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The following transcript is protected under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 License. Link to Audio and Episode Info Here
Show Transcript Deconstructing Dinner Kootenay Co-op Radio CJLY Nelson,
BC, Canada April
30, 2009 Title:
A PRIMER ON PESTICIDE PROPAGANDA II - CROPLIFE EXPOSED Producer/Host
- Jon Steinman Transcript - Aurelie Mortier Jon Steinman: And welcome to Deconstructing Dinner produced at Kootenay Co-op Radio CJLY in Nelson, British Columbia. I'm Jon Steinman. Today marks our 134th episode and part II in a series that we began in March 2008 called A Primer on Pesticide Propaganda. The series was sparked by a DVD titled A Primer on Pesticides that was given to Deconstructing Dinner in September 2007 at the CropLife Canada conference. CropLife is the trade association representing the companies who produce pesticides and/or genetically engineered seed technologies. CropLife has become a well known name here on the show following recordings and interviews from that conference having since made their way onto well over half a dozen episodes. And so this long awaited part II of this Pesticide Propaganda series has been sparked for a pretty good reason... you see CropLife has been on an aggressive and defensive campaign ever since the Province of Ontario announced back in April 2008 that they would legislate a province-wide ban on the non-essential use of 250 pesticides. That ban came into place on April 22 of this year and other provinces who have not already banned non-essential pesticides are thinking of doing the same. One of those provinces being pressured to enact such a ban is British Columbia where the Canadian Cancer Society is putting pressure on the province to do so. The issue has become somewhat of an election one in light of the upcoming May 12th provincial election and is likely what sparked CropLife to hold a meeting with other pesticide industry supporters on April 23 in the City of Richmond. And
so on today's broadcast we'll explore even further than we already have just who
CropLife is and what messages they're communicating to the public in this
heated and controversial period. Increase
Music and Fade Out Lorne Hepworth audio: "Well as you've heard a few
weeks ago the government of Ontario released draft regulations to ban the use
and sale of some pesticides in this province. After months and months of
discussing with the government, the scientific natures of our business
including the extensive pre-market safety testing we do, the benefits of our
products, the rigorous job Health Canada does of assessing the safety of our
products before they will approve them and the need to have clearly articulated
scientific criteria in order for there to be a workable path forward, we are,
to say the least, saddened, dismayed and quite frankly, completely disgusted by
what the provincial government has released for consultation. Quite simply we
expect more from a sophisticated province like Ontario. Regulations to protect
public health and safeguard the environment must be based on science; it is
time for the government to get serious about the science, because we are all
safer with science based regulations Jon Steinman: That's Lorne Hepworth - the President of
CropLife Canada speaking to a group of farmers in December 2008. That clip
helps introduce today's broadcast and the message of "science" that Lorne and
CropLife communicate to the public. Lorne Hepworth will be the focus for
today's episode as it was back in September of 2007 that I interviewed Lorne
shortly after his presentation at the organization's annual conference held,
that year, in Saskatoon. That interview has been long awaiting its Deconstructing
Dinner debut. For
those new to Deconstructing Dinner and our ongoing coverage of CropLife,
the organization is based in Toronto and represents such companies as Monsanto,
Bayer, Dow, DuPont and Syngenta among others. The voices of CropLife executives
and those of their member companies have been heard here on the show on many
occasions. And
also lending their voice to today's episode will be Richard Wiles of the
Washington D.C. based Environmental Working Group (we last heard from Richard
here on the show in late 2006). We'll also hear from Jahi Chappell a
postdoctoral student at Cornell University in Ithaca New York and the co-author
of the 2007 University of Michigan study titled Organic Agriculture and the
Global Food Supply - both Richard and Jahi have been invited to respond to some
of the messages communicated to me by Lorne Hepworth and CropLife Canada. We'll
also be listening to recordings from a rally that was organized on April 23
just outside the Richmond, B.C. hotel where CropLife and its supporters were
meeting to strategize how they might be able to prevent any future
province-wide ban on the non-essential use of pesticides. soundbite So
it's been going on for years now, municipalities from coast to coast to coast
implementing bans on the use of pesticides within municipal boundaries. In
order to streamline the bans that may differ among municipalities, it would
appear to make sense that a province-wide regulation would be a more efficient
tool to manage the increasing public concerns over their supposed safety. The
Province of Quebec was the first to implement a ban and their effort as the
country's first led to one of the world's largest chemical companies, Dow
Agrosciences, to, on August 25, 2008, file a notice of intent to seek compensation
from the Government of Canada for lost profits resulting from the ban on the
2,4-D herbicide. The claim would be brought under NAFTA's article 1105 and
article 1110. Dow is seeking $2 million in damages and "further relief
including additional damages". Dow
is arguing that the Quebec ban was imposed without scientific
justification and disputes the cancer risk associated with 2,4-D. Dow was
required to wait at least 90 days to file its notice of arbitration, which
officially initiates the claim process and results in the nomination of an
arbitration panel. That period has since expired and no indication has been
given as to what steps Dow may take next. The notice of intent is being watched
closely by The David Suzuki Foundation, Equiterre and The University of
Ottawa's Ecojustice Environmental Law Clinic. Prince
Edward Island is yet another province who has announced an intent to ban lawn
and garden pesticides starting in 2010. CropLife was of course active in trying
to challenge that decision. In
New Brunswick, public consultations on the subject have been initiated. In
Alberta, weed and feed pesticide fertilizer mixtures will be banned starting in
2010 but according to the David Suziki Foundation, Alberta is resisting a more
comprehensive ban... And
then there's British Columbia, where mayors municipal councillors from across
the province passed a collective resolution asking the provincial government to
implement this province-wide ban. The B.C. and Yukon branch of the Canadian
Cancer Society and the David Suzuki Foundation are both joining in the effort
and during an election campaign to boot, to encourage this ban to take place.
