"How the Common Good Is Transforming Our World" by Douglas LaBier

Douglas LaBier

Business psychologist and psychotherapist

Posted: October 17, 2010 12:31 PM

How the Common Good Is Transforming Our World

In my previous post I wrote about a rising social psychosis that's visible in three areas of our society. It's likely to prevail for some time, but I think it's like a wave that's crested and will crash to the shore. The reason is that the social psychosis is a backlash against a steadily growing consciousness and behavior that refocuses personal lives and public policies towards promoting the common good.

By the "common good" I'm referring to a broad evolution beyond values and actions that serve narrow self-interest, and towards those guided by inclusiveness -- supporting well-being, economic success, security, human rights and stewardship of resources for the benefit of all, rather than just for some.

It's like a stealth operation, because it hasn't become highly visible yet. But polls, surveys and research data reveal several strands of change that are coalescing in this overall direction. I describe each of them below. They may appear to be unrelated, but I think they're driven by an underlying perspective that we're all like organs of the same body, and the body doesn't thrive if any of the organs is neglected or diseased.

It's an awareness of interconnection of all lives on this planet, and a pull towards acting upon that reality in a range of ways. They include rethinking personal relationships, the responsibility of business to society, and the role of government in an interdependent world.

A 21st-Century Mindset

The rise of the common good reflects a sense of global citizenship and an obligation to be a good ancestor to future generations who inhabit this planet. In fact, it embodies behavior and policies that fit the needs for effective functioning -- both personal and political -- in our post-9/11, post-economic meltdown world.

That is, in previous posts I've argued that this new era of unpredictable change in a non-equilibrium world requires new criteria for psychological health and resiliency, beyond just effective stress management and coping. Others have emphasized the new mindset that's needed for effective business and leadership strategies in this interconnected era.

For example, Matt Bai has described in the New York Times that "[n]ow we live in an integrated world where American jobs rely on the economic policies of governments in Asia or Latin America, while our security is subject to the whims of a cleric living in a cave," and, "[w]ith global interdependence comes a certain lack of control, a vulnerability to disparate influence."

Similarly, CUNY professor and blogger Jeff Jarvis refers to a "great restructuring of the economy and society, starting with a fundamental change in our relationships -- how we are linked and intertwined and how we act."

And Umair Haque writes in his Harvard Business School blog about the new principles of a new economy "built around stewardship, trusteeship, guardianship, leadership, partnership," adding that "[a]s interaction explodes, the costs of evil are starting to outweigh the benefits." In effect, transparency will become the antidote to evil.

Let's look at some of the seemingly disparate themes of the massive shift underway that has spawned the current social psychosis.

The New Norm of Racial-Ethnic Diversity

As you read these words, the country is becoming more diverse. Some demographers believe that 2010 could be the first year that most children born in the country will be non-white. Already, five states have a majority non-white population. New York Times columnist Charles Blow captured a slice of this at the time of the passage of health care legislation, writing that "[a] woman [Nancy Pelosi] pushed the health care bill through the House. The bill's most visible and vocal proponents included a gay man [Barney Frank] and a Jew [Anthony Weiner]. And the black man in the White House signed the bill into law. It's enough to make a good old boy go crazy."

Nearly 20 percent of counties in the U.S. have, or are close to, a nonwhite majority. This shift is steadily changing the social landscape. The trend is towards movement in the direction of tolerance, acceptance and valuing -- rather than fearing or hating -- the increasingly diverse composition of American society. And that includes the rising numbers of those with multi-racial/ethnic backgrounds. Moreover, research finds that the latter group tends to be open-minded and more oriented to inclusiveness and openness.

Volunteer Service

Data show that the number of volunteers is steadily growing among all age groups. During 2009, about 64 million Americans did volunteer work (defined as unpaid volunteer activities through an organization.) That's nearly 27 percent of the populations and reflects a steady year-by-year increase, according to a Bureau of Labor Statistics report. And a rapid rise of volunteerism has occurred in the last decade among men and women in their 30s and 40s. Today, people describe volunteerism as part of their sense of responsibility to help others in need, not something for padding their resume.

Donations of Organs by Living Donors to Strangers

That number is steadily rising. For example, kidney donations from living donors have outnumbered those from deceased donors since 2003. Some states, such as Wisconsin, offer tax deductions for expenses related to living organ donations.

