Pink Slime Meets Green Slime

I've said a couple times that calling the thing "pink slime" is the most effective framing of an issue since the Republicans came up with the "death tax".  I'm amused by this Grist piece, which suggests that "pink slime" may contribute to the good taste of hamburgers and recounts the efforts of an organic beef producer to come up with an organic equivalent, which he calls "green slime".   His efforts, though, cause me to rethink my position: I now think "pink slime" is a much more effective framing than is the death tax.

Simplicity and Organics

Michael Pollan's favorite organic farmer, Joel Salatin, has a new book, with an excerpt here.  Basically he's noting the misalignment between an organic operation and modern methods of marketing, particularly fast food chains and Whole Foods.  He discusses his dealings with Chipotle, where he's succeeded in selling parts of pigs (shoulders and hams) to them, but that leaves him with the problem of selling the rest of the pig.  All in all, it's a complex job of negotiation and management, a far cry from the simplicity some associate with organics.

As I've noted before, what's true for the livestock and poultry farmer like Salatin is also true for the organic field crop farmer.  To make organics work, to make the land produce as much as conventional agriculture, you need to rotate your crops.  That permits Rodale to claim their organic corn production is equal in yield to conventional, but it's also a sleight of hand because the organic corn producer has lots of alfalfa she needs to market.

As an aside, Dr. Pollan appears to be recycling his books as a good organic person should: he's got illustrated versions out now, but it's been a few years since he had a new one.

NY Times and Agriculture on 12/31/2011

The Times has two stories on agriculture today: one on the growth of big organic farms outside the country, drawing down water supplies and exporting organic produce to the US; the other on the conversion of non-ag land to farmland in Iowa, and the expiration of CRP contracts.

The organic piece gets lots of exposure: comments and the top emailed piece. As the article points out, we Americans want our cheap organic tomatoes in December, and Mexico, Argentina, and Chile, and the nations in between, are willing to supply them.  The growth of exports helps those nations, which isn't something the comments note, although the article does mention it.

The Iowa piece reminds me of the 70's, when Earl Butz supposedly promoted fence row to fence row planting.  If the farmer is able to buy the land, he can tear out the fence rows, gaining some acreage and improving the efficiency with which he can farm.  Again, it's the workings of the free market in agriculture.

Organic Versus Locavore

There's a tension between organic food and the locavores, a tension I see in this NYTimes article.  There's a scarcity of organic milk, particularly on the East Coast, partly because prices haven't risen high enough, partly because of the inflexibility of supply (takes 3 years for a dairy to convert to organic production), and partly because there's not enough organic grain grown in the East.  The latter is important because grain is important for milk production; cows produce much less milk if they're simply grazing pasture and eating hay.  So there's an imbalance in the food economy, an imbalance which the free market fills by transporting food/grain from distant places, but that's not something which locavores can be happy about.

The Profitability of Organics

This report  (Iowa State) at the extension site says organic field crops are as productive as conventional.

The LTAR [Long-Term Agroecological Research Experiment] experiment shows that organic crops can remain competitive with conventional crops even during the three-year transition. Averaged over 13 years, yields of organic corn, soybean and oats have been equivalent to or slightly greater than their conventional counterparts. Likewise, a 12-year average for alfalfa and an 8-year average for winter wheat also show no significant difference between organic yields and the Adair County average.

Because of higher returns for organic grains, the study showed a $200 per acre premium over conventional. Given these results, I would think there'd be a lot of acreage being converted from conventional to organic; that's what economics says should happen, isn't it?. On the other hand:

I assume doing organic requires a different set of knowledges and perhaps skills, creating an entry hurdle.  A farmer who is beginning farming and who wants to begin as an organic farmer faces a major challenge.  An established farmer who want to switch to organic faces a major transition, which few people like to do when they're established.

As I've written before, I think the biggest problem for organic farmers is they produce crops for which the market is small.   Note these rotations:
Organic corn-soybean-oat/alfalfa (3 year)
Organic corn-soybean-oat/alfalfa-alfalfa (4 year)
Organic soybean-wheat/red clover (2 year)
 A farmer who converts from corn/soybeans now needs to find a market for oats, alfalfa and clover. In the old days the horses would eat those, but not any more, except for the Amish.


Think about the process of marketing these organic outputs. The transportation costs are going to be the same regardless of how the crop was raised, but because the markets are smaller on average the crop is going to have to travel a longer distance.  So the costs facing a possible organic chicken farm will mount up. 

