It was truly a butt kicking. An old fashioned whipping. We lost the debate, and it wasn't even close.
I had been invited to New York City to debate the statement, "Organic food is marketing hype." We had 20% of the Manhattan audience on our side when the debate started and the same number on our side at the end. The undecided audience members at the beginning of the evening broke almost unanimously for the opposition. You can see the whole thing at In the window at the end of this blog.
The debate winner is the side that changes the most minds, and we were beaten like a rug. It will take a long time and much thought for me to come to final conclusions about the experience, but here are some first impressions.
Ferocious attacks I was totally unprepared for the ferocious attacks on conventional farming. One of our opponents said that one in eight children have birth defects, and strongly implied that my farm chemicals are the cause. The food critic for Vogue Magazine, who is a regular on the Food Channel, informed us that the days of the conventional farmer are numbered.
I was unprepared for the concentration on animal welfare. Sure, I expected they'd accuse farmers of being careless about the land we farm, but I never thought that I would be accused of "raping" the soil with the fertilizers I apply. 'Great Lakes-sized lagoons full of Poo?' What's this poo business? You can't say manure? Animal waste?
Actually, poo was much on the mind of the most effective debater on the other side. Poo fed to cows, poo falling on chickens' heads in cages, human poo prohibited as fertilizer for organic farmers, but used by conventional farmers.
Most of the poo in this debate was thrown against the wall by the other side, and a good deal of it stuck. They were more skilled, and more shameless. There are no fact-checkers in a debate, no editors, and no chance for a do-over. I've thought of a reply to most every claim…72 hours too late.
People in the audience laughed when I said that the application of science to farming had been a good thing; that it has been a boon for the human race that yields are increasing; that genetically modified seed and fertilizer and pesticides have helped feed the world; that we were richer because of modern agriculture.
They laughed when my team member pointed out that modern pig farming has actually lessened the chance of swine-to-human movement of flu viruses. The knowledge about actual food production in that auditorium was nonexistent. If we are to continue to engage our critics, we're going to have to start at the beginning. People really don't have a clue about on-the-ground facts of farming.
Better story-telling I'm not sure how we tell our story better. I'm not sure how we win this argument. It didn't seem adequate to point out that there are environmental costs to organic farming. (Our Vogue food critic informed us that organic farmers didn't till the soil, and that knee high weeds in the field didn't hurt yields.)
This audience, at least, wasn't particularly interested in the fact that people would be hungry if organic farming is so widely practiced that a quarter of U.S. crop ground is in legumes to provide nitrogen for the next years' corn or wheat crop. The fact that plants produce natural pesticides, and that many of those natural pesticides are carcinogenic, didn't change a single mind.
An audience member asked if there was a scientific test to determine whether a crop had been raised organically. Our opponents dodged the question, but it was clear that testing wouldn't show many discernible differences in quality. When one of our team members said there was a test that would show whether commercial fertilizers had been applied to a crop, the other side wasn't the least bit interested.
A cynic might say they were afraid that testing organic crops might prove that some food marketed as organic...isn't. It did seem odd to me that every restaurant, food stand, and small grocery in Manhattan advertised organic produce. If total organic production nationwide is only 3% of the supply, the market penetration in Manhattan is closer to 100%.
We have to learn what messages work, and what messages do not. I'd love to see a focus group study the debate, and find out if anything we said had an effect on the audience.
We conventional farmers have to get better at this, or we're headed toward some major changes in the way we farm. I don't want to face that future, and I don't think it's good for our nation, or the world. But we're losing this battle, and our debate was just one small indication of that terribly depressing fact.