The government has not responded, however the NDP and Green Party have both
included a province-wide ban as party of their party platforms. Now
what's become quite clear as the pesticide industry goes on the defence is that
the message they're choosing to communicate is, as heard in that earlier clip,
one that denounces these already enacted and proposed legislations as not being
based on sound science. This message is being taken so seriously that CropLife
maintains a new section on their web site titled "Get Serious About the
Science". Well,
let's do that.... let's take CropLife Canada up on this offer, and let's get serious
about the science here on Deconstructing Dinner. And
the first topic to get... serious... about... is the one that is at the top of the
public concerns... pesticide residues on food... as it applies to regulations,
pesticide residues are regulated and monitored by Health Canada and their Pest
Management Regulatory Agency (the PMRA). The PMRA sets what are known as
maximum residue limits (MRLs) - a level measured at parts per million that are
deemed to be of no recognizable danger to the food consuming public. I
brought up this issue of pesticide residues and MRLs as part of my September
2007 interview with CropLife Canada President Lorne Hepworth. According to
Lorne, residues, MRLs and parts per million should be of no concern to the
public. To
respond to Hepworth's comments, I also invited Richard Wiles onto the show.
Richard is the Executive Director and co-founder of the Environmental Working
Group - a Washington D.C. based organization whose mission is to "use the power
of public information to protect public health and the environment". Richard is
a former senior staff officer at the National Academy of Sciences' Board on
Agriculture and he has lent his voice to the show before. Here
first is CropLife Canada's Lorne Hepworth. Lorne
Hepworth: To
put this one part per million in perspective, it's like you'd have to eat
20,000 apples every day for the rest of your life to get a toxic dose. So the
issue that I raise there is that people associate any detection, and as we can
now detect down to 1/16th billion per 1 billion of a litre, which we
have heard about this morning, these nano-test tubes, people associate, and I
can understand that, detecting a substance with harm. And nobody wants the
harm, that's why we have the rigorous regulatory system . But as you can do a
better and better job at detecting than you are, it's going to be easier. We
also want to make sure we have a quality of life, whether it's controlling West
Nile virus mosquitoes or safe food supplies etc, etc, etc,... So the maximum
residue limit is a bit of a red-herring debate Richard Wiles: Well there isn't any credible
scientist in any health organization anywhere in the world who would agree that
MRLs are a not important or that would agree with his characterization of the
science. MRLs are set to provide a margin of safety, some comfort, between
levels that cause harm in animal studies and exposure that people get when
people eat food. So the characterization of the 20,000 apples to get a toxic
dose is intentionally misleading, designed to belittle regulatory science that
has been in existence for 50 or 60 years. No one agrees with that type of
characterization of MRLs except industry scientists and industry PR hacks. It
is true that the dose of a pesticide you receive in an apple won't in itself
cause any acute toxic reaction and I don't think there is any environmentalist
or consumer advocate that ever said that it would. What people are concerned
about, is the cumulative exposure over a lifetime, or the multiple pesticides
that you get in your daily diet, and more particularly they are concerned about
population ─
sub sectors of
the population that would be uniquely vulnerable, like children or infants or
others who might have a susceptibility to pesticides and or other chemicals. Jon Steinman: Richard Wiles of the Environmental
Working Group responding to comments made by CropLife Canada's Lorne Hepworth. Richard
went on to suggest that Lorne's comments were not just inaccurate but were
belittling to the public. Richard Wiles : The comment on the public, I
think is all too typical of the Industry's characterization of the public's
ability to handle this information. The implication that the public is out
there panicking about these low levels residues, is, I think, not true, and it's
condescending and insulting to the average person on the street. I think the
public is rational, they mostly don't come anywhere near panicking about any of
this information, the misinformation that this gentleman offered, I think, is
more damaging to an intelligent discussion of the matter than concerns about
applications of pesticide. Jon Steinman: Now Lorne Hepworth's dismissal of residues and maximum residue limits stands as an ideal example of the differing attitudes towards how industry, regulators and the public perceive danger. While industry and regulators seem only ever able to identify immediate threats and dangers, any cumulative danger is nothing that any science can predict. It's
for this reason that Richard Wiles and the Environmental Working Group launched
what they call a Shopper's Guide To Pesticides, which outlines which foods
contain the most and least amount of pesticide residues. Here's
Richard Wiles. Richard Wiles: I think understanding the
cumulative effect of pesticides in the diet is really beyond scientific
capacity at this point. It's just really beyond the understanding we have of
the interaction of these chemicals to really know what the combined impact is.
