"I am just not finding the information in your post about the purported environmental degradation caused by organic agriculture to be verifiable when I do a web search."
Could you be more specific? What from my post, precisely, are you asking for verification of? I didn't say that organic agriculture, per se, causes environmental degredation, but that to get the same output of food, the industry would have to till more land. More tilled land, all else equal, means more runoff, dumping sediment and organic fertilizers into water systems. As for the article you posted, that's the first I'd seen that suggested yeilds as high from organic as other "conventional" methods.
I would note that your statistics on how popular organic products are is quite out of date
If you can find more recent market share data, I'd like to see it. Here's the source of my 4.6% number:
Kortbech-Olesen, Rudy and Larsen, Tim, 2001. “The US Market for Organic Fresh Produce”, presented to the International Trade Centre UNCTAD/WTO conference October 2001, Online: intracen.org
From your article: "More than 1 million children between the ages of 1 and 5 ingest at least 15 pesticides every day from fruits and vegetables. More than 600,000 of these children eat a dose of organophosphate insecticides that the federal government considers unsafe, and 61,000 eat doses that exceed benchmark levels by a factor of 10 or more.
U.S. consumers can experience up to 70 daily exposures to residues from persistent organic pollutants (POPs) through their diets. The top ten POP-contaminated food items, in alphabetical order, are butter, cantaloupe, cucumbers/pickles, meatloaf, peanuts, popcorn, radishes, spinach, summer squash, and winter squash. The use of POPs is not allowed in organic agriculture.
A 1999 U.S. Geological Survey study showed that more than 90 percent of water and fish samples from streams and about 50 percent of all sampled wells contained one or more pesticides."
The information I have (from the EPA) indicates that fewer than 1% of community water system wells and rural domestic wells contain pesticide concentrations above EPA safe limits (which, BTW, are set based on a "ten-fold safety factor" rule below the "reasonable certainty of no harm" level). As for pesticide residues on foods, I haven't seen any conclusive data to indicate that it is a significant problem (and not for lack of research), though consumer surveys on the subject are interesting. They show consumers to be generally aware of the risks, but judge them low and do not give them much weight in buying decisions. It seems they believe our food safe. Does that shock you?
BTW, did you know... that US usage of agricultural pesticides has been steadily and significantly declining since the 1970s?
FYI, here's a collection of other studies related to ag pesticide use, consumer WTP for environmental and human health gains, etc.:
Aspelin, Arnold L. 2003. “Pesticide Usage in the United States: Trends During the 20th Century”, CIPM Technical Bulletin 105, Center For Integrated Pest Management, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, North Carolina, pestmanagement.info
Cash, Sean B., Sunding, David L. and Zilberman, David. 2002. “Health Tradeoffs In Pesticide Regulation”, American Agricultural Economics Association – 2002 Annual Meeting, online: agecon.lib.umn.edu
Curl, Cynthia L., et al, 2002. “Evaluation of take-home organophosphorus pesticide exposure among agricultural workers and their children - Children's Health”, Environmental Health Perspectives, December 2002, Online: findarticles.com
Friends of the Earth (FOE). “Fair Agricultural Chemical Taxes”, Online: foe.org
Govindasamy, R., J. Italia and A. Adelaja. 2001. “Predicting Willingness-to-Pay a Premium for Integrated Pest Management Produce: a logistic approach.” Agricultural and Resource Economics Review 30(2): 151-159.
Mourato, Susana, Ozdemiroglu, Ece and Foster, Vivian, 2000. “Evaluating Health and Environmental Impacts of Pesticide Use: Implications for the Design of Ecolabels and Pesticide Taxes”, Environmental Science & Technology 34(8): 1456-1461.
Paoletti, Maurizio G. and Pimentel, David, 2000. “Environmental Risks of Pesticides Versus Genetic Engineering for Agricultural Pest Control”, Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics, Vol. 12(3): 279-303.
Ribaudo, Marc O., Horan, Richard D., and Smith, Mark E. 1999. “Economics of Water quality Protection from Nonpoint Sources: Theory and Practices”, Agricultural Economic Report No. 782, USDA/Economic Research Service, Washington, D.C.
Roosen, Jutta, Fox, John A., Hennessey, David A. and Schreiber, Alan, 1998. “Consumers’ Valuation of Insecticide Use Restrictions: An Application to Apples”, Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics 23(2):367-384.
Travisi, Chiara, Nijkamp, Peter and Florax, Raymond J.G.M., "A Meta-Analysis of the Willingness to Pay for Reductions in Pesticide Risk Exposure" (July 2004). FEEM Working Paper No. 101.04. ssrn.com
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Injuries, Illnesses, and Fatalities database, Online: bls.gov
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Pesticide Industry Sales and Usage, semi-annual reports for 1994-2001 available online: epa.gov
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency website (EPA.gov), various documents including Pesticides Glossary, Online: epa.gov; Pesticides Laws, Online: epa.gov; OP Cumulative Risk Assessment, June 2002, Online: epa.gov
U.S. Government Accounting Office (GAO), 2001. “Agricultural Pesticides – Management Improvements Needed to Further Promote Integrated Pest Management”, report to Chairman, Subcommittee on Research, Nutrition, and General Legislation Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry, United States Senate, August 17, 2001, Online: gao.gov
Wilson, Clevo and Tisdell, Clem. 2001. “Why farmers continue to use pesticides despite environmental, health and sustainability costs”, Ecological Economics 39: 449-462.
Young, Luci, Rao, S. Ram, 1996. “Industry corner: The pesticide market and industry: A global perspective”, Business Economics Vol. 31(1): 56-60.
Hope that helps. ;-)
As for the Ayn Rand question, did WHAT come from an AR site? |
