2009: THE ORGANIC YEAR THAT WAS

In spite of the trials and tribulations every aspect of Irish life has faced this year, organic farming and food has managed to stand tall.

Difficult, challenging, and testing times no doubt, and more yet to come. This is not to say of course that everyone has grown their business, that all have even survived. It is to say, however, that the organic movement is resilient.

The organic year began with a slightly unusual announcement: the arrival of a new certification body: IMO. This global organisation specialises in various ethical certifications, including organic.

Their arrival may in the coming years open up export markets, expertise and multi layered certification and validation of Irish organic products, which may well help build the Irish organic sector - who knows? Its up to farmers and food producers to be innovative in this regard.

February saw the largest delegation yet of Irish organic food businesses at the BioFach trade show in Germany. This was one of the many innovative actions the Department of Agriculture and the organic sector took: the necessity of a weak UK market bred the ingenuity of new European markets.

The summer saw two significant occurrences: the UK Food Standards Authority's (FSA) report on nutrition, and the figures on the growth of the organic market in Ireland. This report was, in my own reasonably informed opinion, flawed in numerous ways.

In brief, however, regarding the nutritional superiority of organic over conventional: a conclusion of 'not enough evidence to make a case either ways' would have been far more accurate than the actual report's conclusion of 'no evidence'.

New excellent award winning organic products emerged: simple, honest foods like Moonshine Milk, Drumeen Farm Happy Heart Oil and Sowan's bread.

In my own small way, myself and Joe Condon have been adding to this by beavering away on the Organics with Altitude initiative. This encourages hill farmers to consider suitable upland breeds, artisan butchering, direct selling and organic certification. It has been going well for us, and I've really enjoyed getting out and about meeting farmers from Donegal to Kerry.

Also during the summer, Foras Organach was established, a streamlined and industry-led way to help develop the sector, whilst public procurement of organic finally began.

Despite or perhaps even because of the recession, the organic market actually grew in the period up to last records, July. It grew at a faster rate than its previous rate of growth,which was fast anyway. Few other areas are also growing in the Irish economy: as a stark contrast, pharmaceuticals and the multinational sector in general are.

A crucial difference between organic and these other growth areas is that organic is about one of Ireland's key and immovable natural resources � the land. Organic doesn't even have the option of relocating to Bangalore or New Deili: multi and transnational capital always has that option.

In this light, it is at least heartening that the 2009 reviewed programme for government renewed and indeed strengthened its commitment to organic.

Post budget, it was announced that all the organic cash was coming back: grant aid and both the in-conversion and area-based payments are being reintroduced at the previous levels.

And, happy new year folks: the Organic Farming Scheme returns tomorrow. Subject to new organic farmers completing a training course and business plan, they can apply from tomorrow on.

It cannot have been easy for the Minister with responsibility for organic farming, Trevor Sargent, to achieve this in the worst economic meltdown the country has even seen.

I genuinely do not think that the organic movement knows how blessed it is to have a supportive, hard working and, yes even visionary Minister at the helm: how would organic have fared in budgetary cutbacks if a journeyman with no real commitment to the sector was in there instead?

The biggest single remaining block to growth now is the issue regarding REPS 2 and REPS 3 farmers not actually being allowed convert to organic: some 30,000 don't even have the option, unless they pull out of REPS and return their payments.

Here's hoping that this crucial barrier is lifted in the New Year.

French study finds organic is in fact more nutritious

The French Agency for Food Safety (AFSSA) has found that organic food is superior nutritionally, in research published in the Journal Agronomy for Sustainable Development.

This contrasts with the UK Food Standards Agency (FSA) report, lead authored by Alan Dangor of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

The UK FSA report concluded that there was no significant nutritional differences between organic and conventional foods.

However the French study, authored by Denis Lairon, found key differences between organic and conventional foods.