That doesn't mean that it's horrifically awful, it's just means it's an
uncertainty and that given a choice, people like to minimize uncertainties,
particularly when you're dealing with chemicals that are, after all, designed
to be toxic, are designed to kills bugs and diseases, so even if they are
present in food at relatively small amounts, a lot of people would like to know
which foods have the least and which foods have the most, whether they should
buy organic pretty much all the time and where if they can't afford organic or
if it's not available, which fruits and vegetables consistently have fewer or
lower levels of pesticides on them. So it's really a choice issue that
recognises that there is a lot of uncertainty in the science. We just don't
know what these combinations of chemicals will do. That's doesn't mean that
they are all going to kill us tomorrow but it means that scientists can't
really say that it wouldn't be dangerous for some percentage of the population,
some vulnerable 1 or 2 year olds, so why not reduce your exposure if you can do
it, and so that's really what the motivation behind our lists are, just to give
people choice. It's based on the recognition that the scientists are uncertain
that these chemicals are inherently dangerous and that it's probably a good
idea to minimize your exposure when you can. Jon Steinman: Now it's this very uncertainty
that the public has towards pesticides that of course drives so much of the
latest opposition to their presence and use today. And so it remains unclear as
to why the pesticide industry would continue to insist that the public
trust the science, as heard here... Lorne Hepworth audio: Stand up for science Jon Steinman: ...says Lorne Hepworth, even
though recent history has repeatedly demonstrated that products once deemed
safe, were later deemed too dangerous and pulled off of the shelves and off of
the market. I
posed this very question to CropLife's Lorne Hepworth. Jon Steinman audio: When we look at some of the
environmental concerns around pesticides we've brought a few people onto the
show who have looked back on the history of regulatory frameworks in Canada
when it comes to pesticides and we've seen here over the past 30, 40, 50 years
many pesticides that were used within the agricultural system that have been
now pulled off the shelves and are no longer allowed to be used, now this
differs among countries. You spoke very strongly about using science as sort of
the tool to further the agenda of agriculture. How can Canadians be assured
that these sorts of issues are not going to keep popping up, that science will
then prove that certain agricultural chemicals being used today are not as
harmful as the ones that have been pulled off of the shelf? Lorne Hpeworth: First of all, you've got to
remember why the majority of those were pulled off of the shelf. Not because
they somehow caused a problem, but because newer and better molecules came
along. It's like a car company; they don't keep selling the Studebaker when you
got a new Lexus. Ok, the new products come along, and the farmers don't even
want the old ones. After a while, the company says it doesn't make sense to
produce the old technology, they want the newer, better technology. Now are
there instances, occasionally, where once it's been registered, just like
pharmaceuticals, where you get unintended side effects, or something didn't
show up in the testing? We, like any other citizens, and like the regulators,
if that's proven to be a problem from a scientific standpoint, we'd be the
first to want to pull the product off the market, and certainly the regulators
would. There have been very rare instances of that -I mean the one that
everyone would point to is DDT, and that wasn't necessarily... I mean there's a
fair bit of debate around that one and it's still widely used in the world to
control Malaria - I'd be a little careful about drawing conclusions about what
products went off the marketplace and why Jon Steinman: And here's the Environmental Working Group's Richard Wiles responding to Lorne Hepworth's comments. Richard Wiles: Well it's not exactly true
that the only reason all their chemicals have been replaced is because newer
models came onto the market. Certainly that does happen, but I think that
regulatory actions, bans, prohibitions, restrictions on chemicals have been at
least as important in driving innovation in the chemical industry, pesticide
industry as has the desire to just have a better product. Because in reality
companies make a lot more money of old commodity based pesticides that have
been on the market for 20 years and the costs are already amortised and they're
just making money every year on the chemical, that's the ideal situation for a
company. The problem is a lot of these chemicals came onto the market before
comprehensive testing was required and they turned out to be fairly dangerous.
Anyhow, it's also not true that DDT is the chemical only ever banned; I mean
that's sort of silly. There have been plenty of chemicals, particularly, at
least in the USA that were taken off the market as the result of a major
reformed pesticide law in the mid-90s that required explicitly that infants and
children be protected from chemical residues in food and from all roots of
exposure. If you're going to be allowed to use the chemical on food, all
sources of exposure have to be considered so entire classes of insecticides
suffered major restrictions, the organophosphate insecticides - huge
restrictions all across the board there and several chemicals came off the
market completely. A number of different fungicides, and there was a major herbicide
here in the USA, called Cianazine and it was used on maybe 40million acres of
corn that was withdrawn by the manufacturer when it faced the prospect of
having to prove it was safe for children when it ended up in drinking water. So
regulation has forced a lot of innovation in the pesticide industry, and that's
a good thing, chemicals tend to be more specific, and less broadly toxic, than
they used to be. The pesticide industry's position basically is that every
single pesticide out there is perfectly safe, and you know they are routinely
proven wrong on that position. And they're not particularly responsive to data
that show these hazards. I mean for all the chemicals that I named, save a few
where they knew that to try and demonstrate safety was just going to be
impossible, they waged significant and very expensive battles to keep these
highly hazardous pesticides on the market as long as they possibly can because
they make a lot of money on these chemicals, where they have made back the
R&D costs and every year that they can keep those chemicals on the market,
they're going to make another multiple 10s of millions of $ off of them and
we've seen this down here, where Atrazine was the number one weed killer in the
country in agriculture, now it's number 2 behind Roundup, which is used in all
the GM corn, but it's still applied to 50 million acres a year. There are major
toxicity concerns with this chemical. It ends up in the drinking water for
about 25 million people every year. Communities spend 40/50 million dollars a
year on carbon to reduce the levels of this chemical to levels that are safer,
and the industry has spendt 10s of millions of dollars on scientists and
lobbyists to keep these chemicals on the market. Not because it's safe, but
because they can win those fights, they can manipulate the regulatory process
with science and media, and campaign contributions and back-door meetings, and
you name it! Dr. Samuel Epstein (extract
from the Corporation movie): If you wanted to go to a chemist and said look, I want to
have a chemical, say a pesticide, which will persist throughout the food chain,
and I don't want to have it to renew very very often, I'd like it to be fairly
non-destructible, and then he'd put 2 benzene molecules on a blackboard, and add
a chlorine here and a chlorine there. That was DDT. (Voice over for short movie
clip)"When the army needed Jap civilians to help them out in our occupation,
they called on the native doctors to administer DDT, under the supervision of
our men to stem a potential typhus epidemic. Dusting like these goes a long way
in checking disease and the laugh's on them. Pardon our dust... Dr. Samuel Epstein: As the petrochemical era grew
and grew, warning signs emerged that some of these chemicals could pose hazards.
The data initially were trivial, anecdotal, but gradually a body of data
started accumulating, to the extent that we now know that the synthetic
chemicals which have permeated our workplace, our consumer products, our air,
our water, produce cancer, and also birth defects and some other toxic effects.