Looking at the brochure, there's also the question of inputs. "Organic corn and soybean plots receive an average of two rotary-hoeings and two row cultivations per season for weed management."  and "The organic plots receive local compost made from a mixture of corn stover and manure"  Now the cost accounting would cover the costs, but on an operational farm four trips over the land is going to require more labor, which might be a limiting factor.  There's also the question of where the manure, and maybe the corn stover, comes from.  Once again, if we go back to the sort of farming done pre-WWI or on Amish farms, everything works together; the crop rotations include feed for the livestock; the livestock produce manure for the land, etc. But the challenges of integrating  organic operations on a large scale with today's patterns of marketing and consumption are great.

Organic Agriculture Is Profitable

I've been skeptical of organic agriculture's promises, so it's only fair I should highlight this piece from the Agronomy people, reporting on a long term U of Minnesota (my dad's alma mater--go gophers) study. It finds that organic agriculture is more profitable than conventional over an 18-year period.  However:

What gave organic production the edge wasn’t higher crop yields, however; instead it was organic price premiums. In their absence, the net return from a 2-yr, conventional corn-soybean rotation averaged $342 per acre, compared to $267/ac for a 4-yr organic rotation (corn-soybean-oat/alfalfa-alfalfa), and $273/ac for its 4-yr conventional counterpart. When a full organic premium was applied, though, the average net return from organic production rose to $538/ac, significantly outperforming the conventional systems both in terms of profitability and risk. And organic production was still more profitable when the price premium was reduced by 50%.

Cost of production was also lower, because herbicides cost more than organic weed control methods.

Organic Dairy--How to Judge

A set of bullet points from a study of organic dairy:

• The average cow on organic dairy farms provides milk through twice as many, markedly shorter lactations and lives 1.5 to 2 years longer than cows on high-production conventional dairies;
• Because cows live and produce milk longer on organic farms, milking cow replacement rates are 30% to 46% lower, reducing the feed required and wastes generated by heifers raised as replacement animals;
• Cows on organic farms require 1.8 to 2.3 breeding attempts per calf carried to term, compared to 3.5 attempts on conventional farms;
• The enhanced nutritional quality of milk from cows on forage based diets, and in particular Jersey cows, significantly reduces the volume of wastes generated on organic dairy farms; and
• The manure management systems common on most organic farms reduce manure methane emissions by 60% to 80%, and manure plus enteric methane emissions by 25% to 45%. 

I've some quibbles: how does quality of milk reduce volume of wastes? What's unique about organic manure management? (Presumably the organic dairies are small enough to spread manure on the fields, while the non-organic are too big for that?)  3.5 breeding attempts strikes me as high, particularly if we're talking actual inseminations. 

But my bigger criticism is that these don't seem to me to be the right metrics.  What would be right?  Taking a dairy-wide view over years, standardizing the units for both conventional and organic. For example, take a 10-cow dairy (i.e., 10 milkers, plus appropriate replacements) over 10 years.  What's the total feed input and its cost, what's the total output of milk, and meat over the 10 years, what's the total manure output and their related emissions?  Throw in some metrics for quality of milk (is more fat better--it used to be but maybe not now).  Once you do that comparison you can proceed to the advantages of large versus small, as in the manure issue.

The (Dubious) Economics of Organic Turkeys

The Post had an article yesterday on a founder of Cisco who's using her money to subsidize an organic turkey farm in the hunt country of Virginia.  She sells a 22 pound bird for $230, sold half the 1,000 she raised last year, and lost money. The owner is a former 4-Her who vows to make her operation pay.

My first reaction was to mock her for not understanding economics, and for waste, something upon which the food movement frowns.  But perhaps a fairer assessment is this shows the weak infrastructure supporting organic meat and dairy farms and the high hurdles organic farmers have to vault in order to make a profit and survive.  How can anyone pay $10 a pound for turkey, when a reasonable bird is one dollar a pound?  The only way is to sell to someone like the Inn at Little Washington, which is a famous and highly rated restaurant, and very, very pricey.  It's the sort of place an ordinary bureaucrat might go once a decade for some special occasion if the bureaucrat was very into taste and class. You couldn't hope to sell turkeys for that at Whole Foods, or even a farmer's market.  (Remember, this is a geezer speaking, and I'm out of touch.)

Organic Farming in China

Once upon a time, when I was young, the only thing China had was "organic farming".  (Actually, I think the English lord (Howard?) who was an early advocate of organic farming studied Indian or Chinese agriculture.)  Now that some Chinese are rich, "organic" is becoming a fad, according to this Post article.  "Fad" is a little harsh, no doubt attitudes will evolve and people will become more realistic, much as Americans have done.  Maybe Whole Foods will open stores in China, following in the footsteps of KFC?

