Organic Trade Association
Myth #1. Organic is a niche market.
Facts:
- According to new research from OTA, 78 percent (more than three quarters) of U.S. families report they purchase organic products (Source: U.S. Families' Organic Attitudes & Beliefs 2011 Tracking Study).
- Organic fruits and vegetables captured more than 11 percent of the total fruits and vegetables market in 2010, according to OTA’s 2011 Organic Industry Survey.
- Organic buyers are more likely to be Asian, African American or Hispanic than non-buyers. They are more likely to report household incomes of $35,000 and higher. However, they are also more likely to be under 25 than non-buyers.
Hardly niche—78 percent of consumers buy organic in spite of economy.
Myth #2. U.S. consumers are ambivalent about genetically modified organisms (GMOs).
Facts:
- Nine in ten parents (89 percent) say it is important to label genetically engineered foods, according to OTA’s U.S. Families' Organic Attitudes & Beliefs 2011 Tracking Study.
- 78 percent of parents are concerned that genetically engineered foods could lead to unintended side effects in the environment or in animals, according to OTA’s U.S. Families' Organic Attitudes & Beliefs 2011 Tracking Study.
- Nearly 350,000 consumers have written to the commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration this year to demand labeling for genetically engineered foods.
U.S. parents say no to GMOs. We have a right to know how our food is made.
Myth #3. Organic foods are too expensive for the average family.
Facts:
- 78 percent of U.S. families now buy organic food at least sometimes, according to the latest research from the Organic Trade Association. Smart shoppers can and do make organic choices on a budget.
- OTA offers strategies for consumers looking to enjoy the benefits of organic products for less.
- Linda Watson, cook and organic cookbook author, shares a variety of tips from her book, Wildly Affordable Organic: Eat Fabulous Food, Get Healthy, and Save the Planet—all on $5 a Day or Less.
Myth #4. Organic farming can’t feed the world.
Facts:
- Anyone who tells you organic farming can’t feed the world hasn’t seen the latest research from Iowa State University, where long term trials found that conventional and organic produced similar yields, while organic produced better profit and resulted in better soil quality.
- 2011 saw the publication of Rodale Institute’s The Farming Systems Trial: Celebrating 30 years report, highlighting six major findings from its long-term side-by-side field trial comparisons of organic and conventional systems that prove the benefits of organic agriculture.
- An interdisciplinary team of researchers from several U.S. and international universities published a report in the Oct. 20, 2011, edition of Nature, outlining solutions for a cultivated planet to meet growing food needs. They wrote, “To meet the world’s future food security and sustainability needs, food production must grow substantially while, at the same time, agriculture’s environmental footprint must shrink dramatically.” They added, "Closing yield gaps without environmental degradation will require new approaches, including reforming conventional agriculture and adopting lessons from organic systems and precision agriculture."
Expert Perspective: On agricultural productivity and food security.
Myth #5. Concern about agrichemicals is yesterday’s news.
Facts:
- This spring, three independent, government funded studies published in Environmental Health Perspectives found that children whose mothers were exposed to common agricultural pesticides are more likely to experience impaired or delayed cognitive development.
- A study accepted for publication in the journal Reproductive Toxicology conducted by scientists at the Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology at the University of Sherbrooke Hospital Centre in Quebec, Canada, reports the presence of Bt toxin, widely used in GE crops, in human blood. The toxin was detected in 93 percent of maternal and 80 percent of fetal blood samples, as well as in the blood of 69 percent of non-pregnant women tested.
- Organic is the only agricultural system that verifies, using certification and inspection, that toxic and synthetic pesticides and fertilizers are not used at any point in the production process.
Read the studies:
- Prenatal Exposure to Organophosphates and Cognitive Development
- Prenatal Exposure and IQ in 7-year-old children
- 7-Year Neurodevelopmental Scores and Exposure to a Common Agricultural Pesticide
Myth #6. The Jobless Recovery
Facts:
- According to OTA’s 2011 Organic Industry Survey, the organic industry grew by nearly 8 percent in 2010, and added jobs at four times the national average.
- With four in ten families buying more organic products than they did a year ago, organic is growing and hiring. (Source:U.S. Families’ Organic Attitudes & Beliefs 2011 Tracking Study).
- Forty percent of companies in the organic sector hired full-time employees in 2010. Forty-six percent of organic businesses anticipated hiring full-time employees in 2011 (Source: OTA’s 2011 Organic Industry Survey).
Organic added jobs at four times the national average in 2010.
For more information, click here.
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The Organic Trade Association (OTA) is the membership-based business association for organic agriculture and products in North America. OTA is the leading voice for the organic trade in the United States, representing over 6,500 organic businesses across 49 states. Its members include growers, shippers, processors, certifiers, farmers' associations, distributors, importers, exporters, consultants, retailers and others. OTA’s Board of Directors is democratically elected by its members. OTA's mission is to promote and protect the growth of organic trade to benefit the environment, farmers, the public and the economy.
Though made in large part of plastic, glass, ceramics, gold and copper, they also contain critical resources. The gallium used for LEDs and the camera flash, the tantalum in capacitors and indium that powers the display were all pulled from the ground — at a price for nature and people.
"Mining raw materials is always problematic, both with regard to human rights and ecology," said Melanie Müller, raw materials expert of the German think tank SWP. "Their production process is pretty toxic."
The gallium and indium in many phones comes from China or South Korea, the tantalum from the Democratic Republic of Congo or Rwanda. All in, such materials comprise less than ten grams of a phone's weight. But these grams finance an international mining industry that causes radioactive earth dumps, poisoned groundwater and Indigenous population displacement.