Furthermore, industry has known about this, at least most industries have known
about this, and have attempted to trivialise these risks. If I take a gun and
shoot you, that's criminal. If I expose you to some chemicals which knowingly
are going to kill you, what difference is there? The difference is that it
takes longer to kill you. We are now in the midst of a major cancer epidemic
and I have no doubt, and I have documented the basis for this, that industry is
largely responsible for this overwhelming epidemic of cancer, in which 1 in
every 2 men get cancer in their lifetimes, and 1 in 3 women get cancer in their
lifetimes. Jon Steinman: This is Deconstructing Dinner
and part II of our series titled A Primer on Pesticide Propaganda. Part I of
the series is archived on our web site at deconstructing dinner.ca. That
last clip was from the well known Canadian documentary "The Corporation". You
heard Dr. Samuel Epstein speaking. Epstein is a Professor emeritus in
Occupational & Environmental Medicine at the University of Illinois. Before
him was a clip from my conversation with the Environmental Working Group's
Richard Wiles as he responded to the comments made by CropLife Canada's
President Lorne Hepworth. I interviewed Lorne in September 2007. Today's
broadcast is focusing on a number of remarks made throughout my brief interview
with Lorne Hepworth when I attended CropLife's annual conference in Saskatoon.
That interview has been quietly sitting in our archives awaiting an opportune
time when Lorne's comments could be examined. What sparked Deconstructing
Dinner to finally air this interview has been the wave of support across the
country for province-wide bans on the non-essential or cosmetic use of pesticides
(lawn care, home gardens, and most municipal uses are the targets of the bans.)
Quebec was the first to implement a ban followed by Ontario whose ban came into
effect on April 22, 2009. British Columbia is now being pressured by The
Canadian Cancer Society, the David Suzuki Foundation, and municipalities
throughout the province to do the same. Om April 23rd, CropLife
Canada (the trade association representing the pesticide industry) hosted a
meeting in the City of Richmond to strategize with their supporters as to how
to prevent any ban from being implemented. Later on the show, we'll listen
in on clips from a rally of concerned groups and citizens that took place just
outside the Richmond hotel where CropLife's Lorne Hepworth was meeting with
industry colleagues. So stay tuned for that. Now
of course another message communicated by the industry as we've heard
throughout the show, is how newer pesticides are better and safer to use and
while in some cases that may indeed be true, the Environmental Working Group's
Richard Wiles cautions that increased attention might instead be necessary. Here
again is Richard Wiles Richard Wiles: They do make some new
chemicals, but there are some serious issues with some of the newer chemistry
as well, probably the most recent major screw-up by the pesticide industry is
going to end up being the insecticides that are increasingly implicated in the
decline in the bee population. The science is getting clearer and clearer that
a significant portion of that reduction in the pollinator population is due to
pesticides that are extremely toxic
to bees at levels in the parts per trillion levels. So this is a direct
rebuttal of the earlier argument that you have to drink Lake Erie to get a
toxic dose. I mean this is parts per trillion levels in the environment that
are so small you can hardly even find it, and can wipe out bee populations and
these are chemicals of the newer and safer variety so these chemicals are
designed to kill, that's the whole point, they're supposed to kill pests, I
mean that's not necessarily a bad thing but you have to bear that in mind that
they need to be very carefully studied, they need to be very carefully managed,
they need to always assume that you don't know everything, that you have to be
open to new evidence that chemicals might be dangerous and always try to use as
little of those pesticides as you possible can Jon Steinman: That was Richard Wiles, the
Executive Director and co-founder of the Environmental Working Group - a
Washington D.C. based organization whose mission is to "use the power of public
information to protect public health and the environment". Richard is a former
senior staff officer at the National Academy of Sciences' Board on Agriculture.
A link to the organization's Shoppers Guide to Pesticides, as referenced
earlier, will be available on the Deconstructing Dinner web site at
deconstructingdinner.ca and posted under the April 30, 2009 episode. soundbite Jon Steinman: Now before we continue
examining remarks made by CropLife Canada's President Lorne Hepworth... let's
first revisit one of the organization's member companies - Syngenta. It was
after all Syngenta's DVD that was handed to me at the CropLife Canada
conference that was titled A Primer on Pesticides - that sparked this ongoing
series, here on Deconstructing Dinner, titled A Primer on Pesticide Propaganda.
Syngenta
is one of the world's largest producers of seeds, agricultural chemicals and
biotechnology. They're based in Switzerland and their Canadian operations are
headquartered at the University of Guelph (which should come as no surprise if
you caught our recent episode about the University). Now I do want to just take
a moment here to update you on the company's actions... and more specifically,
their marketing campaigns being waged here in Canada that are targeting
Canadian farmers. As a weekly subscriber of Canada's largest agricultural
periodical The Western Producer, I've been the recipient of some of their
aggressive and no doubt expensive marketing campaign, their recent one. The
product being advertised is called Broadband - a herbicide designed to control
grass and broadleaf weeds that threaten monocultures of spring wheat and
barley. And the campaign began in late 2008 upon which 68,000 Canadians, subscribers
to the Western Producer, and mostly farmers, would have opened their copy of
the Western Producer to find a roughly 8.5" by 8.5" thick square piece of paper
with the title Broadband Instruction Guide - the advertisement came across as a
manual for using broadband internet access - a technology only now being slowly
made available in rural Canada. But here's the shocking part... this 8.5"x8.5" ad
needed to be unfolded and once unfolded the size of the paper comes out to 3x
that size - that's 25.5" x 25.5"... and the contents???? blank.... the entire
poster-sized ad was blank except for what read "Step 1... Apply"... assumingly a
signal to the reader of just how easy the product is to use. Now it would be
one thing to recognize this as being one of the most brazen examples of paper
wastage every seen as part of a marketing campaign... but to ad insult to injury...
located at the bottom of the blank poster is the FSC logo... that's the logo
signalling that the paper used came from Forest Stewardship Council certified
trees. Clearly, Syngenta's environmental ethics are a little schizophrenic to
say the least... but of course, Syngenta's trade association CropLife Canada
continues to insist that the industry is "environmentally friendly"... Lorne Hepworth audio: I want to continue on with the
environmental theme, our industry takes its responsibility to the environment.