According to the French study, organic plant products contain more dry matter and minerals, specifically Iron and Magnesium, and contain more anti-oxidant micronutrients such as phenols and salicylic acid. Organic animal products contain more polyunsaturated fatty acids.

The report also found that organic vegetables contain far less nitrates. 80% of human exposure to nitrates comes from vegetables. Nitrates, which convert to nitrites, are linked to gastric cancer, circulatory problems and respiratory conditions such as asthma.

Significantly, the French research also examined pesticide residues, whereas the UK FSA research did not consider this area. Lairon found that 94-100% of organic food has no pesticide residues.

The UK FSA research only considered research with an abstract (i.e. academic summary) written in English. This makes the French research all the more significant, as it is based on a comprehensive 2003 report written in French, as well as more recent findings.

The French study is here

UK FSA report on organic vs conventional food's nutrition: part 2

As revealed last posting on this, the recent UK Food Standards Agency (FSA) report, comparing the nutritional levels of organic and conventional foods from 1958 to February 2008, actually left out every publication from before 1990.

In total, 2/3 of all the relevant peer reviewed research was rejected.

The logic given in the report is that in the 66% of rejected work, various failings in the peer review process were uncovered. The biggest single fault found was that no certification body was listed or inferred for the organic produce analysed (p 15).

In many cases this was because certification was in its infancy.

This is a very big and very important decision to make. Many state bodies, such as our own Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (DAFF), does not actually have a certification body.

DAFF is what is called the competent authority: it delegates to private inspection and certification bodies. However, it does not have private certification bodies inspect its own research centres.

Thus, any research done by DAFF would not have been included in this report, irrespective of which scientific journal it appeared in.

It is reasonable to assume that the same could also hold for at least some other state institutions across the world, who inevitably delegate authority to private certification bodies.

Often, the state does not see the need or value in inspections on its own research by these private bodies: after all, it delegates power to these bodies.

This certification issue is especially significant because in this rejected 66%, the findings are far more positive for organic than in the 34% considered at the quality level.

Interestingly, the report itself does actually list nutritional findings taken from an analysis of all 162 publications.

It is just that the official findings and conclusions, which suggest that there are no significant differences between organic and conventional in nutritional terms, come from their analysis of just 55 publications: i.e. the smaller 1/3 or 34%. For example, they claim:

�Organically produced crops were found to have significantly higher levels of sugars, magnesium, zinc, dry matter, phenolic compounds and flavonoids than conventionally crops� (p 17).

These significant differences were found when taking all 162 peer reviewed published papers into account.

When taking the narrower quality criteria, and considering just a maximum of 55, or 1/3, only three differences were found: Conventional crops were found to have more nitrogen, and organic crops more phosphorus and titratable acidity.

Based on the latter three findings from the smaller set of publications, the authors claim that no significant differences were to be found between organic and conventional nutritionally.

The same holds for livestock products: 3 out of ten significant differences were found between organic and conventional. However with the narrower selection criteria, which leaves out 2/3 of all published research, just one was found. The other two were rejected due to insufficient data.

Out of a possible 162, just 25 in total dealt with all livestock products: i.e. all meat and dairy products.

Incredibly, within these 25, it seems that hardly any were considered to actually have met the quality criteria: according to appendix 13, p.3, no more than 6 publications were at the required level for the authors.

To say that more research is needed sometimes just sounds like an appeal for funding: in this case, it seems fairly clear that this handful of livestock product papers, supposedly spanning five decades, is fairly paltry.

Professor Carlo Leifert co-ordinated the major EU Quality Low Input Food (QLIF) initiative, which involved 31 research and university institutes.

Leifert's own research, suggesting organic milk's nutritional superiority, appeared in April 2008 - technically 2 months too late for inclusion in the study.

He said: "I'm worried about the conclusions. The ballpark figures they have come up with are similar to ours. I don't understand why the FSA are not going away and saying, 'Right, there's something you can do on a farm to improve food.' But they are so blocked by not wanting to say positive things about organic farming."