{"id":33450,"date":"2015-11-05T02:00:34","date_gmt":"2015-11-05T07:00:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=33450"},"modified":"2015-11-04T21:09:04","modified_gmt":"2015-11-05T02:09:04","slug":"the-high-church-organic-movement-is-feeling-under-threat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2015\/11\/05\/the-high-church-organic-movement-is-feeling-under-threat\/","title":{"rendered":"The high-church organic movement is feeling under threat"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nationalreview.com\/article\/426417\/organic-farmings-deservedly-dismal-future\" target=\"_blank\">Henry I. Miller &#038; Julie Kelly<\/a> on the less-than-certain future of the organic farming community:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The organic-products industry, which has been on a tear for the past decade, is running scared. Challenged by progress in modern genetic engineering and state-of-the-art pesticides \u2014 which are denied to organic farmers \u2014 the organic movement is ratcheting up its rhetoric and bolstering its anti-innovation agenda while trying to expand a consumer base that shows signs of hitting the wall. <\/p>\n<p>Genetic-engineering-labeling referendums funded by the organic industry failed last year in Colorado and Oregon, following similar defeats in California and Washington. Even worse for the industry, a recent Supreme Court decision appears to proscribe on First Amendment grounds the kind of labeling they want. A June 2015 Supreme Court decision has cleared a judicial path to challenge the constitutionality of special labeling \u2014 \u201ccompelled commercial speech\u201d \u2014 to identify foods that contain genetically engineered (sometimes called \u201cgenetically modified\u201d) ingredients. The essence of the decision is the expansion of the range of regulations subject to \u201cstrict scrutiny,\u201d the most rigorous standard of review for constitutionality, to include special labeling laws.<\/p>\n<p>[&#8230;]<\/p>\n<p>Organic agriculture has become a kind of Dr. Frankenstein\u2019s monster, a far cry from what was intended: \u201cLet me be clear about one thing, the organic label is a marketing tool,\u201d said then secretary of agriculture Dan Glickman when organic certification was being considered. \u201cIt is not a statement about food safety. Nor is \u2018organic\u2019 a value judgment about nutrition or quality.\u201d That quote from Secretary Glickman should have to be displayed prominently in every establishment that sells organic products.<\/p>\n<p>The backstory here is that in spite of its \u201cgood vibes,\u201d organic farming is an affront to the environment \u2014 hugely wasteful of arable land and water because of its low yields. Plant pathologist Dr. Steve Savage recently analyzed the data from USDA\u2019s 2014 Organic Survey, which reports various measures of productivity from most of the certified-organic farms in the nation, and compared them to those at conventional farms, crop by crop, state by state. His findings are extraordinary. Of the 68 crops surveyed, there was a \u201cyield gap\u201d \u2014 poorer performance of organic farms \u2014 in 59. And many of those gaps, or shortfalls, were impressive: strawberries, 61 percent less than conventional; fresh tomatoes, 61 percent less; tangerines, 58 percent less; carrots, 49 percent less; cotton, 45 percent less; rice, 39 percent less; peanuts, 37 percent less.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Henry I. Miller &#038; Julie Kelly on the less-than-certain future of the organic farming community: The organic-products industry, which has been on a tear for the past decade, is running scared. Challenged by progress in modern genetic engineering and state-of-the-art pesticides \u2014 which are denied to organic farmers \u2014 the organic movement is ratcheting up [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[831,65,66,28,53,13],"tags":[924,39,428,661,752],"class_list":["post-33450","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business","category-environment","category-health-science","category-media","category-politics","category-usa","tag-farming","tag-junkscience","tag-marketing","tag-regulation","tag-supremecourt"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-8Hw","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33450","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33450"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33450\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33451,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33450\/revisions\/33451"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33450"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33450"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33450"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}