually can’t have one without the other. It’s why, in his mind, the future of food is neither McDonalds nor environmental veganism. It is honoring the wisdom of our collective past.
We’ll see all our sustaining “Real Friend” members on Monday, Oct 17th at 6 Eastern with chef and author Dan Barber!
Yours in the dirt, Linley
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Join us for our next book club with Dan Barber by becoming a real friend below with a monthly or annual recurring donation:
“The title of this film, Soul of the Soil, combines these two phrases. They are not bits of marketing fluff. They are the lived truth of the Lazors and Butterworks Farm.”Read on below for Dave’s take on the documentary streaming now on Vermont Public Television and links to watch the 30 minute film that shouldn’t be missed.
Real Organic dairy farmer Jack Lazor of Butterworks Farm in Vermont is celebrated in this short PBS documentary produced by Real Organic Project’s Jenny Prince. Watch it here.
Jack and Anne Lazor in 2020
Dear Friend,
This week a beautiful film was shown on VT PBS called Soul of the Soil.
It is a short glimpse into the lives of Jack and Anne Lazor, two organic dairy pioneers in Vermont. Jack died in 2020 after a ten-year relationship with cancer. Anne recently suffered a stroke, and is now back home at Butterworks Farm. Their daughter Christine and son-in-law Collin now run the farm.
I am sharing the film as an inspiration to all of us.
Some of the letters we send out are not easy to read. Some things are discouraging. It is good to remember that we are part of a powerful positive movement. We are not alone.
40 years ago Jack and Anne were city kids going back to the land, as so many of us did. Many of us homesteaded, and some became farmers making our living by growing food. To those and many who followed, the Lazors were guides, always generously sharing what they learned, often creating competitors in the marketplace through their teachings.
Soul Of The Soil Director Andre Costantini filming at Butterworks.
Jenny Prince filming at Butterworks. She has spent years recording their farm for all of us.
The magic and lived truth of Jack and Anne Lazor.
I have always been inspired by Jack and Anne. I have been a dedicated customer of their yogurt since the beginning. They have literally sustained me. But their impact has gone far beyond their customers in ways that few will ever see.
A marketing maven for a huge so-called “Organic” hydroponic company testified at an NOSB meeting that when people talk about “the magic of soil” and the “soul of organic,” these are “just bits of marketing fluff.” He would see it that way. This is how his world works.
The title of this film, Soul of the Soil, combines these two words. They are not bits of marketing fluff. They are the lived truth of the Lazors.
The vast chasm between the world of that marketing guy and Butterworks Farm reveals the deep gulf between the USDA National Organic Program and Real Organic Project.
Soul of the Soil is a celebration of their lives and Butterworks farm but not all the struggle.
It leaves out some of the struggle, anger, and political organizing that was a part of their lives, but it shows the beautiful farm that they created and it describes their evolution from pasture-based farmers growing grain to 100% grass-fed farmers.
Like Bob Dylan’s evolution from acoustic to electric, their evolution from growing their own grain to rejecting the plow shows their constant questioning and shifting, despite the real economic costs that such ceaseless innovation can bring.
I watched their frustration as the “certified organic” market that they helped to create sometimes turned away from the high-quality yogurt that they offered, favoring national corporate brands that are very far from the real organic practices that they followed. The marketplace became very crowded, and in many stores that the Lazors previously sold to, just getting space on the shelves has become impossible.
Jack and Anne and The Real Organic Project
They were a pilot farm for the Real Organic Project.
And early members of the Vermont Organic Farmers.
Anne has just finished her term on the Real Organic Standards Board. She helped us recreate organic standards that reflect the beliefs that she and Jack have held for the last 40 years.
A final word: Watch the film
I bow to their achievements. These are lives lived. I will let the words of some of the farmers who have learned so much from them be the rest of this letter. To hear their own words, watch the short 30-minute film. You won’t regret it!
Quotes from our Community About Jack Lazor & Butterworks Farm
Gary Hirshberg in the 2022 Real Organic Symposium
Gary Hirshberg 2022 Symposium Excerpt
“As we tried to make the transition from non-profit advocacy to actual commerce (at Stoneyfield) and sort of pay the bills, we outgrew quickly our 19 cows… We realized we couldn’t do both (farm and process). We look at people like Jack and Anne Lazor at Butterworks who farmed AND processed with UTTER astonishment. Jack, who has unfortunately left us, Jack heard me say a thousand times that I just worship him because he did things we couldn’t do.”
Guy and Matt Choiniere in their Real Organic Symposium interview (their podcast is coming soon).
Guy Choiniere Interview Excerpt:
Dave:“Where did you get the information when you were starting in organic? You weren’t getting it from extension at that point.”
Guy:“No. Luckily enough, (we made) connections with some pioneers in the organic field like Jack Lazor and Lyle Edwards. These guys came to see me, because I was going to Horizon meetings, because Horizon was the first processor to reach out to me. After you reach out to the organic market, you sort of get pinpointed by the Co-ops. And Horizon did approach me first, so that’s all I knew. I was going to their meetings and expecting I was going to be a Horizon farmer. But Jack Lazor and Lyle Edwards caught wind of that, and they said, “No. You are not a Horizon farmer. You’re an Organic Valley farmer. You need to come to our meetings and make sure that, before you make a choice, you’re exposed to Organic Valley as well. You are definitely an Organic Valley farmer.”
Dave:“So what was the difference, in their mind, between being an Organic Valley farmer and a Horizon farmer?”
Guy:“It was something about the atmosphere in the meetings. These farmers were working so collectively, and working together. I could just tell that they were building off of each other. And really trying to reach the next level, but together.”
Paul Lacinski and Amy Klippinstein in their Real Organic podcast.
Paul Lacinski and Amy Klippinstein Podcast Excerpt
Dave:“You told me earlier that Jack and Anne Lazor at Butterworks were a great help to you.”
Paul:“Yeah. Tremendously so. Well, one of the places that I first got to decide that I kind of liked being around cows was going up there to visit the Lazor’s. We had a mutual friend who said, ‘You’ve just got to go visit those guys.’
So we did, and we went back a bunch of times over the years. They treat their animals really well. Being in the barn in the winter (we always went in the winter) with those really calm, happy cows… Cows that are unhappy are completely infuriating because they’re LARGE. Cows that have everything that they need are very calm…”
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“How can this kind of soilless farming be called organic? Only by a lawyer or a lobbyist.”
“What this week’s legal decision will mean to the good certifiers who refuse to certify hydroponic production as organic is unknown. Certainly, all of us will need to come together to protect them. If we lose these respected certifiers, who knows how long the USDA Organic seal will have ANY relevance to the world?” Read on below for Dave’s take on the Center for Food Safety and organic farming’s lawsuit loss.
Dear Friend,
I heard the news.
We lost (again) in our lawsuit against the USDA on the certification of hydroponic crops as soilless organic.
This lawsuit was organized by the Center For Food Safety to stop hydro production from being certified organic. Long Wind is one of six farms that were co-plaintiffs in the case, along with the certifiers OneCert and MOFGA.
When I say “we” lost, I mean that ALL of us in the organic movement lost something today. We lost a bit more trust in our government, in our courts.
How the USDA sees organic farming
The USDA never wanted to run a National Organic Program. They never believed organic was a better way of farming.
As former Ag Secretary Dan Glickman said, “The Organic label is a marketing tool.”
It was not seen by the USDA as superior in any way to chemical farming, despite the obvious problems with chemical farming.
They saw its role only as protecting the integrity of the organic label, not as promoting organic farming. Their mission was to protect both the farmers and the eaters from fraud.
It seems to me that the USDA has failed to protect organic.
They have embraced hydroponic and CAFO production.
Hydroponic production is so far from actually being organic that the two biggest hydro producers that have forced their way into the organic market both proclaim that they do not HAVE any hydroponic production.
The producers know that hydro is very unappetizing to their customers.