We put stewardship of the environment in minimizing any risk to the environment
from our technologies as a first order of priority, but more than that, our
industry's technologies are, and in the future will increasingly bring
solutions to some of the world's greatest environmental challenges. Jon Steinman: One might ask that if an
industry can't even make an attempt... to be environmentally responsible
with their marketing campaigns, why would the public give their
complicated chemicals and biotechnologies... any less scrutiny...? Well,
that somewhat forms the basis for another line of questioning that I introduced
to CropLife's Lorne Hepworth... the environmental impacts of conventional vs.
organic methods... Lorne Hepworth response to Jon Steinman
question: Is
it more environmentally sustainable to try and feed the world organically or
through modern technology? And the data I see it, is you would have to bulldoze
down acres & acres, the size of countries to grow enough produce to feed
the people of the world, if you're
going to do it simply by organic production Jon Steinman: Perhaps the best people to
contact to respond to such a suggestion are the authors of a study out
of the University of Michigan published in June 2007 entitled Organic
Agriculture and the Global Food Supply. After being published in the journal
Renewable Agriculture and Food Systems, it received quite a lot of attention as
it was one of the most comprehensive
paper's to date comparing the yields of conventional and organic methods
of agriculture. One
of those authors was Jahi Chappell who responds to Lorne Hepworth's comments. Jahi Chappell: Really I feel like that's very
far out of step with scientific knowledge, if you actually look at the research
from a number of different directions. So I mean, for one thing, the conclusion
of our study was basically the opposite, that for one thing in terms of just
raw yield, organic agriculture, from the evidence we have today, there seems to
be little question that it could provide enough food. As I said before from the
bulk of the research you can find from the literature, and to some degree in
practice, there is a slight decrease in average yields in the developed world
(in the Global North) but there seems to be an average of maybe a 5% to 10%
reduction max, and in the developing world, in the Global South, you end up
seeing, as much as a doubling, sometimes even more than that, of yields, which
strikes some people as fantastically implausible, but that the reason for it is
a lot of the agriculture of the Global South is not intensified conventionally
or organically. They're still using low input methods, subsistence methods,
which basically our conclusion is, you certainly could increase yields, and in
many of these cases, with perhaps a conventional package, but that would be
pretty resource and financially intensive whereas with certain organic methods,
you would use a lot less resources and you also could see a dramatic increase
in yield. And to us the basic question isn't which one produces actually more
at the end of the day? The question is can we feed people, and make enough
food? And so really we're talking about a sufficiency argument. And it looks like
there's almost no question as far as the present research and understanding
goes that we could provide sufficient food for today's population, and the
growing population of the future Jon Steinman: When the paper was being researched, Jahi Chappell was a PhD student in ecology, specializing in the intersection of conservation and food issues. His interest lay in analyzing how conservation policy could effectively be advanced to prevent the rapid loss of biodiversity, which Jahi indicates is, today, similar to the extinction rate that wiped out the dinosaurs. Jahi is now engaged in post doctoral studies at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. Jahi spoke to us over the phone and he outlines the team of people that he worked with on the University of Michigan organic agriculture and the global food supply study. Jahi Chappell: This paper came about with a
group of us at the University of Michigan, involving a group called NEWAG,
which stands for the New World Agriculture and Ecology Group, which is actually
right now sort of a loose international affiliation of people, who work on
ecology, human development, socio-economic development and equity issues. So
one of my mentors Ivette Perfecto at the University of Michigan has worked on
sustainable agriculture for years, especially in coffee ecosystems, she was one
of the people who spearheaded the effort along with Catherine Badgeley, who is
the first author. She has dual interests in paleoecology, which is her primary
academic work, but she's also done a lot of teaching research in sustainable
agriculture, and she herself actually owns a farm with her husband. And so, she
had been teaching a class with Ivette on this issue for years, actually looking
at different farms in Michigan, looking at different scales, sizes and types,
from Amish farms, organic farms, to larger conventional farms, and headed up
this class by going to Cuba in 2004, I believe, looking at sustainable systems
there and some of the students from Ivette and Catherine's class where very interested
in this topic as well. So as a group, including myself, Ivette & Catherine,
two undergraduate students from their classes Emily Zakem and Eileen Quintero
who had gone to Cuba, same time as I did with the class, and then some other
graduate students of Ivette, Andrew Salumon and Katia Aviles-Vasquez, who were
getting their Masters degree in Natural Resources and all of us have these
similar interests in combining equity and food security Jon Steinman: A copy of this paper has been
posted on the Deconstructing Dinner web site including a more digestible
synopsis for those not agriculturally inclined... but Jahi does provide some
startling numbers that came out of their research.... for one, what did the
research predict would happen if the entire world was to switch to organic
methods. Jahi Chappell: If you switch to all organic
under the most conservative assumptions possible meaning that you actually had
a slight decrease in production of agriculture on the world, which we don't
think is realistic, you still end up with 2600 calories per person per day
available and that's still more than is recommended basically for a full and
healthy diet, and if you look at what we think is more realistic by developing
in the Global South modern organic methods, you could increase the production
globally to probably over 4000 calories per person per day, which means
essentially, rather than eating that much that we could provide enough food,
even with the larger population expected about 100 years from now. Jon Steinman: As has been discussed
previously on Deconstructing Dinner, comparing just raw yields of agricultural
systems ignores some of the fundamental reasons why so many people in the world
are malnourished and hungry. The University of Michigan study also explored the