Hands-On Philanthropy

This trend is towards wanting contributions to have visible, direct impact upon people's lives. More are turning away from writing checks to well-heeled organizations like universities or cultural centers. This trend is visible among venture capitalists who bring a high-impact perspective to venture philanthropy as well as among average citizens, who increasingly contribute to international organizations that help people become more self-sufficient in daily life -- for example, through micro finance (providing small loans to individuals starting businesses in impoverished countries), or purchasing a goat for a family that relies on small farming for their livelihood, or paying the salary of a schoolteacher in an impoverished part of the world.

Responsibility for a Healthy Planet

Despite the continued denial of the reality of climate change and the human contributions to it by the GOP, a denial unmatched among major political parties around the globe, pressure continues to build, both politically and on a grassroots level, for actions that reverse or halt climate change and promote sustainable living. Among the latter are groups like 350.org, the Alliance for Climate Protection and community alliances of citizens, businesses and government such as Bethesda Green, in Bethesda, Md. This trend is underscored by the steadily rising financial contributions to environmental organizations.

Support For Human Rights

Data show a steady increase of both financial contributions to and membership in such organizations as Human Rights Watch, Save the Children, Amnesty International, Mercy Corps International and others. Even in the absence of effective action, consciousness continues to build around the perspective that violations of rights to safety, dignity and personal freedom for another -- anywhere in the world -- affect oneself, as well. In addition, the view of security and human rights is expanding to include not only freedom from violence and terrorism, but also the rights to health care, support of older citizens, rights to adequate housing, food, fair wages and other conditions. A recent U.N. report examines these issues with respect to responsibilities and actions of member nations.

Personal Success

I've written previously that men and women increasingly want a "4.0 career": one that provides more than personal recognition, power and financial reward. They want meaningful work, opportunities for continued learning and growth, a positive management culture and a team-oriented, ethical environment. They want to have impact on something larger than just their own personal success. These themes are especially pronounced among younger workers.

The Social Impact of Business

Business leaders have already bought into the need for sustainability, and many are contributing to the rise of a new business model, one that addresses social problems and serves the common good as well as achieving financial success. The "green business" movement reflects this shift, along with the concept of the "triple bottom line." Related trends include sustainable investing, social entrepreneurialism, corporate social responsibility, building a psychologically healthy management culture, and transparency via open access to information and corporate disclosure policies.

Acceptance of Gay Relationships and Gay Marriage

Acceptance of gay relationships has steadily increased, while opposition to gay marriage has steadily decreased, when tracked over the last several years, according to data from the Pew Research Center. Between one-quarter and one-third of gay and lesbian couples are raising children, a steadily rising number. And the most current surveys indicate that about half of all Americans support gay marriage.

Families And Relationships Are Transforming
A majority of Americans now say their definition of family includes same-sex couples with children, as well as married gay and lesbian couples. Regarding intimate relationships, surveys by the Gallup organization and other groups find that the quality of the relationship is more important to people today than simple allegiance to the institution of marriage. Census statistics and other data confirm this, showing, for example, a steady decline in the marriage rate over the last several decades, while cohabitation has steadily risen in each of those same decades. About half of all households today are headed by people who are single. And unmarried couples are as likely as married couples to be raising children: it's currently approaching 50 percent.

Some surveys report that at least 30 percent of those polled admit to having had an affair. Whether that's accurate or not, the upshot is that affairs are no longer viewed as immoral in today's culture. Moreover, attitudes towards prostitution are also shifting towards greater acceptance and focus on the rights of sex workers.

So, these are just some of the pervasive shifts underway. My read is that they link around an underlying theme that our culture is evolving in both consciousness and action, and that evolution will grow and strengthen over time. That's why the current social psychosis will fade. That's not only hopeful but important: The rise of the common good is both a necessary path for survival and security on an interdependent planet and the path towards personal psychological health, success and well being in this new world era.

Douglas LaBier, Ph.D., a business psychologist and psychotherapist, is Director of the Center for Progressive Development, in Washington, D.C. You may contact him at dlabier@CenterProgressive.org.

Follow Douglas LaBier on Twitter: www.twitter.com/douglaslabier

Jon Stewarts Final Speech at Rally to Restore Sanity

"The War on Raw Milk"---Mike Adams

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As a rule of thumb, I don't drink anything that comes out of a cow. But for the last several thousand years, a large percentage of the human population has consumed cow's milk -- a substance that admittedly contains quite an impressive collection of nutrients. The problem today is that those nutrients are artificially modified through pasteurization (cooking) and homogenization (breaking down fat molecules) to create a ready-made, highly processed cow's milk beverage with a long shelf life that can be sold to consumers as "milk."

