Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
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on the ABC television news show
20/20
in February 2000. Stossel told 12
million viewers that ABC commissioned laboratory tests of conventional
and organic food. He claimed that organic food had about the same level
of pesticide residues as the conventional food, which shows that it is a scam
for people to pay more to buy organic food. After months of complaints,
criticisms, and even an editorial in the
New York Times
, Stossel finally went
on the air quietly to retract portions of his story in August 2000 (Rutenberg
and Barringer 2000). Most notably, he admitted that the laboratory
never
tested
for pesticides in the food samples, and that
the information he reported
simply did not exist
(Burros 2002). But he did nothing to remedy the overall
negative and inaccurate tone of his report. These are just a few examples of
the misinformation from opponents of organic farming seeking to misrep-
resent it and the sensationalist reporters willing to fabricate a news story. It
is important for advocates of organic agriculture to realize that naysayers
exist, so we can vehemently discredit their assertions. We must expand the
knowledge base and educate Americans about the true ecological and social
potential of organic farming.
These corporate and media-induced injustices must be revealed. Agri-
cultural and food issues should top our list of news stories in the United
States, but unfortunately they are rarely mentioned. This is why strong
advocacy can play a crucial role in bringing these issues to the forefront.
Talk to your friends, your neighbors, your kids, your kids' teachers, and the
school cafeteria cooks. Talk to the managers of your favorite restaurants
and grocery stores. Tell them you want organic food to be available in your
community and that locally grown organic food is even better. Be heard.
Bring these issues to light.
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RE
LEVANT RESEARCH
Organic farming research receives horrendously low levels of funding, com-
pared with both our government's support and private industry's big bucks
for conventional agricultural research. Increasing organic research money
is an obvious need. Just imagine what we could learn from equitable re-
search funding! Let's “allocate equal funding to research on nonproprietary
approaches to agriculture (i.e., organic methods) as proprietary approaches
(i.e., biotechnology) receive from their private sources, and then allow these
two approaches to be packaged and 'marketed' to farmers and consumers”
(Lotter 2003, 104). With this level playing field, even more producers would
be attracted to organic methods and more consumers could be educated
about the benefits of organic farming. Although equal funding may be a
