Organic Strawberries Just Taste Better

Living in South Florida this time of year, the supermarkets are filled to capacity with inexpensive conventional strawberries that look great but are, quite frankly, tasteless despite that they are grown in the region.  I know of many people who believe that organic produce simply tastes better than conventionally grown produce but the taste difference almost certainly has less to do with organic or non-organic agriculture techniques and more to do with a number of other agriculture factors.  Farmers have a range of different and competing market objectives that they can choose in how they produce their strawberries.  For example, here are two extremes of different market focuses that farmers can target: 

• Focusing on minimizing total cost per bushel and growing a durable berry that can handle transportation to distant markets without damage
• Focus on growing berries for a local market that is more focused on flavor and less focused on price

The choice in the farmer's focus means totally different production values just as Kia building a subcompact car has different production values than Rolls Royce building a luxury car.  Having experiencing a Kia subcompact and an Rolls Royce, you can't make a blanket statement comparing cars made in England vs. cars made in South Korea any more than you can make a blanket statement about the flavor of organic vs. conventional agriculture methods.

A farmer that focuses his berries on flavor and premium price will probably grow berries with greater spacing giving each plant more sunshine and allow greater root structure development for better water absorption (less irrigation).  A farmer with this focus may also choose to grow for a longer growing cycle and pick the berries closer to their optimal ripeness for a more ripened on the vine flavor, color and sugar content.  Growing berries for flavor and a premium market can be done with organic or non-organic fertilizer and insecticides (strawberries are nearly universally grown through plastic sheets to eliminate the need for herbicides and tilling regardless of whether they are organic or not). 

What makes them premium flavor (and cost) is not the organic choice over non-organic but all these other choices the farmer makes in his growing methods.  Growing this way will also imply a lower asset utilization--meaning lower yield per acre, lower yield per gallon of fuel and lower yield hour of tractor time not to mention lower yield per hour of farm labor per bushel of output.  Quite simply growing for flavor is more costly by being less "efficient."

By contrast, growing berries for "tonnage"--low cost, high output and durability--implies that berries are going to be planted very close to each other, fertilized intensively forcing fast growth, irrigated aggressively and picked early for durability and for gas ripening close to the berry's final market.  The good news, is that growing this way reduced the amount of land required per bushel and is fundamentally less expensive particularly from an asset utilization, energy and labor cost.  To fertilize so intensively, it is far more likely that a farmer with this market focus will use non-organic fertilizers because they are easier to handle and apply in greater density than organic fertilizers.

I maintain that these farmer choices beyond the organic vs. conventional fertilizer and insecticide choices make the biggest impact on fruit flavor.  The reality is that organic growers are ALSO targeting the premium market so of course they taste better.  The premium market also places more value on the berries being organically grown and since it is unheard of for a premium berry to be not organic just as it is unheard of for a tonnage produced berry to be grown with organic methods.  There is, therefore, little opportunity of a real comparison between berries made using the same agricultural techniques and market objectives and just varying in their type of fertilizer and insecticide.  Better taste of organic berries may very well just be a side affect of these other factors.

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The Fallacy of Comparing Yields

I see articles from time to time suggesting that organic yields can be equivalent to conventional yields.  Inevitably, they compare an organic field using very high labor and energy applied (in other words, relatively unconstrained in their use of certain inputs) to a conventional field that has to be profitable on world commodity price levels (in other words, constrained in their use of inputs).  The only way to properly compare the two is to hold the state variables constant. 

What I mean by that is that in order for yield comparisons to be done with some reasonable sense of accuracy it has to be done for a given amount of energy, for a given amount of labor and equivalent fields with equivalent moisture and drainage, etc.  This is simply not happening.  Comparisons are made between high input organic farms like the Rodale test farm against USDA average numbers for the county in question or nationally.  It would also be interesting to compare yields for a given amount of expense whether that expense is used for energy, labor, fertilizer or transportation while holding field, soils, drainage, moisture, etc. constant.

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The Soil Biodiversity Aricle I Have Never Seen....

Much has been written about soil bio-diversity.  The basic premise is that intensive agriculture and intensive use of pesticides, herbicides and fungicides leads to less soil biodiversity and this is bad for the overall ecology.

I am not disputing that typical organic agricultural practices provide better soil biodiversity, the question I have is this:  Is this a result of the pesticides or is this a result of the higher density agriculture?  Does anyone consider that in an organic agricultural environment, more acreage needs to be planted per bushel so that if production is converted to organic agriculture, some land that is currently fallow (with rich biodiversity) has to be put to the plow.

In other words, the real comparison between organic and conventional agriculture methods in the area of biodiversity is to look at comparing organic fields with the combination of conventional and fallow fields that would need to be cultivated if the fields were converted to organic production.