calories between systems and their findings were also quite telling. Jahi Chappell: I guess one of the things I
haven't even mentioned yet, in response to that clip you played, is that if you
look at it right now, we're already producing enough food on a caloric global
basis. Right now there are approximately 2800 calories per person per day
available in the world. And despite this, we have 1 billion people suffering
from hunger, from acute malnutrition. If you look at the people who are suffering
from micronutrient deficiency that's probably around 2 billion people, so even
though we have enough food on a caloric basis right now, we have between 15%
and 30% of the world which still aren't getting adequate access to food. So
that's one of the first points that it doesn't even seem to be a matter of raw
yield right now, and if you look at the research by Economist Mark Eusen (sp?),
even famines seem to be rarely from a lack of food but rather from the ability
to get access to food Jon Steinman: ...Jahi Chappell... As mentioned earlier, the University of Michigan study was published in June of 2007 only months before I joined the pesticide and biotechnology industry at the annual CropLife Canada conference. The conference seemed like an ideal place to introduce the results of the study and indeed I did, during my conversation with CropLife's Lorne Hepworth. Lorne's comments are followed by a response from the study's co-author Jahi Chappell Jon
Steinman audio: One
study that just came out of the University of Michigan and the school of
Natural Resources and the Environment. They actually did some studies on
whether organic agriculture can produce equal or greater yields and their study
concluded that indeed it can. Now it looked more at North America saying that
it is about equal... Lorne Hepworth (interrupting): Can I give you a quick answer
on that one? Jon Steinman: Yeah, sure Lorne Hepworth: One of our speakers today Paul
Sumner said that it needed a lot to review, and they went to their expert scientific
panel, and they said what you needed to do was a critical review of the
literature, that's what you need to, is a critical review of that literature,
because what I have seen is that their methodology was highly suspect from a
scientific standpoint... Jon Steinman: Are you familiar with the
study, because I haven't done that research Lorne Hepworth: Well, I haven't read the study
but I saw some of the commentary afterwards JS: right Lorne Hepworth: So I can't comment, but what I
have seen on the commentaries, I can tell you, by far and away, the
conventional wisdom, the weight of scientific evidence suggest that in the far
vast majority of instances, it's rare to find an organic system that will match
yield and quality with conventional Jahi Chappell: He's confusing two different
things, he says the conventional wisdom and the weight of the evidence.
Conventional wisdom certainly is that you can't provide sufficient food with
organic agriculture but what we did, as I said, was review the literature to
try and find what the actual evidence said. So when you do that and look at the
weight of the evidence out there it does seem to say the conventional wisdom is
wrong, which is what happens sometimes, conventional wisdom becomes a thing
sort of in and of itself, living by itself, outside of the actual evidence. And
the evidence moves on the ground, and so I would say that that was just not a
correct assessment of the current evidence. So he said what needs to be done is
a critical review of the literature, what I think he's implying there is that
instead of just looking at literature in general one needs to assess individual
studies and go through and figure out perhaps this one isn't as good as that
one and this one's evidence is better than that one, which, as a scientist, you
can never argue against taking a closer look at something, but all of our
evidence was from what's called peer reviewed literature, with a small
exception, which means that scientists already have reviewed it prior to it
being published in the first place. So it's already passed muster from a
variety of experts, which is to say that this is a publishable article, this is
something that we think the evidence is secure enough. There was a small
minority of our evidence taken from what's called grey literature, which is
published by the Rodale Institute and a couple of other non-profits. There are
2 points with that, for one thing, these are highly competent, highly respected
organisations where the data came from. They just didn't publish it in, what's
called a peer reviewed journal where scientists who were not involved in that
project, also examined the evidence independently. The type of data that falls
into that classification is also data by the FAO, by the US government. So grey
literature is not considered the scientific gold standard but it doesn't mean it's not reliable
automatically. The other thing is that we did our study, we reanalyzed the
study omitting that information from the grey literature, and our results were
the same statistically Jon Steinman: ...Jahi Chappell... This
is Deconstructing Dinner, a weekly one-hour radio show and Podcast produced at
Kootenay Co-op Radio CJLY in Nelson, British Columbia, I'm Jon Steinman. You're
listening to part II of A Primer on Pesticide Propaganda - a series first
launched in March 2008 and sparked by an informational DVD that was provided to
Deconstructing Dinner by seed and chemical giant Syngenta titled A Primer on
Pesticides. It
was on the same day when we received the DVD that I interviewed the President
of Syngenta's trade association - Lorne Hepworth of CropLife Canada. Now Lorne very quickly cut off my question as you heard in order to provide his response that outright dismissed The University of Michigan study. In that response he indicated he had not seen the study but had read commentaries on it. So we, of course sought out these commentaries published after their paper came out and we came across only one. Sure enough, Jahi confirmed that the one we came across was almost certainly the one Lorne Hepworth was referring to. The commentary was published by Alex Avery - the Director of Research and Education with the Center for Global Food Issues based in Churchville Virginia. Both Alex and his father Dennis Avery are well known critics of organic agriculture and food with Dennis having authored a book titled "How to Save the World with Pesticides and Plastics"... but cutting right to the chase... the Center for Global Food Issues is an industry front group and part of the Hudson Institute who receives financial backing by agricultural giants like Archer Daniels Midland, Cargill, ConAgra Foods, DowElanco, DuPont, McDonald's, Monsanto, Syngenta and.... CropLife... While it would seem responsible for the media to not give Alex's comments the light of day, the same journal that published the University of Michigan study chose to publish his comments alongside other responses from both the study's authors and another researcher implicated in Alex Avery's comments. Here's Jahi Chappell Jahi Chappell: The short response to his