The war on raw milk Posted: 7/12/2010 - Commentary by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger In the history of food, pasteurized, homogenized cow's milk is a relatively new thing. For most of recent history, milk has been consumed as a fresh, raw beverage, just hours out of the cow. Each day's milk was usually harvested that very morning from the local cow, and most farms had at least one milk cow. (For many families, it was what kept them alive through the harsh winters...) During all these centuries, fresh cow's milk was considered a nourishing, even lifesaving beverage that provided people with hard-to-find proteins and fats in times when calories were hard to come by. Pasteurization and the road to dead food This went on until roughly the end of the 19th century, when pasteurizationwas introduced to the milk industry as a way to increase the shelf life of milk by killing the bacteria that spoil it. By "cooking" the milk, large milk producers were able to centralize product production at distant locations (large-scale dairy farms) and then ship the product to consumers anywhere in the country. When kept at the right refrigeration temperature, this pasteurized milk now had a shelf life many times longer than raw milk.So the dairy industry grew profitable and large, and over the next few generations, Americans got used to "milk" meaning "pasteurized, homogenized milk" even though it was an unnatural alteration of the real milk that the country had grown up on. Raw milk rediscovered Fast forward to the 21st century: Now, more and more consumers are becoming aware of the health benefits of raw milk. It's loaded with active probiotics, of course, which we now know increase skin health and digestive health while potentially even improving cognitive function. So naturally, consumers started purchasing raw milk from their local farmers and coops in order to benefit from this raw, unprocessed food. (Actually, lots of health-conscious people have been doing this since the 1960's, but "raw milk" didn't really become popular among near-mainstream consumers until just the last few years...)When people buy raw milk from local farmers, this of course takes away profits from the large corporate milk producers that are selling pasteurized, homogenized milk. So the dairy industry attempted to get the federal government to destroy the competition (the raw milk producers). But instead of just saying, "We want you to destroy our competition," they made up an excuse, "Raw milk is dangerous!" Yep: The same beverage that America was raised on is now considered by the feds to be "too dangerous to drink." Sure, you can drink diet soda laced with aspartame or high-fructose corn syrup -- two ingredients known to cause degenerative disease -- but you can't drink raw, wholesome, fresh milk anyway because it's "too dangerous." The idiotic war against raw milk Now the war is on. State and federal regulatory agencies, spurred on by the monopolistic business practices of the dairy industry, have set out tocriminalize the sale of raw milk. They've raided raw milk resellers, arrested raw milk marketers and seized countless gallons of raw milk to be destroyed.Raw milk, the bureaucrats say, is dangerous because it hasn't been sanitized yet. Raw milk is "dirty" while cooked, pasteurized or irradiated milk is "clean." And Big Brother thinks you're not supposed to eat "dirty" foods like raw milk. Sure, you can smoke yourself into a lifetime of cancer -- that's fully approved by the government. You can slather your body with personal care products laced with cancer-causing chemicals, because that's also approved by the government. You can drink brain-busting aspartame, chow down on diabetes-promoting MSG, or swallow any number of mouthfuls of processed foods laced with a thousand different synthetic chemicals that probably cause everything from cancer to Alzheimer's. Go take a swim in the Gulf of Mexico and soak up some Corexit dispersant chemicals -- the government doesn't protect you from any of that. But raw milk? Well that's just too dangerous. It's all natural! And if you're the whored-out U.S. government -- now run by commercial interests --natural is bad! The secret government plot to kill all your food You see, food safety in America has come down to killing your food. Only "dead food" is "safe food" in the eyes of the FDA and state health authorities. That's why they killed your almonds (there are no more raw almonds commercially available in the United States of America), and it's the same reason why they're gearing up to irradiate all your fresh produce. (http://www.naturalnews.com/023945_f...)The government wants to kill your food but it has nothing at all to do with food safety. If the government were really interested in food safety, it would ban the stuff that really promotes disease: Fried fast food, toxic chemical additives like aspartame, empty calorie ingredients like white flour and bleached white sugar... you get the idea. But none of those things have been banned at all. Instead, of all the thousands of things that are bad for your health, the government has chosen to single out raw milk as somehow deserving the most attention -- even thought raw milk is arguably GOOD for your health and not bad in the least! So why does this matter to our freedom? Because now, not only is the government deciding what's good and bad for your (and legislating laws against your free choice); but the government's ability to determine what's good or bad is flawed in the first place. Freedom of choice Like most freedom-loving Americans, I don't think the government has any business telling you what to eat. (But then, neither do I think corporations should have Free Speech to advertise all their junk products, either, although that's another topic altogether.)If some guy in Brooklyn wants to eat himself to death on hamburgers and corn syrup, that's his right and his choice. The feds have no business criminalizing his food choices, even if they do seem rather poorly made. But even if the feds were to start enforcing its control over your food, it would only make sense to ban the most dangerous foods first... you know, the stuff that's really causing epidemic disease in America. Stuff like high-fructose corn syrup, aspartame, MSG, partially-hydrogenated oils, petrochemical-derived artificial food colors, dangerous chemical preservatives and so on. But none of those things are even being considered for any ban. And that means, by any reasonable logic, that the ban isn't about your health. It's not about "protecting you" from dangerous foods. The government, after all, approves the sale of cigarettes, alcohol, hair coloring chemicals and a thousand other things that are terrible for your health. They aren't interested in protecting your health in the least. What they are interested in doing is protecting their corporate masters in the highly influential dairy industry. And that's what this all comes down to: The war on raw milk is a juvenile attempt by the federal government to protect a profitable, powerful industry by destroying its competition regardless of the consequences to your health -- and regardless of what freedoms they destroy in the process. Your right to buy what you choose has now been overthrown by the government's desire to protect the processed-milk dairy industry. And that's why the cow in my CounterThink cartoon sprays the bureaucrats with raw milk, shouting, "Take THAT, you bureaucrats!" Permissions to use: Want to use this cartoon? Specific, limited permission is granted to reprint in any book, movie, website, magazine, newspaper, animation or other media under the following 'professional courtesy' conditions: Cartoon creator Mike Adams must be conspicuously credited. Web address www.NaturalNews.com must be posted below or adjacent to the cartoon in a conspicuous manner. If on the web, the link must be clickable. You may not use this cartoon in a disparaging context or manner. You may not charge for this cartoon. Truth Publishing retains all ownership, rights and copyrights. Reprint rights may be revoked, without notice, on a case by case basis, if reprint courtesy is, in our opinion, abused. High-resolutions files are available for film and print.