This picture of a Driscoll’s blueberry facility comes from the USDA Hydroponic Task Force report. I served on the Task Force. We saw this as a clear example of a pure hydroponic system.
The world knows what soilless farming & hydroponic means.
Hydroponics is when the nutrition of a plant is supplied as a liquid feed.
That is it. The nutrition is not coming from the complex dance of minerals and microbes that terrestrial plants have relied on in the soil for the last 500 MILLION years. That is a long time. Something got figured out with all that co-evolution.
There are many kinds of hydroponic systems, from aeroponics with their roots hanging in the air to hydro berries and tomatoes with their roots stuck in a plastic pot filled with shredded coconut husks.
So, apparently, the marketing whizzes at these huge hydro companies can’t read. Or never wondered. Or never tried to understand. Or tried hard to forget.
The sad thing is that we let them. “We” being our government in this case. Not just Tom Vilsack, not just the USDA, but now also the courts.
The rest of the world watches the National Organic Program with dismay. Disbelief, even.
How can this kind of soilless farming be called organic? Only by a lawyer or a lobbyist.
Beyond just governmental reform…
By and large, I have moved on from the dedicated attempt at governmental reform. It is still important work. I still try to help, and I tip my hat to the brave souls who are still in the trenches, but for me, it is time to try something else.
I haven’t seen any real progress in the last 12 years of lobbying the USDA’s National Organic Program.
There has been great growth in organic sales, but also great erosion of the integrity of the NOP. The recent Origin of Livestock might be a step forward. We will just have to wait and see.
Earlier “victories” like the Pasture Rule and the Arthur Harvey lawsuit have been easily side-stepped by industry.
What this week’s legal decision will mean to the good certifiers who refuse to certify hydroponic production as organic is unknown. Certainly, all of us will need to come together to protect them. If we lose these respected certifiers, who knows how long the USDA Organic seal will have ANY relevance to the world?
My own response to the failures of the USDA was to start the Real Organic Project with a group of like-minded farmers.
Is it possible for a plucky band of farmers to create a meeting place for the real organic movement?
Is it possible that millions of eaters actually want food grown in the soil and clean of pesticides? Food coming from animals living outside, participating in the endless cycles of water, carbon, and nitrogen?
We think it IS possible.
So let us gnash our teeth for a moment at the failures of our government. Let us cry over the staggering greed and power of the multinational corporations.
Join the RealOrganic community of eaters and activists, farmers and authors, chefs and students, scientists and adventurers, engineers and artists. Sign up as a Real Friend, click here.
The end of organic poultry porches? Don’t hold your breath.
The current proposed organic livestock & poultry practices rule demonstrates the power of chemical agriculture over the organic sector. Read on below for Linley’s take on the standards’ past and challenges for the future of Real Organic:
Pictured here: Alexandre Farms children rotating their pastured poultry. Rotating chickens on pasture prevents nitrate contamination of soil and groundwater, provides a varied diet for the birds including grass and insects, and makes for more nutritious meat and eggs.
If the Organic standards required vegetated cover for poultry production, this would open markets for operations that rotate their chickens on pasture AND feed organic grain, a rare combination.
Dear Friend,
As much as I like to write about all the good work we do, today is a day to make sure we stay informed.
The Real Organic Project exists because the USDA has failed us. While we haven’t walked away from the important work of USDA reform, we aren’t willing to bet our future on that effort.
This month, we are called once again, to comment on another “proposed rule” that attempts to correct the abysmal state of organic poultry. This is a perfect example of why we need “another lane” for farmers who follow the law.
As we all know, for decades now, the USDA has allowed the certification of confinement poultry production. They do so under the premise that small concrete-floored “porches” (attached to mega-confinement facilities) qualify as “outdoor access”. Unfortunately, things don’t appear to be changing anytime soon.
Is this what organic means to you? Democratic Senator Debbie Stabenow (Chair of the Senate Agriculture Committee) has lobbied against legislation that would kick Herbruck’s Poultry Ranch, certified by QAI, out of the organic label because their two story industrial barns don’t provide real “outdoor access.” Herbruck’s markets under the brands Eggland’s Best, Green Meadow, and many “private label” brands they do not disclose.
Organic Livestock and Poultry Standard Details
To be clear, the current law requires “living conditions which accommodate the health and natural behavior of animals” AND “year-round access for all animals to the outdoors, shade, shelter, exercise areas, fresh air, clean water for drinking, and direct sunlight.”
The law clearly prohibits confinement, so why do we need a new rule?
Because the USDA has taken the position that “the outdoors” does not mean…well…the outdoors. Only a lawyer could love this twisted debate!
Another important detail:
There is NO ONE who supports the certification of these chicken CAFOs
Except for the people who own the chicken CAFOs and the politicians they lobby.
Even the Organic Trade Association is suing the National Organic Program over this one.
The ups and downs of the OLPP
I’ll tell you what I’d like to see. I’d like to see the state and federal governments set aside enough state and federal land in each county to feed that county. They should have ways to encourage and support farmers who could raise some of that food on those lands. We need to think about some new ideas on this.
Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack
A quick history lesson:
In the last weeks of the Obama presidency in 2016, the USDA, led by Tom Vilsack, finally passed an Organic Livestock and Poultry Practices (OLPP) Final Rule.
This was after decades of pressure by the organic community.
Two weeks later that rule was pulled by the Trump administration.
Four years later, Tom Vilsack is once again the Secretary of Agriculture. Instead of immediately reinstating the 2016 Final Rule after re-entering the office, two years later we have been offered a different “proposed rule” now available for public comment.
The different rule is renamed the Organic Livestock and Poultry Standards (OLPS) Proposed Rule. This long-awaited proposal turns out to be an even weaker attempt to close the “porch loophole.”
The new OLPP has no minimum requirements for the outdoor area to be vegetated and allows for half of the outdoor space to be concrete (something that often prevents the birds from going outdoors in the first place). It also removes language from the 2016 Final Rule that required enough natural light to penetrate the buildings so that “inspectors can read and write when the lights are off.”
But most importantly, it has a MAJOR caveat…
The new OLPS proposes “grandfathering” in the current CAFO poultry “porches” for up to 15 years!
Which is to say, forever.
Eggs from chickens confined in these industrial warehouses already make up over 75% of the current organic market. Besides breaking the current law, these operations have also benefitted from the NOP’s recurring issues of massive fraudulent “organic” grain (both domestic and imported).
Allowing porches has essentially mandated porches under the organic seal.
It is cheaper to convert a conventional CAFO to a “certified organic” CAFO, than it is to actually produce chickens organically. As a result, real organic poultry operations have largely gone out of business or left the organic label for “pastured” or “non-GMO” labeling, both rife with their own greenwashing issues.
Or is THIS what organic means to you? Real Organic Project requires real pasture, defined as a minimum of 50% vegetated cover, as pictured here at Coyote Creek Farm.
Conventional farming’s influence in organic production
The current proposed rule demonstrates the power of chemical agriculture over the organic sector. Not only is the proposed rule weak, but we still find conventional companies, that have no stake in organic production, lobbying against the rule. In 2016, even the Iowa Pork Producers Association opposed the OLPP Final Rule.
Why would the conventional industry care what happens in organic?
Because it sets a precedent that animal welfare matters.
What is an organic eater to do?
The USDA has opened a public comment period until Oct. 11 here. You can submit your comments requesting changes to the proposed rule, especially that there should be NO implementation period for operations with “porches” (never mind 15 years!!). The organic community has waited long enough!
The organic industry must begin to recover its lost integrity. In the meantime (perhaps indefinitely), to support real organic egg producers and our work, go here to donate any amount – even $1 helps.
Idalou Egg Ranch in Texas is certified organic by CCOF, without providing hens real outdoor access.
