Food For Thought

Brown cows make chocolate milk.  False.  Cows only make white milk.  Humans add chocolate flavoring to it. 

Vitamin D is a steroid hormone.  True.  We only hear bad things about steroids and hormones, but this steroid hormone is essential to human health and wellness.

The world's major food crops are all grown from seeds.  False.  Many crops such as corn, wheat and rice are produced from seeds, but three of the top ten crops produced worldwide are produced using vegetative reproduction techniques.  These include sugar, potatoes, bananas, sweet potatoes and yams. 

Natural is always safe.  False.  There are many natural things that are harmful, such as naturally occurring toxins and carcinogens.  Nicotine, opium, heroin, morphine and cocaine all come from plant sources.  Arsenic, radon, lead and strychnine are all natural.  And don't forget rattlesnakes and sharks!

Organic food production does not use pesticides or synthetic fertilizers.  False.  Natural mineral salts or natural pesticides from plant materials are allowed.  Organics can use natural (biological) or synthetic substances. 

Natural Pesticides are less toxic than synthetic pesticides.  False.  Several "natural pesticides" are highly toxic, even carcinogenic.  Copper sulfate is highly toxic and shown to cause liver disease.  Rotenone may cause Parkinson's disease.  Pyrethrin is a likely carcinogen.

The only sustainable form of food production is organic.  False.  If we were to convert to totally organic food production, yield would decline by 30-40%.  In order to to produce the necessary amount of nitrogen to fertilize the soil, we would need to convert 1/3 of all crop acreage into green manure production (such as clover, alfalfa or trefoil), which releases nitrogen as it biodegrades.  Or we would need to produce nitrogen by increasing the number of cattle on the planet by 700% and using the manure as fertilizer.  The U.S. alone would have to raise 1 billion additional cattle to replace the nitrogen from commercial sources.  We would also be subject to widespread disease outbreaks.  For example, the organism that caused the Irish Potato Famine is controlled by using synthetic fungicides.

Homeowners use the greatest concentration of chemical pesticides per acre.  True.  The EPA found that homeowners use chemical pesticides at a rate eight times higher than farmers, and they use chemical fertilizers at a rate three times higher than farmers.

Organic peanut butter versus commercial peanut butter.  To protect children from cancer, use organic peanut butter.  False.  Look at the facts.  Peanuts grow in the ground.  Soil naturally contains many fungi.  Some of those fungi produce aflatoxins.  Aflatoxins are known and very potent carcinogens.  Growers use fungicides on peanuts produced traditionally.  Fewer fungi mean that less aflatoxin is found in commercial peanut butter.  Organic peanut butter is often contaminated with aflatoxins.  So, traditional peanut butter has less potential for aflatoxin contamination. 

Globally, the primary use of wood is fuel to meet human needs.  True.  Wood energy is the dominant source of energy for more than two billion people.  60% of the world's total wood removal each year is used for energy purposes.  Right now in the Amazon basin, trees are being cut down to produce electricity, not to make grazing land for cattle or to produce high quality furniture. 

The world can support more vegetarians than meat eaters.  False.  If we were all vegetarians, there would be less food, not more.  For every acre able to grow crops there are almost four acres that can graze animals.

Eating beef is the reason that methane in the atmosphere has tripled in the past 100 years.  False.  While cattle and other ruminants belch methane, they are not the leading methane producers.  These factors contribute considerably more methane to the environment: energy production (natural gas and oil drilling and processing and coal mining), landfills, wetlands and swamps, anaerobic septic tanks.

Less than one-half of one percent of our federal budget is spent on farm programs.  True.

Below are Public Service Announcements recorded by Illinois Agri-Women Members.  Click on the title to listen.  They are in MP3 format and can be downloaded to most audio programs.

Accurate information

Illinois agri-women is a not-for-profit membership organization that would like to share some Food for Thought about our food choices.  U.s. consumers can choose from among more foods than ever before.  There is also more information and misinformation about those foods than ever before.  take the phrase, “all-natural” for example.  it conjures images of blue skies and vibrant health.  upon more thought, it also brings to mind naturally occurring toxins, microbes and carcinogens like nicotine, arsenic, radon, strychnine and other sources.  sir winston churchill once said, “a lie can travel halfway across the planet in the time the truth is still putting on its trousers.” while information about food may not be lies, it might still deserve more research before taking it to the checkout line.

Nutrition

Illinois agri-women is a not-for-profit membership organization that would like to share some Food for Thought about choosing nutritious foods.  one popular notion is that fresh is best.  a number of peer-reviewed scientific trials show that the level of nutrition and phytonutrition varies by the type of vegetable and preparation or storage process.  for example, if you’re looking for beta carotene, frozen then boiled spinach has more than fresh or canned spinach.  while broccoli is best fresh and carrots are best boiled – again that’s for beta carotene.  but it varies by nutrient and vegetable.  The science leads us to mix it up and enjoy a variety of fresh, cooked, frozen and canned vegetables.