Wednesday, Aug. 18, 2010

What's So Great About Organic Food?

By Jeffrey Kluger

Update Appended: Aug. 25, 2010

Looking for a quick way to feel lousy about yourself? Then forget the idea of a healthy diet and just eat what your body wants you to eat. Your body wants meat; your body wants fat; your body wants salt and sugar. Your body will put up with fruits and vegetables if it must, but only after all the meat, fat, salt and sugar are gone. And as for the question of where your food comes from — whether it's locally grown, sustainably raised, grass-fed, free range or pesticide-free? Your body doesn't give a hoot.

But you and your body aren't the only ones with a stake in this game. Your doctor has opinions about what you should eat. So does your family. And so too do the food purists who lately seem to be everywhere, insisting that everything that crosses your lips be raised and harvested and brought to market in just the right way. If you find this tiresome — even intrusive — you're not alone. "It's food, man. It's identity," says James McWilliams, a professor of environmental history at Texas State University. "We encourage people to eat sensibly and virtuously, and then we set this incredibly high bar for how they do it." (See whether you should buy organic or conventional food.)

The ideal — as we're reminded and reminded and reminded — is to go organic, to trade processed foods for fresh foods and the supermarket for the farmers' market. Organic foods of all kinds currently represent only about 3% of the total American market, according to the most recent numbers from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), but it's a sector we all should be supporting more.

That sounds like a great idea, but we'll pay a price for it. Organic fruits and vegetables cost 13¢ to 36¢ per lb. more than ordinary produce, though prices fluctuate depending on the particular food and region of the country. Milk certified as hormone- and antibiotic-free costs $6 per gal. on average, compared with $3.50 for ordinary grocery-store milk.

What's more, while grass-fed beef is lower in fat, and milk without chemicals is clearly a good idea, it's less obvious that organic fruits and vegetables have a nutritional edge to speak of. A 2009 study in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition led to a firestorm in the food world. It found no difference between organic and conventional produce with regard to all but three of the vitamins and other food components studied, and conventional produce actually squeaked past organic for one of those three. (See the results of a farm vs. supermarket taste test.)