Based on this video of Idalou Egg Ranch, certified by CCOF in Texas, it would seem they would still qualify for organic certification even if the OLPS is passed. Placing CAFOs in the desert to “feed the world” drains aquifers and contaminates soil. These industrial operations can still have access to conventional markets, but shouldn’t qualify for the higher standard of organic.
Join the RealOrganic community of eaters and activists, farmers and authors, chefs and students, scientists and adventurers, engineers and artists. Sign up as a Real Friend, click here.
Our monthly book club continued our intimate setting for participants to ask Bob Quinn all about organic questions and answers. We loved hearing his take on some major issues around organic farming.
Read on below for a few of the questions that came up in Linley’s recap letter below:
Dear Friend,
We had an outstanding gathering to address organic questions and answers with Montana farmer BobQuinn and our Real Friends last Thursday during our book club.
A friend in attendance wrote me to say that she much prefers the intimate nature of our gatherings compared to a formal presentation. This allows us to feel like we actually get to know our fantastic guests as friends.
I’m always so impressed by the questions from the audience. This week I’d like to share a few of those excellent questions and Bob‘s responses.
I come from a family of teachers who have all taught me I must repeat something a minimum of 4 times, in different ways, before others start to remember and learn. So even if you attended last Thursday, read a few of the highlights that we’ve captured, and then go teach a friend a few of the lessons that came out of that excellent discussion.
I hope you enjoy Bob‘s words as much as I did.
Organic Q&A:
“How has organic farming helped fill that desire to re-populate rural communities across the country?”
Bob Quinn’s Answer:
“Organic takes more workers, it requires more labor. I look at this as an opportunity to offer more jobs. Our farm has offered more opportunities for people to live here and survive here. You can also enter specialty markets and add value. On my own farm we’ve created a food business to make snacks to sell under the Kamut brand. We created an oil-crushing facility that crushes high oleic safflower oil, which is really good for your heart and the best kind of oil for cooking.
I see in our neighborhood, half our farms are gone. Big Sandy has declined from 1,000 to 600. We have pollution all over the country and people can’t even drink the water in Iowa anymore. And the farm children can’t drink the water because it’s so contaminated with nitrates from chemical fertilizers. We have glyphosate in the rain that falls on our farm, which to me is just hideous but it’s everywhere. We’re using so much of these chemicals. They’re pervasive.
But the most serious thing that I think is that we have 60% of our people sick with at least one chronic disease. The CDC says that 60% of the blame for that can be placed right on our diets. So I would say that even though we brag about being the most efficient, and our farmers are growing more than in any other place in the world, the whole system, to me is not a success story.
There are two sides to every coin, and the only side they show you is the production side. But the other side is all those health concerns I just mentioned. And that’s what I see. I’m hoping it’s starting to be an incentive to rethink where we’re headed and where we’re going. And I just hope that it can be done fast enough.”
“What chance do you think we have of getting more significant support to build out regional food systems in the upcoming farm bill.”
Bob Quinn’s Answer:
“First and foremost, local food is food security.
I’ll tell you what I’d like to see. I’d like to see the state and federal governments set aside enough state and federal land in each county to feed that county. They should have ways to encourage and support farmers who could raise some of that food on those lands. We need to think about some new ideas on this.
The industrial model is all about consolidation and centralization.
They use, as an excuse, efficiency as their holy grail because its going to lower your price, so we’re going to have cheap food. And they tout cheap food as the solution to everything.
Well the truth is, that cheap food comes at a very high price, but we don’t pay it at the checkout counter.
We pay it at the doctor’s office and when we don’t feel good and by losing work days. No one talks about that! The pollution around the country and the dead zone in the gulf of Mexico, all of this should be factored into this cheap food price and you’ll see we don’t have cheap food. Our food is very, very expensive. When you talk about cheap food we have to talk about the price of health care. We need to focus on combining food and health and then it becomes a very different picture.”
“So why can’t we get a little more federal research money?”
Real Friend Question Continued:
“I raise blueberries. Organic blueberries need eight pounds of nitrogen for a crop. We put on two. So the soils are generating six pounds. And I asked the soil microbiologist where did this six pounds of nitrogen come from? There’s a mycorrhizae called ericoid that’s specific to blueberries. And he said, ‘I don’t know.’ I said, ‘But it had to come from somewhere. It didn’t come from me. I put in two.’
I went to agriculture school at Washington University and I was taught that nitrogen comes from legumes. Rhizobia, I think is the microorganism. Blueberries are not legumes so they do not have rhizobia. And I say, ‘So are you telling me this is magic?’ He said, ‘No, I’m not saying that.’
Organics get 1/2 to 1% of the federal agricultural research dollars. Why can’t we increase it to, I don’t know 1%?”
Bob Quinn’s Answer:
Research should be ahead, it should be where we’re going, not where we’ve been.
“I think you’re on the right track. Wonderful. I use that line all the time. The amount of organic food in this country is 6% of the total. And the federal research for organic is only 1/2 to 1%.
We aren’t even keeping up with the current trend. Research and science by definition should be leading and not following. The farmers are not able to keep up with the demand in this country, so we’re bringing in organic food from who knows where to meet the demand.
Many of my neighbors would be more interested in converting to organic and changing if they felt more comfortable about where to start. And if you have a problem that comes up, like a pesky, perennial weed, what do you do about it?
Research is the key to answering those things. And yet, we have foot draggers. At least organic is on the radar now. I mean, it used to be zero when we first started, but I think it should be 10.
Research should be ahead, it should be where we’re going, not where we’ve been. We’re not even keeping up with the marketplace!
Farmers are going broke with the commodity markets. Why don’t we give them a chance to come into the organic field?
The extension services are woefully short on people that can advise for organic in most states.
And farmers, their backs are against the wall financially. Most of them can’t afford to make a big mistake and they can’t afford to experiment. And for me, experimentation is fun. I do that instead of going to the coffee shop or going fishing. So it’s great fun. But for most farmers, they don’t know where to start.”
Organic solutions used by conventional farmers
Real Friend Follows Up: “I just want to add that we pointed out three conventional tools that started in organics. Like the pheromone traps for tree fruits… three different technologies that were developed in organic that spread toward conventional. And that still did not sway (the extension agent).”
Bob Quinn Answers:
“That’s a great point. Most of the research that’s done on organic principles can be used easily by non-organic farmers, just even to adopt one little thing. Not to go all organic, but just adopt something to reduce their pesticide or chemical load. And that’s an advantage to them. No one can afford the price of chemicals these days.
But the reverse is not true. The research on chemicals is in no way of use to organic farmers, because we can’t use those chemicals anyway. So it’s very frustrating.
In Montana, the chemical farmers are all having trouble with something called acid soils. Montana soils are naturally alkaline because of low rainfall and the evaporation of dissolved salts on the surface. The ground is naturally alkaline, and we can grow grain just fine on alkaline soils.
But now with chemical fallow and not tilling, the concentration of chemical fertilizers has changed the alkalinity of the soil to acidity. And now we have the same problems that they have in the Midwest… some of the soils are too acid and farmers have to lime them.
Well guess what the solution was here in Montana for the chemical guys? Just buy another chemical! And so farmers are further down the toilet in their expenses. They are buying another chemical to fix a problem that chemicals created in the first place!
You know, Einstein himself said that it’s almost impossible to solve a problem using the same tools and techniques that created the problem. And that’s exactly what they’re doing.”
Organic yields, land use and climate change
Question from Dave Chapman: “The head of the environmental science department at Dartmouth once told me, ‘Well of course organic is worse for the climate because organic takes more land for the same yield, thus you need to clear more land for agriculture,‘ referring to an article published in the journal Nature about lower yields in organic.
Do you have a response to that study that is more sane?”
Bob Quinn Answers:
“You know, all of that is coming from a growing population and wanting to ‘feed the world.’
People think the only way to feed the world is by extrapolating from what we’re doing now…
… and if you change anything in that you’re going to decrease it.
Well guess what research in Africa and India has shown?