Population

Illinois agri-women is a not-for-profit membership organization that would like to share some Food for Thought about our world’s growing population.  The United Nations Population Reference Bureau and others estimate that global population will increase from 6.5 billion to 11 billion by the year 2050.  Even though population is not growing out of control, population will still increase dramatically before it levels off.  We will need to produce as much food in the next 40 years as has been produced in all of human history.  Members of Illinois Agri-Women grow, process, distribute and regulate our food supply.  We rely on technology, generations of experience, and an informed public to be able to do our jobs even better in the future.

Farm structure and government subsidies

Illinois agri-women is a not-for-profit membership organization that would like to share some Food for Thought about our nation’s farmers.  The United States department of agriculture records 2.13 million farms in our country. less than one percent of all these are non-family owned corporate farms that produce about six percent of our food and fiber.  family owned and operated farms comprise 90 percent of the farms in the united states.  the entire u.s. department of agriculture budget is less than one half of one percent of our country’s annual budget.  the majority – 60 percent – of those funds are for food stamps and other food and nutrition programs.

Check The Facts

Below are the references from Addressing Misconceptions About Agriculture to help you sort out fact from fiction.  PDF Format.

References Page 1

References Page 2

References Page 3

References Page 4

References Page 5

The CropLife Ambassador Network (CAN) is also a wonderful resource for agricultural facts.  Their mission is to provide scientifically based, accurate information to the public regarding the safety and value of American agricultural food production.

CAN has volunteers working in the agricultural industry available to speak about the methods of modern American farming.  CAN provides this FREE speakers program to schools and civic groups across the Midwest. 

For more information, click on the CropLife Ambassador Network logo above.

Download ready-to-use PowerPoint presentations right from the CAN website.  All of the basic facts and figures on important agricultural topics have been put together in a format that's easy to acquire and easy to use. The CropLife Ambassador Network has done the work for you.  Check out the presentations HERE.

By the year 2025, the world's population will include 9 billion people.  How will we feed them all?

American Agriculture has continually stepped up, providing more and more food for the world, while doing a continually better job in protecting the environment.

Science, research and best management practices allow farmers to produce three times as much food on virtually the same land as was under cultivation in 1960. Using significantly less land, today's farmers are also feeding twice the number of people as they did 40 years ago.

Recent data shows that since 1980, U.S. corn production has increased 57.8 percent while farmers' use of nitrogen on corn is down two percent. Use of phosphate and potash are down 24 percent and 26.8 percent, respectively.

As late as the 1950's, humans had to manually pull weeds.  Then weed-killing plows were developed, but they could not uproot weeds that were growing close to the crops and they caused erosion.  With the introduction of chemical herbicides, production increased and soil erosion decreased.

Organic crop growers do not use chemical herbicides.  "Controlling weeds without herbicides takes a lot of time and is very costly for us.  We do all our weeding by tractor or by hand, which is very labor intensive.  Conventional farmers spend only about $50 an acre on herbicides that knock out every weed in sight.  Organic farmers may have to spend up to $1,000 an acre to keep weeds under control," said a representative from Earthbound Farm Organic

 Organic rice yields are 50% lower than conventional fields.  In North Dakota, the leading organic corn state, yields are 25% lower than conventional fields.

Fungicides are used to control plant diseases such as wheat rust and powder mildew on vegetation.  In the United States, 90 to 99% of the acreage of most fruit and vegetable crops are sprayed every year with fungicides.  Some crops are sprayed 10 to 15 times every year.  Organic producers use organic chemicals with a higher frequency of application in order to get lower results than synthetic fungicides.  Consumers assume sprays are not used on organic farms.

Most U.S. crop acres are sprayed with herbicides and fungicides every year.  U.S. crop production without herbicides and fungicides means less production, higher food prices, expanded crop acreage, cultivating more, exporting less and importing more.

There are a lot of misconceptions about the use fertilizers in agriculture.   

Farmers are not adding fertilizers to the ground.  They are replacing nutrients that are lost at each harvest.  When crops go off to market, so do most of the nutrients that were once in the ground.  The nitrogen, phosphate and potash used in fertilizers are nutrients drawn from nature.  Farmers use soil sampling to determine what nutrients the soil needs to be productive.

The world has no choice but to use fertilizers.  Without fertilizers, we would not produce enough food and 2 billion people would starve.  There will be population increase of 2 billion more people by 2025, which will require even more efficient food production.  That would be impossible to achieve without conventional fertilizer.  Organic fertilizers only yield 1/3 to 1/2 of what conventional fertilizers do and at added cost. 

More crop is yielded on less acreage through the use of agricultural technology like herbicides, fungicides and fertilizers.  By increasing productivity, farmers help conserve land and safeguard recreational land and wildlife habitats. 

Benefits of Agricultural Technology from Kansas Small Business Newsletter, December 2006.  http://kssmallbiz.com/

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