Said differently:  Organic agriculture can claim that their farms have higher biodiversity but one must factor in the additional amount of land needing to be put the plow.  If the organic agriculture has a 20% lower yield, than the comparison should include 20% (or more) of woodland included in the conventional tally.  In other words it makes no sense to compare the biodiversity within an acre of farmland farmed conventionally vs. organically unless one considers that more fallow land will need to be put to the plow for organic agriculture for the same amount of OUTPUT.  It is really a question of biodiversity across full ecosystems for feeding whole populations, not an acre vs. acre comparison.

My making this point should seem obvious and it is shocking that no one makes writes an article that considers the whole ecosystem.  Is it because they are trying to spin an article to support their biases by ignoring this point or are they just that naive?

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Its Tough To Make Comparisons

It amazes me how difficult some comparisons are.  Here I try to focus on the comparison between organic and conventional agriculture and the more I look at it the more I see incomplete comparisons and faulty methodologies.  If I can see these issues as an outsider, how can those who are supposed experts not see them or not address them.  It is generally shocking to me how few books on agriculture are available on places like Amazon, how few blogs there are, and how little discussion and debate there is.

I came across a few interesting blogs and articles recently that highlight this issue of being able to make a good comparison.  The first article is a comprehensive comparison of the costs and benefits of having a artificial vs. natural Christmas tree.  It should be simple, right?  Plastic trees are reusable and should be better for the ecology right?  Not so simple, take a look.

 Christmas Tree Article

So much of the analysis depends on how many years the Christmas tree is in use and what is done with it at the end of its useful life. Natural trees contribute to carbon sequestering right?  Not so fast.  Do yourself a favor and just read the executive summary.  So much has to do with what is essentially the weighting factors in the analysis.

The same issues are at play with the discussion of whether it is better for the environment to use paper vs. plastic bags.  I like this blogs covering of the topic.

 Plastic vs. Paper

Bottom line is this:  Paper really doesn’t biodegrade in a landfill so the biodegradability issue is really off the table.  Both bags are resource intensive for their single use and a lot has to do with where you bags come from and the trade off of fossil fuels vs. water with paper needing much more water to be produced and, of course, plastic being a fossil fuel.

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Higher Nutritional Value of Organics?

I came across this interesting show on NPR's Science Fridays show:
NPR Show

Based on this paper:
Paper

In short it discusses a study where conventional vs. organic strawberries were compared for nutritional value and soil diversity.  The finding was that the organic berries had about 10% more vitamin C and other anti-oxidants per unit of measure (pound or whatever) of produce and that the organic fields' soils had greater "healthiness" as measured by their bio-diversity and bio-activity.  Finally, they were also able to show that the organic berries stayed fresh longer and had less phosphorus in them.

Here is what the study didn't talk about:
1) What was the yield difference of the conventional farms vs. the organic farms - this is important because in a sense we should be considering vitamin content per acre of strawberries, not just per pound.  In other words if it is so much lower yield to grow organic strawberries than the amount of berries CONSUMED by the consumer will likely be lower due to the high cost.  Consumers will CONSUME more vitamins because they will and can buy more.  Furthermore, without a study of yield there is no consideration of the reality that a lower yielding agricultural method like organic will require a greater number of farm fields or an over farming of existing fields and that affect needs to be considered.

2) Another point of discussion about yield is that with few plants or fewer berries per plant in an organic field, it is not that the organic process yields more nutrition, it could just be that the over density of conventional methods leads to lower nutrition.  If the conventional fields were planted at lower (equivalent) density, than the results would be different.  Likewise about the soil health.  Perhaps it is just the higher farming densities that are creating the soil health issues, not the methods.  This is a HUGE point that is not mentioned.  Maybe any nutritional or "taste" differences are based on lower plant densities.

3) Pesticide Residue Public Policy Considerations - If there are pesticide residues in the crops but the crops are much cheaper, the policy question comes down to whether we want people eating more produce that might have a bit of residue or possible risk, or whether we prefer that people eat less (because it is more expensive and we don't have the farm land) of organic produce with no residue.

4)  Berry Size -  In the discussion of that there were higher vitamin levels in the organic strawberries pound for pound there is no discussion of vitamin levels berry to berry.  The likelihood that the conventional berries are larger (don't we all see this at the supermarket?) do to the intensity of the conventional fertilizer may mean that the berries have the same vitamin content but since the conventional ones are larger, the conventional berries have less vitamin content per pound.

5) There is nothing to suggest that any findings regarding strawberries in California are generalizable to other crops or even the strawberries in other significantly different climates.

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He is a little fast and loose with the facts

I think this guy has captured a good measure of the criticism of the "organic agriculture" movement but may be a bit fast and loose with the details.

Article

He isn't backing up what he is saying but this is representative of what and how many people in this debate handle information...too often it is all about making unsupported facts!!

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Organic 'has no health benefits'

UK's Food Standard Agency has done a comprehensive review comparing organic produce to conventional produce and they have concluded that there is no difference between the health benefits of organically produced produce vs. conventional produce.  Here is the BBC summary:

BBC

And here is the agency announcement that links to the paper and other resources:

Agency and paper

I will spend some time reviewing the paper and post on it soon.

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