The conversion of small, peasant farms to organic increases their yields 2-3 times.
That’s huge! Most of the world’s population eats locally. It’s only the developed countries that ship their food thousands of miles. The developed world only feeds a third of the population.
Most of the world feeds itself through local agriculture. And most of the local agriculture is not chemical.
But, what’s now happening to local farmers around the world is that big companies have come in and offered money to grow just monocultures of whatever commodity they want to export and they offer big prices and markets to convert to chemical. What’s been lost is local food security, the diversity of crops, and the soil building of organic and ancient systems.
The other side of that is, if you’re worried about having enough food..
Let’s do something about the 40-50% of the food that’s going to waste
What you’ve described is getting back to the humdrum of focusing on yields at the expense of everything else. And of course high yields have produced cheaper food. If you’re just talking about the checkout counter, that’s what we have, but it’s come with so much trouble.
Those reports that isolate just yield are not telling the whole story.
As a county average, our farm is right in the middle for yield. On very wet years the chemical guys surpass us. On average years we are all about the same. But, on very dry years, we are the ones that are surpassing them in yields because all of their chemicals have caused the grain and the plants to dry up way earlier than those that are on regenerative organic soils.
I think those kinds of comparisons need to be broadened. Rodale has done some long term studies that show that organic is not so different from the chemical stuff in yields. You can tell any story you want with scientific research, it’s just how you put it together and there’s people that are not afraid to do that to make themselves look good.”
This is just a sampling of what we all learned last week
What a privilege to tap the workings of these experienced minds! I hope you can join us for future bookclub discussions.
If everyone who reads this letter became a donating Real Friend, we could focus entirely on our educational and certification work, instead of fundraising. Now wouldn’t that be a coup! Imagine what we could do!
We have had requests to:
Turn our symposia videos into short snippets for teachers to use as part of their curricula.
An online store to feature products from Real Organic farms that will ship to your door.
Help our farmers who want support with marketing the label.
Use the Real Organic network of farmers to learn from each other.
Collaborate with the international organic community that wants to work more closely with us.
The list goes on. There is so much we can to do together. As Bob said, I just hope it can be done fast enough.
Our next bookclub will be with the brilliant chef Dan Barber on Monday, October 3rd. Knowing Dan, that will be a wild ride!
I can’t wait! See you there.
Yours in the dirt,
Linley
Image Courtesy of Slow Food Nations
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Our whirlwind California tour brought us to the heart of communities that were early adopters of Organic farming. We interviewed Warren Weber, Javier Zamora and more…
Read on below about our conversations with California organic farmers, eaters, chefs, and more in our letter below:
Dear Friend,
Linley and I had an intense time in California last week. Much like a Revival meeting, we traveled from town to town, meeting with supporters and seekers. At every evening meeting, we were provided with feasts of vegetables and fruits donated by the local farms and lovingly prepared by chefs in California’s Farm To Table movement.
Our California tour brought us to the heart of communities that were early adopters of Organic
We met with pioneers who started early farms and who organized CCOF. This was the organic farming that much of the rest of the country was inspired by. And it wasn’t just the farming that inspired us.
As David Weinstein has said, it is not enough to celebrate your local organic farmer. We must also celebrate our local organic distributors, local organic restaurants, and local organic stores. Organic is not just a product. It is a community, and it can only work as a community. Farmers don’t exist in a vacuum.
Linley and Tom Broz at the Live Earth Farm gathering.
The Organic California tour visits were our chance to meet new friends and to talk with old friends.
Some of the farms that hosted us were not certified by the Real Organic Project, but…
All were concerned about protecting organic from dissolving into an ocean of greenwashing.
In conversations with a hundred people, I didn’t hear one person who said that hydroponic should be certified as organic. Most snorted at the absurdity of the idea. The only question was what to do about a failing USDA system.
One interview excerpt
With Warren Weber, founder of the oldest California organic farm, Star Route Farms:
Dave: Has your definition, in your head, how you feel about organic, real organic, I’m not talking about whatever the USDA certifies, but what you think of as organic, has it changed in the last 40 years?
Warren: No. It hasn’t changed at all.
Dave: So, could you tell me what that word, real organic, means to you?
Warren: Well, it means building your soil to the place it will sustain good crops for you. And that can mean things like companion planting, it means building your soil in the most natural way you can with cover crops and compost.
Organic Is About Healthy Soil
It is important to remember that there are many thousands of organic farmers in America who know that organic is based on healthy soil. The Organic Farmers Association has polled the certified farmers in the US, and the answer is crystal clear. Organic is about healthy soil.
Only a handful of hydroponic operators and their lobbyists think otherwise.
It is said that California is the birthplace of Big Ag in America. The model of plantation agriculture built around cotton and slavery in the South was transferred to growing the fruits and vegetables in California.
There has been a struggle in the last 100 years for the heart and soul of California Agriculture.
This struggle was spelled out by Walter Goldschmidt in his famous book, “As You Sow.”
He suggested that farm scale will dictate the health or dysfunction of an agricultural community.
He based his thesis on his study of two towns in California: Arvin and Dinuba.
The study revealed that industrial-scale farming led to a community that was an unhappy place to live, and that small-scale farming led to a vibrant community, rich in social engagement and economic health.
Known as the Goldschmidt Thesis, this government research was squashed by the very forces being investigated.
Reality is not so simple as to be spelled out in a book, but the notion that we have choices about the kind of world that we will build is important.
So many of our California conversations reported efforts at deep change.
Water Access for Small California Farms
In the cold consequences of a system sculpted by large economic entities, smaller farms become “uncompetitive.” But the truth is that the large farms in California profited by twisting the laws guiding the allocation of the water coming from publicly funded projects like the Central Valley Project.
The CVP was designed to provide irrigation to farms smaller than 160 acres and whose owners lived on the farms.
It worked out very differently, with taxpayers’ water going to enormous farms.
That made the landowners a fortune overnight with the water paid for by all.
You can’t visit California farms today without talking about water. With dwindling water reserves, California agriculture faces enormous changes.
Every farm we visited was concerned about water, about fire, about economic viability. They face an apocalyptic present in which their future is very uncertain. In the Central Valley, the land is literally sinking as the aquifer is pumped dry.
Tillage and Other Lessons From Farmers
We talked with some of the most skilled farmers in the country. Three of them are working on experiments on reduced tillage in organic vegetable production. This research is being conducted with Chico State and UC Davis.
There are no easy answers as new problems arise. Concerns surrounding weeds, new pests, locked up nutrients, and compaction were discussed. So far, it is clear that tillage can be reduced, but not eliminated. But it is also clear that the minimal-till has reduced yields.
In the coming weeks, we will try to share some of the lessons we learned from those farmers.
We give our gratitude to the farmers who taught us, who fed us, and who set such strong examples of skillful soil management and social justice for their teams. We visited farms that pay a living wage, and give medical insurance for their workers. That is not an easy thing to accomplish while making a living growing food. They are competing with farms that treat soil and workers terribly.
They demonstrate that a different way is possible. Let us build on their example.
Those interviews will form the core of this Winter’s symposium. Keep reading these letters for updates.
Imagine having hope in these trying times!
Our gratitude to the farmers, authors, and chefs who hosted, taught, challenged, and fed us during our Organic California tour:
Full Belly Farm, Live Earth Farm, Park Farming Organics, Pinnacle Organic Produce, JSM Organics, Little Paradise Farm, Chefs Jesse Cool, Bryan Thuerk, and Jonathan Miller, Larry and Sandy Jacobs, Ken Kimes and Sandra Ward, Tom & Denesse Willey, Fruitilicious Farm, Bad Dog Farms, Prema Farm, TomKat Ranch, Jim Durst, Warren Weber, Liz Carlisle, Carol Presley, Cindy Daley, Susan Clark, Paul Underhill, Blue Heron Farm, and Paul Hawken. We learned from all of these, and many more. Thank you to all for sharing your energy, thoughts, questions, and concerns. And for your amazing food that sustained us.
