food for health, about us

Organic or inorganic, what’s the difference?

Elizabeth Gay debates the motion

At the Society’s A.G.M. in October 2004, a remark was made that neither the McCarrison Society nor the Soil Association has analysed in detail why organic food is better for us than food grown by chemical methods.

Lady Eve Balfour, Founder of the Soil Association in 1946, had no doubt as to the enormous benefits to the health of both man and beast of food grown organically. In her book “The Living Soil”, she says, “The concept of nutrition as a flow of nutrient materials from the soil through plants and animals to humans has been strongly reinforced by researches in the field of human metabolism. All human tissues undergo constant renewal. It follows that the integrity and biological quality of the nutrient materials used for this renewal are of first-rate importance to health; and that the extent to which they are influenced by agricultural practices becomes a matter of great practical significance to the medical and dental professions.”

The first essential is a healthy soil with plants that are free of disease. Crops grown in organic compost show a marked resistance to disease. Sir Albert Howard was present when trials were carried out in India and Sri Lanka (then Ceylon) on crops of tea and rubber, showing that after just one dressing of compost there was a noticeable resistance to insect pests such as red spider and mosquito blight and also a marked improvement in growth. The improvement was not a slow process but immediate and spectacular.

Sir Albert deduced that the sudden improvement, after only one application of compost, was due to the humus stimulating the mycorrhiza (close association between plant roots and soil fungi), which are known to occur in the roots of tea. He suspected that the mycorrhiza might be a key factor in the roots of other plants and this led to the careful examination of the roots of crop plants both in tropical and temperate climates. In all the specimens examined vigorous, healthy growth was invariably accompanied by extensive fungus infection on the roots of the plants concerned, which was not so when the plants were poor or unhealthy. Crops grown with compost or quantities of farmyard manure always showed maximum mycorrhizal development, in sharp contrast to those grown by artificial means. Organic compost was also very effective in ridding land of eelworms due to the increase in the soil of organisms such as fungi and insects and other nematodes that preyed on the eelworms.

Lady Eve believed that part of the reason for so much ill health and sickness in the U.K. is because “we have ignored the dependence of plant life upon the action of soil fungi. …… It is as though man’s ignorant and greedy exploitation of the soil has put into reverse the wheel of health.”

Of course, this does not mean to say that compost-grown crops are never attacked by pests, for indeed they are, but the damage done is normally not severe and the plant will recover quickly. This may be due to the greater strength of the cell wall in compost grown plants which may also explain their better resistance to frost.
A further benefit of composted manure which should not be forgotten, is the increase in the worm population. Worms make a big contribution to the availability of nutrients in the plant root zone. One farmer remarked that when he manured his grassland with chemical fertiliser the worms disappeared but the next year, following a good application of organic compost the worm casts reappeared immediately.

There is no doubt that the health of crops grown with compost can be transmitted to animals. An experiment was carried out by Dr. T. Rowlands. Taking an acre of land that had never had a crop on it, he divided it into two half-acre plots. These were ploughed and prepared for seeding. One half was heavily fertilised with cow dung, the other half with chemical fertiliser. Both plots were seeded with the same cereal. Both plots had good crops with well-filled heads. The seeds were kept separate and two groups of rats from the same families were divided into equal halves. The group fed from the chemically fertilised plot showed every evidence of malnutrition while those fed from the farmyard manure plot had a perfectly normal, healthy growth.

With regard to human health, “the fact that the discoveries of McCarrison indicated that immunity from degenerative human disease followed the ingestion of a fresh, well-balanced diet of unprocessed natural food, and that those of Howard disclosed a marked similar resistance capacity, to both degenerative and infectious maladies, as a consequence of returning to the soil a sufficiency of carefully prepared waste products, may be regarded as something other than a coincidence. In the latter case both crops and livestock showed this salutary immunity.” Furthermore, it later became apparent that the resistance to pests and diseases increased with successive generations of organically nurtured plants and animals, thereby producing a beneficial cumulative effect.

Soil has been described as a fountain of energy flowing through a circuit of soil, plant and animals. Food chains are the living channels that conduct energy upwards; death and decay return it to the soil. Soil fertility is the capacity of soil to receive, store and transmit energy. Lady Eve recognised the fact that this capacity is something that cannot be replaced with what is chemically the same but is very different as a conductor of living energy. There is a great difference between a plant nutrient contained in organic material and the same nutrient in inorganic chemical form.

So it seems that while the difference between organic food and food grown by chemical methods is not tangible, the one is life-giving whilst the other interrupts that vital circle which is so essential for health. This is not something that can be analysed in detail, although it is said that similar substances, one organic, the other inorganic react differently to ultra violet light. The proof is in the quality of life. Just because one cannot see it, is no excuse not to believe it or the Christian faith would not have endured for two thousand years.

References

The Living Soil and the Haughley Experiment – Lady Eve Balfour - Universe Books 1975
An Agricultural Testament – Sir Albert Howard Other India Press 1996