commentary is that in several spots, he simply was misunderstanding what we
wrote, in some other areas, he said for example with double count data, which
is simply incorrect, because although some data sets had the same author, from
different papers published on the same data sets, we made sure that we went and
eliminated from our database any overlap so we went back and re-examined all
the data afterwards to pull out things that would have been double-counted, and
that was another one of the primary critiques. Really it seems like, to give
the short summary, that he seemed to be misreading the original studies and
sometimes misreading our study as well, and if you look at the actual examples
the problems he raises are not actually present Jon Steinman: that was Jahi Chappell, co-author of "Organic Agriculture and the global food supply"; A University of Michigan study published in June 2007 in the journal "Renewable agriculture and food systems". Jahi is now engaged in post doctoral studies at Cornell University, in Ithaca NY. And a link to Alex Avery's commentary is linked to from the April 30, 2009 episode posted on our web site at deconstructingdinner.ca including copies of the responses to Avery's remarks. One of those responses came
from the now-retired Bill Liebhardt - the former director of the Sustainable
Agriculture Research and Education Program at the University of California at
Davis. Liebhardt's research was used as part of the University of Michigan
study and his work was criticized in Alex Avery's commentary. His response to
Avery begins like this... "My research was initiated because I
attended a 2000 meeting in PA where Dennis Avery (father of Alex) was debating
GMOs. Dennis Avery made claims in that talk about the yield differential of
conventional and organic crops and then went on to say how that yield
differential would affect land use. Dennis Avery stated that organic yields
were only 55-60% of conventional yields and that 18-20 million acres of
wildlife habitat would have to be farmed if high input agriculture were farmed
organically." Sound
familiar? Lorne Hepworth audio: And the data I see, is that
you would have to bulldoze down acres and acres, the size of countries to grow
enough produce to feed the people of the world, if you're going to do it simply
by organic production Jon Steinman: Bill
Liebhardt's remarks about the Averies and their Center for Global Food
Issues continues, "As I listened to Dennis Avery's talk, I wondered where he
got his data or information. I knew of farming systems comparisons around the
country and the yield differences were not like that. As soon as his talk was
over, I was the first to ask a question and it was this. What is the source of
your information showing that organic yields were only 55-60% of conventional?
He did not want to answer the question. However, the moderator was a journalist
from a Philadelphia paper and he said it was a legitimate question and it
should be answered. So Avery said he was told that organic wheat in England
yielded only 55-60% of conventional. So that was his source. I thought this
person is going around the country using one data point to suggest how the
world should feed itself. I thought that the question of how we feed ourselves
is an important one but one that it should be based on more information than
that." Again Bill Liebhardt's full response is linked to from the
Deconstructing Dinner web site. And again, Dennis and Alex Avery are seemingly a pretty significant source of information for CropLife Canada... perhaps the most vocal group advocating for the agricultural chemicals and seeds in this country. It would likely come as a shock to know that even today, municipalities, provinces and Canada's federal government provides ample space to CropLife to express their opinions on matters of human and environmental health. Perhaps even more shocking is the amount of space CropLife and groups like the Center for Global Food Studies receive in North American media. When Alex Avery was interviewed saying that "buying organic food could kill you" on the well known television show 20/20, reporter John Stossel made no mention that Avery was funded by the pesticide industry. Well, regardless of the continued attention these companies and organizations receive, there was a small group of British Columbians who seem to be well aware of the tactics used by CropLife Canada and gave them a less than welcome welcome... when they arrived in the City of Richmond on April 23. Lorne Hepworth was among those in attendance to host a meeting among other industry supporters to discuss how the industry should respond to a looming province-wide ban on non-essential uses of pesticides. At
the rally was David Maidman of Pumpkinhead Productions who filmed the vocal and
peaceful group of protestors outside of the Richmond hotel. The first voice
heard is that of Arzeena Hamir - the coordinator for the Richmond Food Security
Society. Protestor
1: We're
first of all celebrating the fact that Richmond City Council agreed to start
looking at a by-law to ban cosmetic pesticides and we're also here to greet a
group called CropLife Canada, that wants to try and block a provincial
pesticide ban so we're here to show them that exactly what we're looking for in
B.C., we need stop the sale of chemicals and pesticides and give them a greet. (singing in the background and
street noises) Protestor 2: Hi, my name's Ben West from
the Western Canada Wilderness Committee, and we're here today because a group
called CropLife, that's a lobbyist for the chemical industry has tried to look
at ways to stop a cosmetic pesticide ban from happening here in B.C., like it
just happened in Ontario. They're saying that groups like the Canadian Cancer
Association are spreading mistruths, and I guess that leaves us with a
question: Who do you want to believe? Do you want to believe the lobbyist for
the chemical industry or do you want to believe the Canadian Cancer Society? Protestor 3: Hi, Harold Steeves - a farmer
in Richmond, and we don't deliberately grow dandelions, but we don't go around
nuking them either, let's put it that way. The dandelion is a flower, a
buttercup, it's beautiful, and dandelions make good eating. We have them
growing in our alfalfa field and we did a study on them some years ago, and
found that actually the dandelion is more nutritious than the alfalfa Jon Steinman: The video version of that
audio is linked to from the Deconstructing Dinner web site at
deconstructingdinner.ca and posted under the April 30 2009 episode. Thanks
to Pumpkinhead Productions for their work recording that April 23 rally in