Together.
Dave and Linley
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Though mycorrhizae are incredibly common (and functionally important) to land plants, they are in rapid decline. We are farming in ways that destroy these fungal interactions, and we are now farming on half of the world’s land.
Read on below about plant mycorrhizal relationships and why they are important in organic farming systems:
“Our hands imbibe like roots, so I place them on what is beautiful in this world.” – Francis of Assisi
Dear Friend,
The interactions between plant roots and fungi (aka mycorrhizae relationships) are quite intimate.
As the mycologist Merlin Sheldrake puts it: It’s not sex (there’s no genetic exchange), nonetheless, the intimacy of the partnership is sexy!
Changes to both the root cells and the fungus begin to occur before they even touch:
Root exudates lure compatible fungal threads while simultaneously deterring others that are not well matched.
The fungal threads have a special organ, the spitzenkorper, that guides the tip toward the chemical stimulus from the roots.
The mechanisms underlying plant/mycorrhizal compatibility are not well understood and while some fungi are quite picky about the identity of their host plant, many are promiscuous. If given the opportunity, individual mycorrhizae will form partnerships with many different plants at any given time.
Scientific literature is full of alluring words describing what comes next. Entanglement, stimulus, penetration, intracellular exchange. The fungus ultimately forms an arbuscule (a tree-like structure) inside the plant root cells, specifically for the exchange of fluids.
Do I have your attention yet? Good, because the relationship is important.
Source: https://mycorrhizas.info/vam.html
Impacts of Farming on Fungi Symbioses
Though mycorrhizae are incredibly common (and functionally important) to land plants, they are in rapid decline.
We are farming in ways that destroy these interactions…
…and we are now farming on half of the world’s land. Fertilizers, herbicides, and pesticides not only harm mycorrhizae, but they interfere with a crop’s ability to form these relationships. If the nutrients are hand delivered, why bother bartering for them with fungi?
Yes, plant and fungi symbioses are beautiful, but why should we care?
Because in healthy soils, plants exude roughly ⅓ of their carbon-packed photosynthates into the soil to lure soil life to their roots.
We need fungi lured by photosynthates to put this carbon from the atmosphere back into the soil.
On average, Soil Organic Matter (i.e. carbon) has already been reduced by roughly half in agricultural soils. Fertilizers speed up the decay of organic matter, releasing carbon into the air. Tillage that does not return ample biomass into the soil will oxidize the organic matter that is there. We must give back more than we take. RealOrganic farmers understand this.
Potential Global change consequences:
The potential consequences of changes in arbuscular mycorrhizal communities are depicted well in the image below:
Source: FEMS Microbiol Ecol, Volume 94, Issue 11, November 2018.
Organic Farming is Carbon Farming
It is called organic farming for a reason. Organic chemistry is the chemistry of carbon
Organic farming is the farming of carbon.
Realorganic farmers replace fertility in the form of slow-release compost, mulch, and incorporated cover crops.
Slow-release fertility does not interfere with a crop’s ability to form underground partnerships, because the nutrients are not readily available. They are locked up in the organic matter.
So the crop must feed the soil with its photosynthates to attract microbes to unlock the nutrients for them.
Our challenge is to support and incentivize RealOrganic agriculture so we can reverse the loss of carbon from the soil.
Without soil, it is not organic farming.
There is so much essential beauty in the underground, and we are losing it before we even begin to understand it.
Yours in the dirt, Linley
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“What Your Food Ate is a capstone piece that looks at why the WAY that we farm is important, not only for the health and longevity of human societies, but how that actually affects our own individual health.” – David Montgomery in the Real Organic book club.”
Read our What Your Food Ate discussion transcript with David Montgomery in this week’s letter:
Dear Friend,
What Your Food Ate is a book about nutrition and soil.
The exploration of soil and health is important. We don’t want to be sick. We don’t want to feel bad. What we eat is fundamental to how we feel; how we thrive. Many of us don’t see that.
How our food is grown is invisible to us.
When I asked Michael Pollan if the food system is getting better or worse since he wrote Omnivore’s Dilemma, he said that the popular understanding and concern for the food system has gotten much better over the last ten years, but the actual food system itself has gotten worse.
It is the best of times and the worst of times.
What Your Food Ate is another melody in the symphony of our popular culture.
The book addresses the most basic of questions:
Does it matter to our health how our food is grown?
We have come to believe that agriculture matters to climate, to the pollution of our air and water, to animal welfare, to worker welfare, and to building economically healthy communities. But this most basic food question, first raised in the 1930s and 40s, has not gotten the public discussion it deserves.
Does healthy, microbial-rich soil provide food that leads us to greater health?
This conversation began in the 40s when chemical agriculture really took off. The chemical agriculture of that era now seems innocent in comparison to the Industrial Ag of our time.
We have had considerable discussion on the issue of pesticides in our food. This is the legacy of Rachel Carson and her groundbreaking book, Silent Spring. Most of us are pretty clear that we don’t want to eat poisons, regardless of how safe the chemical companies insist it is.
But there is also the legacy of Albert Howard, Gabrielle Howard, Louise Howard, Eve Balfour, and Lord Northbourne. They focused on the nutritional differences between food grown in healthy, microbial-rich soil and that grown in impoverished soil fertilized by chemicals. Their observations are the foundation of the organic movement, so named by Northbourne and elaborated by the Howards and Balfour. Much of the Howards’ work was done in India, where they made “the peasants and the pests” their teachers.
David Montgomery, co-author with Anne Bikle, of What Your Food Ate.
What Your Food Ate addresses those questions and more.
Since that time there has been a great deal of research done on soil, nutrition, and health.
But no one has pulled all that research together to try to see the lessons that we have gleaned from our scientific studies. What Your Food Ate is such a book, drawing on a thousand scientific references. It is trying to see the forest, not just the trees.
The Book Club session with David was lively. It started with his observations on living soil, and then included his thoughts about organic and regenerative.
We created the Book Club to share some of the amazing authors working in our sphere with our Real Friends. For those of you who can support us as Real Friends, the links to all the Book Club sessions are still available. But for all of you, an excerpt of the important conversation with David Montgomery is below. David covered a lot of ground.
What Your Food Ate Book Club Discussion Excerpt
“Agriculture policy IS health policy”
David Montgomery: We really look at What Your Food Ate as kind of a capstone piece that looks at why the WAY that we farm is important, not only for the health and longevity of human societies but, how that actually affects our own individual health. And then how does that impact population health?
It probably won’t be much of a surprise to anybody on this call that essentially the bottom line is that what’s good for the land is good for us too. But we tried to trace the science that connects those dots from soil health, to crop health, to livestock health, to human health. And there’s an awful lot of dots to connect there, and there’s an awful lot of contingency and variability that affects all that.
But, there’s a clear thread that runs through it that really suggests to us that, yes, we can argue effectively that the health of the land, soil health, in effect actually influences human health. And not just at a multi-century population scale idea of keeping the soil on the land where I started back in writing the book Dirt. But much more personally in terms of what goes on in our own bodies, and how the compounds in the food that we raise can be suffused with the micronutrients and phytochemicals that actually help support human health—even though they do not have caloric value and traditionally aren’t considered nutrients. And how modern farming with the conventional trilogy of over-tillage, overuse of agrichemicals, and the underuse of diversity has really undercut what’s in the food that we’re all getting.
How much does that integrate up and affect our individual or population health? Well, that’s pretty complicated, but the connections seem to be there, and the connections seem to be real, even if it’s difficult to predict specific outcomes, like if you ate three peaches from some wonderful orchard that we know about. What will that actually do to your health? You can’t answer questions like that.
But I think we can make the case that agricultural policy IS health policy at a national scale. And that what we do to raise our food actually matters for what the food can do for us in terms of maintaining our health over the long run. So that’s kind of the short version of the book and the basic message of it.