"We draw these bright lines between organic and conventional food," says McWilliams. "But science doesn't draw those lines. They crisscross, and you have people on both sides of the argument cherry-picking their data." For consumers trying to stay healthy and feed their families — and do both on budgets that have become tighter than ever — the ideological back-and-forth does no good at all. What's needed are not arguments but answers.

The Wages of Eating
The biggest reason not to ignore the food purists is that in a lot of ways they're right. Our diet is indeed killing us, and it's killing the planet too. Earlier this month, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta released a study revealing that nearly 27% of Americans are now considered obese (that is, more than 20% above their ideal weight), and in nine states, the obesity rate tops 30%. We eat way too much meat — up to 220 lb. per year for every man, woman and child in the U.S. — and only 14% of us consume our recommended five servings of fruits and vegetables per day. Our processed food is dense with salt and swimming in high-fructose corn syrup, two flavors we can't resist. Currently, enough food is manufactured in the U.S. for every American to consume 3,800 calories per day — we need only 2,350 in a healthy diet — and while some of that gets thrown away, most is gobbled up long before it can go stale on the shelves.

See Dr. Mehmet Oz's take on organic food.

Keeping the food flowing — and the prices low enough for people to continue buying it — requires a lot of industrial-engineering tricks, and those have knock-on effects of their own. Up to 10 million tons of chemical fertilizer per year are poured onto fields to cultivate corn alone, for example, which has increased yields 23% from 1990 to 2009 but has led to toxic runoffs that are poisoning the beleaguered Gulf of Mexico. Beef raised in industrial conditions are dosed with antibiotics and growth-boosting hormones, leaving chemical residues in meat and milk. A multicenter study released just two days after the obesity report showed that American girls as young as 7 are entering puberty at double the rate they were in the late 1990s, perhaps as a result of the obesity epidemic but perhaps too as a result of the hormones in their environment — including their food. And for out-of-season foods to be available in all seasons as they now are, crops must be grown in one place and flown or trucked thousands of miles to market. That leaves an awfully big carbon footprint for the privilege of eating a plum in December.

The food wars are fought on multiple fronts, but it's the battle over meat that generates the most ferocious disagreement. Americans have always been unapologetic carnivores, which befits a nation that grew up chasing buffalo and raising cattle across endless stretches of open plains. But lately things have gotten out of hand. The U.S. produces a breathtaking 80 billion lb. of meat per year, with poultry alone making up 35 billion lb. It's now common knowledge that the animals are raised in mostly miserable conditions, jammed together on factory farms and filled with high-calorie, corn-based feed that fattens them up and moves them to slaughter as fast as possible. It can take up to two and a half years to raise a grass-fed cow, while a feedlot animal may face the knife after just 14 months. (See TIME's special report "How to Live 100 Years.")

The idea of animals living such short, brutish lives introduces an element of altruism into the organic-vs.-commercial debate over meat that isn't there for other foods. Just this month, Ohio Governor Ted Strickland brokered a truce between animal-rights activists and farmers in his state to improve the living conditions of hogs, veal calves and hens; that agreement followed similar reforms enacted in California in 2008.

"When you're raising something with a circulatory system and a nervous system, they deserve care," says Bev Eggleston, the owner of EcoFriendly Foods, a decidedly nonindustrial farm in Moneta, Va., that produces cattle, hogs, veal, lamb and poultry. Eggleston's animals live in fields and coops, not feedlots and cages. The farm has a petting zoo, and the doors of the slaughterhouse are open to visitors so they can see the clean and as-humane-as-possible conditions in which the animals are killed. "I want to speak for the animals," Eggleston says. "When I pull a knife, I want them to know their gift is being received."

There are material advantages to that kind of humane treatment. Cattle that eat more grass have higher ratios of omega-3 fatty acids to omega-6s, a balance that's widely believed to reduce the risk of cancer, heart disease and arthritis and to improve cognitive function. Take the cows out of the pasture, put them in a feedlot and stuff them with corn-based feed, and the omega-3s plummet. (See a special report on women and health.)

"The levels are almost undetectable after three months," says Ken Jaffe, a former physician who now runs Slope Farms, an open-air cattle farm in the Catskill Mountains of New York. The big beef manufacturers concede that while the ratio for omega-6s to omega-3s is 1.5 to 1 for grass-fed cows, it leaps to 7 to 1 for those that are grain-fed. But industry reps challenge the significance of those numbers. "The best ratio hasn't been determined yet in terms of nutritional balance," says Shalene McNeill, a registered dietitian working for the National Beef Cattlemen's Association, an industry group. "And it's important to remember that this is just one small part of a consumer's overall diet."