Richmond BC. As the May 12 provincial election in B.C. approaches, it should be noted that both the NDP and Green Party have incorporated a province-wide cosmetic pesticide ban into their party platforms while the BC Liberals have yet to even respond to the requests from the Canadian Cancer Society to legislate the ban. To take us to the end of today's part II of our Primer on Pesticide Propaganda series, we've prepared a collage of some previously heard and unheard audio that helps capture the tone of today's broadcast... A thx to Jahi Chappell, Richard Wiles, Lorne Hepworth, Pumpkinhead Productions, Devon Wong, and the voices of those who shared their thoughts at the April 23 rally in Richmond. And also thanks to New York musician Terry Winchell and her Pesticide song... Terry Winchell
singing: Pesticides pesticides have screwed up my
insides, what am I gonna do? In 1962 Rachael Carson warned about the Silent
Spring All this time we haven't learned a thing Voice introducing: Ladies and gentleman, please
welcome Dr Lorne Hepworth (clapping) (In the background, Terry
Winchell singing: ... Oh
Farmer Dan told me one day Lorne hepworth: I still have a small farm in
Southern Saskatchewan, in the middle of the bottom of the Palliser Triangle,
and I have a confession to make to all my members in the room, apparently my
grand-father was an organic farmer. He really didn't have any choice, there
really weren't any tools then, and I am not so sure that Greenpeace would
acknowledge my early roots in that organic farming venture." Terry Winchell: (All this time we haven't
learned a thing!) Richard Wiles: CropLife, where do they sit in
the whole milieu of big bad industry trade groups? They've done what a lot of
trade groups do so well, they've probably done it more than most! They change
their name so many times, it's hard to figure out who they are. Almost like the
companies they represent, that change their name it seems like every couple of
years just to keep you off guard. Terry Winchell: "So put on your rose tinted
glasses Oh
Pesticides , Pesticides Lorrne Hepworth: Stand-up for science! Protestor: They blow science in your
face, but they're not scientists, they're advocates. What advocates do is
exactly what we're doing, they're grabbing hold of anything and they'll throw
it in your face in the hope that you believe it. So, whenever they use the word
"Science", it's being used probably in a pretty flimsy and inaccurate way. Richard Wiles: And
I think that the new chemistry has gotten almost beyond the ability of
regulators and scientists, to truly understand the implications of human
exposure. These are chemicals that work in very novel ways and maybe toxic to
insects in a way that would apparently have no effect on humans because of the
differing anatomy for example, but in fact may have an impact on people that
needs to be evaluated Terry Winchell: Farmer Dan told me one day Gravity
pulls all things down Voice in the audience at the
Croplife conference: Thank
you very much. It's Marian Stypa with Syngenta, I'd just like to pursue some of
the questions that we had discussed a little bit earlier about the perception
of the industry and about the messaging and what's going on out there. You
know, it's somewhat alarming for us in the industry to wake up in the morning
and to read the headline and that a significant leadership party is thinking
about a new policy of outlawing the use of pesticides. I think we have to take
that seriously, we have to look at it as a threat Jahi Chappel: Alex Avery and his father,
Dennis Avery are very established critics of organic agriculture. They really
made some wild claims, they've said that organic agriculture is a liberal
fetish, and that basically we don't care about the welfare of people because
they're going to starve under organic methods. I can't find the exact quote,
but I think Alex Avery compared organic advocates to terrorists. This is really
over the top rhetoric from them sometimes Lorne Hepworth: What I have seen is, their
methodology was highly suspect from a scientific standpoint... Jon
Steinman: Are
you familiar with the study, because I haven't done that research Lorne Hepworth: Well, I haven't read the
study but I have raw some of the commentaries afterwards Terry Winchell: All
this time we haven't learnt a thing (Advert voice over- Female) You've
talked about benefits for the farmer, but are there really any benefits to
consumers and society? (Advert voice over Male) There are many benefits for
consumers and society from the use of pesticides. First the use of pesticides
minimizes the land base needed for agricultural production, because we are able
to produce more food on less land, we're able to feed an ever increasing
population without severely encroaching on forest and natural areas, leaving
more land for conservation and recreational use. Jahi Chappell: Really I feel that is very
far out of step with scientific knowledge, if you actually look at the research
from a number of different directions. Diverse organic systems are really where
it's at, and looking at systems that move away from what we call an input
substitution model, where you're just basically changing industrial inputs for
organic inputs, instead of a large monoculture you're maybe just spraying an
organically acceptible pesticide on now. Really looking at diverse cropping and
rotational systems, like what Rodale works on and other institutes is really
the direction to go and organic monocropping has really become a problem and
will continue to become a problem if we don't really move from that sort of
industrial monocrop system model Lorne Hepworth: If you believe like us, in
science, not public opinion polls, Science, not anecdotes, should be the corner
stone, join us and make you voice heard. Because the day we allow governments
to develop public policy based on which way the wind is blowing, is a sad day
indeed Jon Steinman: CropLife Canada's Lorne
Hepworth expressing his contempt for democracy. This has been part II of Deconstructing Dinner's Primer on Pesticide Propaganda series. We'll be posting a wealth resources on our web site that all tie in to the topic of today's show. Some of those resources will include unheard audio segments from my interview with Jahi Chappell. Also on our site will be a link to a video by University of British Columbia student Devon Wong who recorded an interview with Lorne Hepworth on April 23 in Richmond BC on the same day of the rally we heard segments from earlier. Again, today's broadcast has been archived under the April 30, 2009 episode at deconstructingdinner.ca Ending Theme That was this week's edition of
Deconstructing Dinner, produced and recorded at Nelson, British Columbia's
Kootenay Co-op Radio. I've been your host Jon Steinman. I thank my technical
assistant John Ryan. The theme music for Deconstructing Dinner
is courtesy of Nelson-area resident Adham Shaikh. This
radio program is provided free of charge to campus/community radio stations
across the country, and relies on the financial support from you the listener. Support for the program can be donated
through our web site at deconstructingdinner.ca or by dialling 250-352-9600.
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