Albert Howard and other important characters in organic
Dave Chapman: A couple of years ago Will Brinton said to me that he felt that the science of the last 60 years had strongly supported the observations of Albert Howard back in the 1940s. And it’s fascinating to see that as we learn more and more, we get more and more sophisticated descriptions or understandings of what Howard was just observing with his naked eye. How do you feel about that?
David Montgomery: You know, I agree with Will on that. That’s one of the themes that runs through the book and why we deal with some of the historical characters like Howard. But also McCarrison, and Eve Balfour, and others in his time who are really seeing connections between healthy land, healthy animals, and healthy people. But what they really lacked at the time was a mechanistic understanding of how the connections actually worked. They had ideas, some of which were insightful, and some of which were kind of wrong. But at the gross level, the level of observed connections and seeing what matters, they were pretty ahead of their time.
One of the things we do in the book is to break the pieces of those connections down, and write about the studies that have come up, not just very recently, but starting in the 40s. There’s a lot of good science that was done that looked at how nitrogen fertilizers impacted the nutritional value of food back in the 40s and 50s. But growing quantity was the goal at that time, not necessarily growing quality.
And I think that Howard and his peers got short-changed by history, in part because of that thing that scientists are so good at doing. And that is criticizing things that they don’t understand the mechanisms behind.
And so the pioneers had insightful observations, they connected the dots right, but they couldn’t really explain what lay between the dots. How the connections actually worked.
And a lot of science, as Will was arguing to you, has filled in those dots over the last 80 years. And it’s pretty amazing when you think about it through this framework, how much of what we’ve learned about the soil microbiome, and the effects of agrichemicals and tillage on crops and crop health, and what’s actually IN our crops, has actually lined up pretty well with their insights, with the insights of the original organic pioneers. They were definitely on the right track in terms of arguing that soil health is really something that underpins the health of the things that then grow on the land and derive their sustenance, albeit indirectly, from the soil.
Feed the world or nourish the world?
Dave Chapman: I just got sent an article that was about the head of Syngenta. And he was saying, “We can’t afford to have organic farming. We’re all going to starve!” And he was portraying Ukraine as the final nail in organic’s coffin. And that we have to abandon all this foolish talk of nutrient density, and we have to focus on producing calories, and lots of them, as cheaply as possible. What’s your response to that?
David Montgomery: (Laughing) You know, that could be a recipe for feeding the world, but maybe not necessarily nourishing the world. I think we can aim higher than that. And I think the real lesson of what’s going on in Ukraine in terms of the world’s food supply is twofold; We shouldn’t be so dependent on nitrogen fertilizers, and we shouldn’t be so dependent on grains. That’s a recipe for diversifying our farming practices, and for diversifying our diets, actually. You know that we’re the only top carnivore that exists off of seeds. It’s kind of odd when you think about it that way. Or maybe I should say, top omnivore. So I think that gentleman is taking the wrong lessons from the current geopolitical situation.
If we want to actually look at a resilient style of farming that can both feed the world AND nourish the world, we have to reexamine the basic premises of modern conventional agriculture…
…and that boils down to tillage and the overuse of agrichemicals and the diversity of what we’re growing and eating.
And the Ukraine example I think plays right into that. The current situation is also a good example of why we need to get off of fossil fuels. We are completely dependent on them for running the economy of Europe and keeping Europe warm in the winter at this point. But we’re also dependent on fossil fuels for our agricultural system and nitrogen fertilizers are a BIG piece of that.
Among the things I have been very interested in since I wrote Dirt are the studies that looked at the comparisons of organic yields and conventional yields. And just how biased some of the reporting has been on that, in the sense that the conventional thing that you hear in the media is that there is a 10% to 15% to 20% yield penalty on organic.
But what you don’t get until you actually dig into those studies that underlie some of those comparisons is that when the comparisons are done with crop varieties that are bred for yield in organic systems and grown on healthy fertile soils in organic systems, they can match or outcompete comparable conventional farms.
And so there are some real apples and oranges comparisons that have gone on and been solidified in conventional “wisdom” around that issue.
The thing I like to bring up is what if we actually invested in building healthy fertile soils? There are studies we cite in What Your Food Ate that argue that the yield penalty could be reduced to just a couple of percent, or even eliminated altogether. And then look at how much food we actually waste in cities, like 20% to 40%, depending on where you’re at. That’s bigger than even the worst-case assessments of the organic versus conventional “yield penalty.”
So the idea that we would all starve if we went organic is fiction. It depends on assumptions that are not necessarily true. And you can make a strong case for a resilient agriculture being one that is founded on soil health, and well done organic practices have long advocated for that, as you know and as Howard was advocating a hundred years ago.
Dave Chapman: Thank you. I loved that. You mentioned that it’s amazing how the small and the large tie together here, like fractals, and that it turns out that really growing nutritious food is also growing food in a way that benefits us as human beings and as citizens of the planet in so many other ways than just nourishment. Could you speak about that?
The global benefits of a farm’s healthy soil
David Montgomery: One of the take-home lessons for me, both from Growing a Revolution and from What Your Food Ate was how advantageous it is across the board to actually rebuild healthy soils, in terms of taking carbon out of the atmosphere and parking it in the ground.
There are lots of benefits to be had there, and lots of controversy over just how MUCH carbon could be taken agriculturally from the atmosphere and parked in the ground for just how long. But there are some pretty good studies that have demonstrated that there is an effect there.
And the single best way to reduce nitrate pollution in, say, the Gulf of Mexico, is to use less soluble nitrogen for agriculture in the Mississippi River Basin. That is the simplest way to do it because that is the root cause of the problem.
Phosphorus in the Great Lakes is similar, with a different geography and a different chemical. Going to more regenerative, soil health building practices that rely far less, if at all, on soluble synthetic fertilizers, that’s the way to reduce those sources of pollution, as well as keeping nitrates out of the drinking water supply in our rural communities in the Midwest.
And I also think that restoring profitability to small farms is the key to unlocking the economic potential of rural areas across North America once again. It’s kind of sad to give book talks across the Midwest and drive through town after town with a vacant downtown. The population density of rural America has been going down. Smaller, more profitable farms is something a more regenerative style of farming can help foster.
So there are all kinds of ancillary benefits to just improving the health of the soil.
The one we focus on in the new book is what it could mean for human health, but there are all these other benefits in terms of reduced pollution, increased carbon sequestration, and greater resilience in terms of moisture holding capacity on agricultural soils that have a higher carbon content.
When we talk about building soil health, we’re really talking about building soil carbon and soil life. These are the two components of soil health. To do that, we have to think about the soil differently, and we have to farm differently than we do conventionally.
What really is organic matter?
Dave Chapman: Could you describe the ways in which soil carbon and soil life are different? Are they completely one hand in a glove or is there a difference?
David Montgomery: I think of them as a little different, because I think of soil life as the actual living organisms. And once they die, they become soil carbon. So the difference is: Are they alive, or are they in the process of being recycled? One of the interesting things we uncovered, that Anne and I hadn’t known when we went into researching the book, was that there have been a bunch of studies in the last decade that have looked at how a lot of soil organic matter, soil carbon, is the remains of dead microbes. And so that soil life BECOMES the soil organic matter.
I used to think organic matter was mostly just the remains of things like leaves and grasses, and roots and plants. But it turns out that those plants are pushing out exudates into the soil, dripping out carbohydrates, fats, and proteins out of their roots to feed life around the root zone.
Stuff that Anne and I wrote about in What Your Food Ate, but also a lot in The Hidden Half Of Nature. And how that life in the soil produces things that help the health of the crops, and helps crops get things like the mineral elements, like nitrogen and phosphorus, out of soil organic matter or mineral particles, thereby obviating the need for so many agrochemicals in an agricultural setting.