Organic Growth in Bricks and Mortar

Organic Valley, an organic cooperative, is expanding its headquarters.  Hype is easy, bricks and mortar are hard.

What Scares a Nuclear Submariner?

I don't think of submariners and Navy Seals in the same way, but I do consider submariners to be tough-minded.  John Phipps is a ex-sub man and he's scared ****less by herbicide-resistant weeds.

I'd score that as one point for the organic types.

Organic Versus Locavore

EWG has a post on organic gains from which I take this quote:

Organic salad greens have fared even more impressively.  According to Nielsen surveys, fresh cut salad greens increased their market share from 8.3 percent in 2006 to 15 percent so far this year.  Pre-packaged specialty salads have grabbed a whopping 46 percent of that market sector, compared to 29 percent in 2006.

I observe the good news for organic isn't good news for locavores, as I'm assuming the pre-packaged greens are shipped. Once again the consumers' desires are conflicting; healthy--yes; convenience--yes.

Non Organic Means to Organic Ends?

Here's a report from Iowa State on experiments growing corn with perennial ground cover.

After the first two years of the study, researchers have already discovered a system that allows for removal of up to 95 percent of the corn stover, increases the amount of carbon kept in the soil, increases water use efficiency in corn and also maintains corn yield.

Someone familiar with the arguments of organic advocates will see a lot of overlap in the experiment, yet the experimenters are not trying to be "organic" by USDA standards.  It's obvious they're open to chemical treatments and presumably genetically modified organisms so their inputs can differ from organic ones.  But the goal is close to the organic goal, conserving soil, building carbon, etc. 

Seems to me this sort of thing is likely to become more prevalent than strictly organic farming. We'll see.

Ethical Questions for Farm Programs

A retiring agricultural economist raises some questions (my headings):

Poor Farmers?

In agricultural economics, at Purdue and elsewhere, it seems to me that our central challenge is how to be both mission-driven, responsive to our clientele in agriculture – and also true to our first principles as and as individuals. When the Purdue ag econ department was founded in the 1920s and as the department grew in the 1930s, farmers were much poorer than the average American. relative poverty persisted through the 1950s and 1960s, and at that time there was the added of huge disruptions due to rapid outflow of labor and consolidation of farmland. But for a of reasons, since the 1990s American farmers have been much richer than the average American, and there has been no further net outflow of labor or consolidation of farmland in America as a whole. So, from its hardscrabble roots, the agricultural economics discipline now finds itself serving a relativelywealthy and stable sector. Agriculture is a high-risk enterprise, but it’s not going away or even shrinking. This puts our discipline in an enviable if sometimes awkward position....

Nature of Farm Programs?

Now after decades of study, it turns out that government interventions such as crop
insurance, renewable fuel mandates, the conservation reserve program, land conversion restrictions and many others are not necessarily what they seem. Modern economics can explain them pretty well, but only as rent-seeking devices. These interventions are ways for farmers and landowners to obtain income transfers from the public in a way that is obscured from public view, hidden partly by their sheer complexity and partly by the claim that they exist to solve market failures such as credit constraints or environmental problems.

Organic Farming

People say they want to organic methods and traditional genetics to avoid health risks and environmental threats posed by industrial agriculture. People say they want to buy local and artisanal food so as to promote the local economy, or to avoid environmental damage from long-distance transport. But when scholars investigate these claims, they may turn out to be very fragile. What if organic, local, traditional and artisanal products don’t actually deliver a healthier, more secure and sustainable food system? This is not a hypothetical question. Right now, the preponderance of evidence is pointing in that direction.

Organic Grain Yields

From a farmgate post focused on the prices for organic soybeans and corn:

Singerman also reports several studies that indicate organic corn yields were 8 to 10% lower than conventional corn, and organic soybean yields were anywhere from 1% to 19% lower than conventional beans.

Here's the summary:

While price premiums for organic corn and soybeans may seem to be twice that of the prices of conventional crops, that relationship may be more coincidental than normal. Prices for both organic and conventional crops can be volatile, but they are set in different markets, they do not move in lock step with each other, and conventional crops cannot be substituted for organic crops meaning they are separate commodities.

Organic Milk

Had to buy milk today so I checked the coolers.  My Safeway has 7 coolers devoted to milk of various kinds (whole, reduced fat, organic, soy, etc. etc.).  Of the 7, 2 were organic, a proportion which surprised me a bit.  The Safeway doesn't serve the richest clientele in the richest county in the country; lots of immigrants live in the area, though many of those are doing well.  But 30 percent organic is pretty good market penetration.

