Dear Friends,

I want to share this letter to the editor of the Tufts Health & Nutrition Letter, written by my good friends and colleagues, Frances Moore Lappé and Anna Lappé. They articulate the case for organic agriculture so beautifully!
Yours in health and hope,
Mollie

October 16, 2006

Tufts Health & Nutrition Letter
200 Boston Ave., Suite 3500
Medford, MA 02155

Dear Editor of Health & Nutrition Letter:

We enjoy and have long benefited from the thoughtful content of your publication. We are writing today because we were struck by your advice (October 2006 Vol. 24, No. 6) to readers concerning whether to buy organic food.

The key lines of advice come at the end of your special report: "But none of this means organic food is always your best or smartest buy." Then, referring to a Consumers Union conclusion, you repeat that at times "it's simply a waste of your money."

We strongly disagree. The choice for organic is a brilliant use of our money because it is a "vote" for a safer planet for all. While we think it is important to raise consumer awareness about the threats to organic certification's integrity, we also think it critical that consumers realize the many benefits of choosing organic.

What troubles us most is your encouraging readers to think that "smart" buying means weighing very narrowly their own and their families' risk, blind to our wider interdependence. Beyond our families' immediate dietary safety (and there you certainly provide enough evidence of an association between pesticides and disease to make one choose organic), we feel most people would not want to encourage exposing farm workers and farmers to the harm pesticides cause them. Tens of thousands of farm workers are poisoned each year. But every time we purchase pesticide-sprayed foods, we are voting for that damage and suffering to continue. The life expectancy of farm workers in this country is well below the national average.

Moreover, pesticides contaminate waterways and ground water, making well water in many parts of the farm belt undrinkable. They have also been shown to cause abnormalities in, or worse, to kill, wildlife exposed to them. Chemical agriculture also contributes to global heating, harming us all. By contrast, in an international review of farming, the UNFAO reports "organic agriculture not only enables ecosystems to better adjust to the effects of climate change but also offers a major potential to reduce the emissions of agricultural greenhouse gases." It adds that "CO2 emissions per hectare of organic agriculture systems are 48 to 66 percent lower than in conventional systems."

Buying organic gives us a chance to vote for reversing this failed experiment. And it is a recent one! Early in your special report you call pesticide-sprayed foods "regular products" ­ encouraging readers to see as normal (and therefore tested and harmless) a practice that has been widespread only in the last 50 years, a blink of historical time.

Most of your readers have discretionary income: they are able to purchase many non-necessities that may not be "smart" by a narrow calculus but which make them feel good ­ whether it's a new lipstick, a different shade of paint for the kitchen, or a gift for a friend. Your newsletter could encourage readers to feel great about spending money to move our farm system toward sustainability and health. You could help your readers appreciate that our food is only as cheap as it is because the real costs of producing it -- including soil erosion, poisoning of farm workers, contamination and depletion of groundwater, as well as greenhouse emissions -- are not counted.

Choosing organic is an important way we can begin to acknowledge these real costs and to feel good about taking responsibility for bequeathing a healthy planet to our children. That, we hold, is spending at its "smartest."

We look to you for leadership. Thank you for considering our feedback.

Frances Moore Lappé and Anna Lappé
http://www.smallplanetinstitute.org/ http://www.smallplanetfund.org