But that soil life, once it dies, then IT becomes soil organic matter that MORE soil life can feast on to actually keep the process going, and as more plants add more of their ”shed” parts, or their “dead” parts. It’s this whole bustling world of life that’s just taking the elements that have been brought into the biological domain, taken from the geological domain by plant roots and fungi, integrated into biology, and then this wheel just keeps spinning, turning them over. So I’ve used soil life and soil organic matter as two pieces of that cycle. Very intimately related, but not quite the same thing, by virtue of one being alive and one being formerly alive.
Dave Chapman: Yes, that’s great. On any one of these, we could go for a long time, and I would like to, but I have two more quick questions. One is were you surprised by anything you learned when you both were researching this book?
The flavor and nutrition connection
David Montgomery: Oh yeah. In the new one in particular, when Anne was looking into the connections between the flavor of foods and the healthfulness of foods. And one of the things that she uncovered as part of her research on this were studies that actually looked at how our bodies have taste receptors, not just in our mouth, but throughout a lot of our organs. Like our livers and kidneys, if I remember right, have taste receptors for things like fats and phytochemicals. Or bitter taste receptors, in particular, turn out to be instrumental in communicating and T-ing up our immune system.
I think you could ask quite fairly why would we have taste receptors throughout our body when the food goes in our mouth, and that’s where we taste it? Well, we’re not TASTING with our other organs, but those receptors are being informed about what’s in our food. And there’s a hypothesis that Fred Provenza’s been very big on writing about, thinking about, and greatly influencing our thinking about in terms of animal husbandry and how livestock choose their diet out in the wild, how they choose what to eat. It’s called the Flavor Feedback hypothesis. And that’s looking at how the flavors that appeal to an animal, like us, are those that reflect the content of things that are health-promoting in that food.
There was a study on tomatoes, in particular. We have all, I am sure, had those horrible flavorless tomatoes that one can find in grocery stores. The question that has long sort of bugged me: Is that a less nutritious tomato? Is that a worse tomato in terms of human health? I can’t tell you how many times we have been asked that in the last twenty years. And Anne found a paper, I think it was in Science, so fairly credible stuff, that looked at a study, I think it was Florida State or the University of Florida, I forget which, where they fed people a range of different tomatoes and asked, “Which ones do you like? What ones are most flavorful?”
And then they analyzed the chemistry of the ones from the least flavorful to the most flavorful.
What they found was that the ones that appealed most to the human palate were those that had higher levels of, if I’m thinking right, omega-3 fats, carotenoids, a class of phytochemicals, and also particular amino acids.
And they were essential amino acids, meaning that they were the kind of amino acids we can ONLY get from our food. Our bodies can’t make them ourselves. So these are all things that are health-promoting compounds that were the things that characterized the most flavorful, delicious tomatoes. That suggests that there is a feedback that helped people pick a diet in the pre-agricultural world when we were picking our diet from nature around us.
How did we know what to eat? Well, it turns out our bodies have evolved mechanisms where what’s in our food gets communicated throughout our body to our various organs, and that gives feedback in terms of how we feel after we eat and how satiated we are. Whether we want to eat more? Whether we’re satisfied? And it can help guide us to the foods that we like that are more healthy.
Now, of course, that has been perverted in the modern food processing world, because sugar, salt, and fat were all pretty rare in the ancestral human diet. So our bodies are hardwired to LOVE that when we get it. You know, I’m top of the list. Sugar, salt, and fat, I love it. But it’s pretty abundant now. And so when that guy from Syngenta is arguing we just need to grow quantity, if he is basically just arguing quantities of carbohydrates, simple sugars, made palatable by salt and fat, that’s not really a recipe for health, but it sure is a recipe for getting people to eat it. Because that appeals to our taste buds.
But what I was really fascinated about, back to your original question, in learning and researching this new book, was how our bodies, when we are consuming whole natural foods, our bodies have this internal radar, if you will, for guiding us to the healthier stuff. We’ve just kind of disarmed and disoriented that in the modern grocery store.
Dave Chapman: I’ll have to get that article about tomatoes and tape it to the wall.
David Montgomery: And if anyone is interested, the source materials for What Your Food Ate run to 56 pages of references. There are literally a thousand references. It is all on the website.
Tillage, Regenerative Agriculture and Big Ag
Dave Chapman: I have one last question. This one is maybe provocative. You go through the book and you show many, many studies comparing organic to conventional and showing, time and time again, that the organic production is genuinely more nutritious, not that it’s guaranteed to have a certain health outcome, but that overall, it certainly does have a positive health outcome. A friend pointed out to me that all of that organic agriculture involved tillage. It ALL did. The organic no-till is JUST just now being played with. And you know some of the people who are playing with it and I do too. And the conclusion of your final chapter was, “and thus, we should support regenerative agriculture.” And I thought “Wait a minute, shouldn’t we be supporting organic?”
We’re going to have a symposium this winter asking the question: “Is organic regenerative? Is regenerative organic?” And I know that what you mean by Regenerative might be different from what Syngenta means by Regenerative, because they claim to be a Regenerative company also. And they ALL do, all of Big Food, Big Ag is waving the Regenerative flag, regardless of what any of us think about it. And I’m just curious what you think about that? You mention Real Organic in the book. Do you think that that research demonstrates something? And that the research for what we are calling Regenerative hasn’t yet happened?
David Montgomery: No, if you read our book, what we’re arguing for are practices that build soil health. And so when you look at a definition for Regenerative agriculture as an agriculture that builds soil health, that’s what we’re talking about. Syngenta can say whatever they want about what they are doing, but…
…if their practices aren’t building soil health, they’re not doing regenerative agriculture.
So you mentioned tillage. You know one of the big topics in the Dirt book was that looking at past societies, none of which had agrochemicals in their arsenal, destroyed their land through tillage. There’s absolutely no question that tillage is bad for the soil. Now the question you SHOULD be asking is how MUCH tillage?
Because if you have healthy fertile soil, you can get away with a little tillage. You can probably get away with even a fair bit of it if you’re doing other things in terms of composting and mulching and practices that build and maintain soil health.
On the other hand, if you’re NOT doing those things, and you’re routinely doing a lot of tillage, you’re going to degrade your land really fast. And I’ve been on “organic” farms that have degraded their land. No Question. But I don’t consider those to be using good organic practices. Right? So it’s not so much, in my view, regenerative versus organic as two things that need to be set up as flags to rally around. The flag we all should be rallying around is building soil health.
There are some big problems with many of the comparisons of organic and conventional produce that I think actually make organic look not as good as it actually is, particularly the great variability in practices across both ends of the spectrum. And there are other structural things in those comparisons in terms of growing crops that were bred for success in conventional systems and then trying to grow them organically and going, “Oh there’s not much in the way of yield” or “There’s not much in the way of differences.”
But the things that actually come out as very consistent in the studies that we’ve reviewed on the differences between organic and conventional as a background to talking about soil health, was that there are always differences in phytochemicals, and those are rooted in interactions with soil life. There are often differences in mineral micronutrients. Those are things rooted in interactions with soil life. There are rarely big differences with the macronutrients, and that’s in part because a tomato is a tomato. It’s the basic chemistry of what makes a tomato.
And there are big differences in the livestock world in terms of the fatty acid composition. But those are all things that soil health influences.
And so when Anne and I talk about Regenerative farming, we’re not so much talking about any particular company’s definition of what Regenerative farming is.
And it’s kind of like the whole purpose of the Real Organic Project is to try to highlight how the term “Organic” has sort of lost its way in terms of the USDA’s program. That’s a good example of what I think you may be concerned about, but the term “Organic” has just as much baggage as the term “Regenerative” in that regard today. That’s why you guys started the Real Organic Project. So what we’re arguing for with the term Regenerative is an umbrella term for building soil health and fertility. Rebuilding that as a consequence of agriculture. And there are lots of different ways to do that. You know, Biodynamic farming is a really good example of practices that I may sort of roll my eyes at some of the philosophy that goes with it, but when you look at what people actually do on biodynamic farms, it’s about building soil health and fertility. It’s like, this is regenerative! And if you look at well done Organic farms, probably most of the Real Organic Project farms, I would call those all Regenerative if they are building soil health.