Environmental Damage: 'Nature Has Been Overexploited'
The problem is that modern technologies don't work without what are known as critical raw materials. Collectively, solar panels, drones, 3D printers and smartphone contain as many as 30 of these different elements sourced from around the globe. A prime example is lithium from Chile, which is essential in the manufacture of batteries for electric vehicles.
"No one, not even within the industry, would deny that mining lithium causes enormous environmental damage," Müller explained, in reference to the artificial lakes companies create when flushing the metal out of underground brine reservoirs. "The process uses vast amounts of water, so you end up with these huge flooded areas where the lithium settles."
This means of extraction results in the destruction and contamination of the natural water system. Unique plants and animals lose access to groundwater and watering holes. There have also been reports of freshwater becoming salinated due to extensive acidic waste water during lithium mining.
But lithium is not the only raw material that causes damage. Securing just one ton of rare earth elements produces 2,000 tons of toxic waste, and has devastated large regions of China, said Günther Hilpert, head of the Asia Research Division of the German think tank SWP.
He says companies there have adopted a process of spraying acid over the mining areas in order to separate the rare earths from other ores, and that mined areas are often abandoned after excavation.
"They are no longer viable for agricultural use," Hilpert said. "Nature has been overexploited."
China is not the only country with low environmental mining standards and poor resource governance. In Madagascar, for example, a thriving illegal gem and metal mining sector has been linked to rainforest depletion and destruction of natural lemur habitats.
States like Madagascar, Rwanda and the DRC score poorly on the Environmental Performance Index that ranks 180 countries for their effort on factors including conservation, air quality, waste management and emissions. Environmentalists are therefore particularly concerned that these countries are mining highly toxic materials like beryllium, tantalum and cobalt.
But it is not only nature that suffers from the extraction of high-demand critical raw materials.
"It is a dirty, toxic, partly radioactive industry," Hilpert said. "China, for example, has never really cared about human rights when it comes to achieving production targets."
Dirty, Toxic, Radioactive: Working in the Mining Sector
One of the most extreme examples is Baotou, a Chinese city in Inner Mongolia, where rare earth mining poisoned surrounding farms and nearby villages, causing thousands of people to leave the area.
In 2012, The Guardian described a toxic lake created in conjunction with rare earth mining as "a murky expanse of water, in which no fish or algae can survive. The shore is coated with a black crust, so thick you can walk on it. Into this huge, 10 sq km tailings pond nearby factories discharge water loaded with chemicals used to process the 17 most sought after minerals in the world."
Local residents reported health issues including aching legs, diabetes, osteoporosis and chest problems, The Guardian wrote.
South Africa has also been held up for turning a blind eye to the health impacts of mining.
"The platinum sector in South Africa has been criticized for performing very poorly on human rights — even within the raw materials sector," Müller said.
In 2012, security forces killed 34 miners who had been protesting poor working conditions and low wages at a mine owned by the British company Lonmin. What became known as the "Marikana massacre" triggered several spontaneous strikes across the country's mining sector.
Müller says miners can still face exposure to acid drainage — a frequent byproduct of platinum mining — that can cause chemical burns and severe lung damage. Though this can be prevented by a careful waste system.
Some progress was made in 2016 when the South African government announced plans to make mining companies pay $800 million (€679 million) for recycling acid mine water. But they didn't all comply. In 2020, activists sued Australian-owned mining company Mintails and the government to cover the cost of environmental cleanup.
Another massive issue around mining is water consumption. Since the extraction of critical raw materials is very water intensive, drought prone countries such as South Africa, have witnessed an increase in conflicts over supply.
For years, industry, government and the South African public debated – without a clear agreement – whether companies should get privileged access to water and how much the population may suffer from shortages.
Mining in Brazil: Replacing Nature, People, Land Rights
Beyond the direct health and environmental impact of mining toxic substances, quarrying critical raw materials destroys livelihoods, as developments in Brazil demonstrate.
"Brazil is the major worldwide niobium producer and reserves in [the state of] Minas Gerais would last more than 200 years [at the current rate of demand]," said Juliana Siqueira-Gay, environmental engineer and Ph.D. student at the University of São Paulo.
While the overall number of niobium mining requests is stagnating, the share of claims for Indigenous land has skyrocketed from 3 to 36 percent within one year. If granted, 23 percent of the Amazon forest and the homeland of 222 Indigenous groups could fall victim to deforestation in the name of mining, a study by Siqueira-Gay finds.
In early 2020, Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro signed a bill which would allow corporations to develop areas populated by Indigenous communities in the future. The law has not yet entered into force, but "this policy could have long-lasting negative effects on Brazil's socio-biodiversity," said Siqueira-Gay.
One example are the niobium reserves in Seis Lagos, in Brazil's northeast, which could be quarried to build electrolytic capacitors for smartphones.
"They overlap the Balaio Indigenous land and it would cause major impacts in Indigenous communities by clearing forests responsible for providing food, raw materials and regulating the local climate," Siqueira-Gay explained.
She says scientific good practice guidelines offer a blueprint for sustainable mining that adheres to human rights and protects forests. Quarries in South America — and especially Brazil — funded by multilaterial banks like the International Finance Corporation of the World Bank Group have to follow these guidelines, Siqueira-Gay said.
They force companies to develop sustainable water supply, minimize acid exposure and re-vegetate mined surfaces. "First, negative impacts must be avoided, then minimized and at last compensated — not the other way around."
Reposted with permission from DW.