And, although the taste tests in this Grist post were a bit inconclusive, supermarket organic milk came out pretty well.

Pollan in the NY Review of Books

Michael Pollan has a review article in the NY Review of Books.  Briefly he sees a "food movement"

Among the many threads of advocacy that can be lumped together under that rubric we can include school lunch reform; the campaign for animal rights and welfare; the campaign against genetically modified crops; the rise of organic and locally produced food; efforts to combat obesity and type 2 diabetes; “food sovereignty” (the principle that nations should be allowed to decide their agricultural policies rather than submit to free trade regimes); farm bill reform; food safety regulation; farmland preservation; student organizing around food issues on campus; efforts to promote urban agriculture and ensure that communities have access to healthy food; initiatives to create gardens and cooking classes in schools; farm worker rights; nutrition labeling; feedlot pollution; and the various efforts to regulate food ingredients and marketing, especially to kids. 

He has problems with his facts and history in three cases

The dream that the age-old “food problem” had been largely solved for most Americans was sustained by the tremendous postwar increases in the productivity of American farmers, made possible by cheap fossil fuel (the key ingredient in both chemical fertilizers and pesticides) and changes in agricultural policies. Asked by President Nixon to try to drive down the cost of food after it had spiked in the early 1970s, Agriculture Secretary Earl Butz shifted the historical focus of federal farm policy from supporting prices for farmers to boosting yields of a small handful of commodity crops (corn and soy especially) at any cost.

This is a repeat of an error from The Omnivore's Dilemma, which is wrong.  Butz didn't have this power, the legislation passed by Congress was a change, but in the long view not that big of a change, and the decisions Butz made to lower loan rates were reversed by his successor after he was fired and during President Ford's reelection campaign.

Again:

Beginning in 2001 with the publication of Eric Schlosser’s Fast Food Nation, a surprise best-seller, and, the following year, Marion Nestle’s Food Politics, the food journalism of the last decade has succeeded in making clear and telling connections between the methods of industrial food production, agricultural policy, food-borne illness, childhood obesity, the decline of the family meal as an institution, and, notably, the decline of family income beginning in the 1970s.

Did household income decline since 1970?  No. See this wikipedia article   Or see this for a quick view. Note he doesn't cite women's lib, which some of his readers might be supportive of.

And finally he twice refers to the White House "organic garden".  Wrong--Michelle's garden is not organic, though it leans that way. See Obamafoodorama.

No Bird Brains Here

Don't know how they did it, but this article (hat tip Ann Althouse) says birds can distinguish between wheat that's conventionally grown and wheat that's organically grown.  And, wait for it, they prefer the conventional, apparently because it has more protein.

I'm a bit skeptical--wheat strikes me as a crop where growing it organically isn't much different than conventional, but we need to trust the wisdom of our feathered friends.

The Old Familiar Story: Surpluses in Agriculture (Pot This Time)

Via Ann Althouse, here's an NPR story on a crash in marijuana prices in California.  Seems there's an oversupply of field-grown pot; buyers prefer the indoor stuff.  It ends, as other farm stories have ended over the decades:

"California's pot economy is transforming, and it's starting to resemble a real commodities market where only big players can compete. It's a shift that could leave some growers in the dust."

AFTERTHOUGHT: This is also a case where consumers presumably prefer the product of industrialized ag over natural field grown stuff.

Does Organic Pay?

Just to state my position up front:
I don't believe organic cropping can match commercial/industrial farming on a per acre basis for a given crop over a period of years. The problem is that organic operations have to rotate crops.  Over a 10-year period a commercial producer in a corn/soybean rotation will produce more corn and beans than an organic one in a corn/soybean/alfalfa (maybe small grain) rotation.  That's assuming average weather. 

I do believe organic cropping is more productive if the weather is variable or extreme--more tolerance for droughts.

With that position, it's no surprise that I should appreciate this Purdue study. Their bottom line is that, if you do things right, organic can be as profitable or more profitable than commercial farming. The summary from farmgate:

When net returns per acre are written in four digit numbers, it does not take much imagination to realize that organic production can be profitable. However, getting there takes time and patience. After suffering through the transition period without price premiums, and taking the yield penalty, organic crops can become profitable with the help of higher prices and lower production cost. Key factors to success are timing of your crop rotation and finding a market for your crop.

In other words, as long as organic is a market niche commanding price premiums, it can be profitable once you make the transition.  But if it becomes mainstream, it won't be profitable.