But there are also some conventional-ish farmers, or like the two no-till vegetable farms we write about in the book. Neither one of them is certified Organic as I recall. And they’re both incredible in terms of their soil. And it’s exactly what we want to be doing. And I’ve even been on some big ranches and farms where farmers who come out of the conventional farming world have virtually weaned themselves off of agrichemicals by adopting these more regenerative agricultural practices. And they will NEVER go Organic because it’s not their tribe. I mean you talk to them about it and you realize, Oh no, this is just NOT going to happen. And yet, what have they done? They’ve basically become organic farmers. (laughter). Why? Because it built the health and fertility of their land.
So I’m trying to take the big picture view that by 2050 we need to make farming practices that build the health and fertility of the land as a consequence of intensive farming the new conventional farming.
And frankly, I don’t really care what you call it as long as it’s building soil health.
And I think Regenerative is a very good term for that. But the worry about the term being co-opted is a real one. That’s a very real and legitimate concern.
–End of Excerpt–
If you are already a Real Friend, we thank you via this awesome opportunity to ask David Montgomery your questions on June 30, 6pm EDT. Your contribution supports our certification and educational programs.
If you have not joined us yet, now is the time. You will have so many opportunities to meet with wonderful minds such as David Montgomery in the coming months.
“One of the great foundational lessons of organic farming is the belief that everything is connected. Albert Howard wrote about the Law Of Return and Dave reflects on waste and a whole system approach to organic farming in conjunction with Eli Goldratt’s “no complex systems” argument in this week’s letter:
“In reality, there are no complex systems” – Eli Goldratt
Dear Friend,
Eli Goldratt once taught a lesson where he showed two pictures.
Picture A:
Six circles in two rows.
Picture B:
Had six circles with a “mess” of squiggles, lines, arrows, and symbols
Eli asked, “Which one of these is a simple system and which one is a complex system?”
He insisted that the answer would depend on your background.
If you were a normal civilian, the answer would be obvious. The six circles in Picture A represent a simple system. If you were a physicist, the answer would be obvious. The “mess” of squiggles and arrows is the simple system.
That is because, in the mess, everything in the picture is somehow connected to everything else. In the six circles, nothing is connected to anything else.
Then Goldratt added one final statement:
“In reality, there are no complex systems.”
“All the great agricultural systems which have survived have made it their business never to deplete the earth of its fertility without at the same time beginning the process of restoration.” ― Albert Howard, The Soil and Health: A Study of Organic Agriculture
No matter how complicated the world seems, it is never a “complex system”. It is always a “simple system”. Everything is always connected to everything else, even if we don’t understand why or how. That is the real world.
In our imagination, we often create unreal systems.
We start to actually believe that everything isn’t connected to everything else. Much of our science is based on isolating variables, breaking systems down into smaller parts. Only by “simplifying” can we make an experiment.
As Stuart Hill said, we think that science is putting a rat in a cage, giving it a shot, and seeing what happens. Stu called this “shallow science.” What we learn from this can be enormously valuable and powerful. But it is always a partial truth. Our actual lives are lived in environments that are complex and interconnected.
When we change reality, there are always unforeseen consequences.
We discover drugs that can help us, but they always have “side effects.”
Our “science” is often used to create ways of producing cheaper food.
Not everyone can afford it, but we have historically cheap food.
And expensive health care.
The cheaper food often creates health problems that we then address with new (expensive) drugs.
Which often create problems that we treat with further drugs. Or with sophisticated surgeries.
We seldom seriously consider eating differently or exercising more. Or the many lifestyle changes that will make the drugs and surgeries unnecessary.
Our conventional chemical agricultural system is constructed as if:
The nutritional quality of our food doesn’t matter.
Farming processes happen in isolation.
The way our food is grown isn’t connected to our weather, to our health, to our air and water.
It doesn’t matter to eaters how farm workers or farm animals are treated.
The profit motive will always lead us to the common good.
One of the great foundational lessons of organic farming is the belief that everything is connected.
Albert Howard wrote about Organic’s Law Of Return.
Howard strongly advocated the recycling of all organic waste materials, including human manure, back to farmland. Everything must continue as part of a system. Everything must be returned. There is no “away” in which to throw our trash.
It matters. In reality, there are no complex systems. There are only simple systems. And our limited understanding. But our ignorance will not protect us.
Will Brinton once told me that almost all of the research done on soil and nutrition since Howard’s writings in the 1940s has supported Howard’s conclusions.
The recent book What Your Food Ate by David Montgomery and Anne Bikle has looked carefully at that ocean of research in the last 80 years and come to the same conclusion.
What Your Food Ate was released on June 21. Co-author, David Montgomery, will be our next guest at the Real Organic Book Club on June 30th. See you there!
Join the Real Organic community of eaters and activists, farmers and authors, chefs and students, scientists and adventurers, engineers and artists. To join Real Friends, please click here.
In their latest book, David and Anne tackle the question scientifically: “Is my health affected not only by what I eat but by HOW it is produced?”
“David Montgomery has a knack for writing books that help the organic movement grow…” Read Linley’s letter about the soon-to-be-released What Your Food Ate discussion with David Montgomery in this week’s letter:
Dear Friend,
David Montgomery has a knack for writing books that help the organic movement grow.
He has a wonderful talent for taking a simple claim (like when your farmer says, “Healthy soils make healthy animals and healthy people”) and backing it with reams of peer-reviewed research and historical context.
In his first book, Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations…
David brought us on an agricultural journey through time and taught us how we must avoid the mistakes of the past if we are to survive into the future. Just how many people can the earth support in perpetuity?
In The Hidden Half of Nature…
David Montgomery and Anne Bikle took us on a ride in their magic school bus to the rhizosphere so we could visualize how it resembles our gut turned inside out! They not only explored what foods bring us health, but explained why we should reframe the question to, “How do I foster a healthy microbiome?”
In Growing a Revolution…
David explored the ecological crises caused by agriculture and tells stories of the farmers showing us a better way. How do we shift our method of food production to one that is truly sustainable?
And now, in What Your Food Ate (published this week: June 21, 2022)…
David and Anne tackle the question scientifically:
“Is my health affected not only by what I eat but by HOW it is produced?”
“And if the answer is yes, how do we know this to be true?”
Fifty pages of peer-reviewed resources are synthesized, and David and Anne tell us we are just scratching the surface.
If you are already a Real Friend, we thank you with this awesome opportunity to ask David Montgomery your questions on June 30, 6pm EDT. Your contribution supports our certification and educational programs.
If you have not joined us yet, now is the time. You will have so many opportunities to meet with wonderful minds such as David Montgomery in the coming months, including Vandana Shiva, Dan Barber, and Bob Quinn to name a few.
See you there, Linley
Join the Real Organic community of eaters and activists, farmers and authors, chefs and students, scientists and adventurers, engineers and artists. To join Real Friends, please click here.
![Blue rectangle with white text that reads next to a small circle headshot of Michael Pollan: ""I think often, and I am asked often, how things have changed since then [writing Omnivore's Dilemma]. "And they’ve changed at the level of the conversation, at the level of the culture, at the level of people’s knowledge of the food system, but we still have a food system dominated by a small number of very powerful corporations. And no amount of shift in the consumer’s point of view is going to change that, I don’t think. This is really a matter for the government, for policy, for antitrust enforcement, things like that. "So I’ve come to think that until we get action at that level, we’re not going to see profound change. Concentration is, if anything, worse than in 2006 when Omnivore’s Dilemma was published." - Michael Pollan in our interview in 2021"](https://i0.wp.com/www.realorganicproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/Pollan-Change-Quote.png?resize=800%2C400&ssl=1)