Farm-raised animals are also higher in conjugated lineoleic acids, fatty acids that, according to studies of lab animals, may help reduce the risk of various cancers. What's more, animals not raised on feedlots have less chance of spreading E. coli bacteria through contact with other animals' manure, though the industry insists it is making improvements, with better spacing of animals on the lots and better cleaning methods in slaughterhouses.

Hogs and chickens present fewer problems than cattle — at least in terms of chemicals — since government regulations prohibit farmers from using growth hormones on either animal. But antibiotics are still served up liberally, and that creates other dangers. Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), for example, an often deadly pathogen associated mostly with hospital-acquired infections, has been increasingly turning up in hog farmers, who contract it from their animals. In one study last year, a University of Iowa epidemiologist found that 49% of the hogs she tested were positive for MRSA, as were 45% of the humans who handled them.

Far more troubling — if only because the problem is far more widespread — is the recent recall of more than half a billion eggs from two producers due to salmonella contamination. Salmonella is hardly unheard of even among chickens raised in comfortable, free-range conditions. But when you confine half a dozen birds at a time in cages no larger than an opened broadsheet newspaper, and stack hundreds or thousands of those so-called battery cages together, you're going to spread the bacterium a lot faster. The egg manufacturers stress that thoroughly cooking eggs can kill salmonella — which is true as far as it goes. But treating chickens like conscious creatures instead of egg-manufacturing machinery can help avoid outbreaks in the first place.

Short of swearing off eggs and meat — a perfectly good choice, but with only 3% of Americans describing themselves as vegetarians, not likely for most people — there are no easy solutions. For one thing, if we all decided to switch to healthier, chemical-free meat, there wouldn't be remotely enough to go around. Only 3% of cattle in the U.S. are organically raised, and just 0.02% of hogs and 1.5% of poultry. What's more, that scarcity helps drive the already premium price higher still.

Another alternative is to eat more fish, which is healthier anyway because it's leaner, lower in calories and higher in omega-3s. But with fish stocks collapsing worldwide because of rampant overconsumption, there's only so far that solution could take us. A half measure — but a very powerful one — is simply to cut back on whatever meat we do eat, even if we can't quit it altogether. This shouldn't be too hard: Americans already consume at least 1.5 times as much meat as the USDA recommends in its famed food pyramid. And with plenty of protein to be found in eggs, soy, cheese, grains, nuts, legumes and leafy green vegetables, there is no shortage of ways to compensate. (See "The Battle for Global Health.")

"You need to eat animals only to close the nutrient cycle," says Fred Kirschenmann, a distinguished fellow at the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture at Iowa State University. "If we changed a few things about how we live, we'd have fewer animals in the system."

Cash Crops
When animal protein, whether organic or not, becomes a supporting player in the diet, then fruits, veggies and grains take the lead. That's generally a good thing, but here too there are complications. The back-to-the-land ideal of farming without the use of synthetic pesticides and other chemicals can take you only so far in a country with 309 million mouths to feed (not to mention a world with 6.8 billion). Say what you will about the environmental depredations of agribusiness, industrial farms coax up to twice as much food out of every acre of land as organic farms do. And even that full-tilt output may not be enough to keep up with a global population that's galloping ahead to a projected 9 billion by 2050.

"Only about 5% of the arable land on the planet remains unused," says McWilliams. "But we'll need to increase food production by 50% to 100%." If we have to spray, fertilize and even genetically engineer our way there, that's something we may simply have to accept. (See Dr. Mehmet Oz's take on organic food.)

In the U.S., running out of crop foods is not a problem — at least not yet — but pesticide residues on fruits and vegetables cause people some perfectly reasonable worries. Properly washing or peeling produce can take care of most of the problem, but if you buy organic, you avoid the pesticide issue altogether, right? Not necessarily. It's not just that drift from nearby nonorganic farms can contaminate other crops in the vicinity; it's also that organic farmers use pesticides of their own. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, there are now 195 registered biopesticides — substances derived from animals, plants or minerals that are toxic to certain species — used in 780 commercial products. There is broad agreement that biopesticides are not as dangerous as commercial pesticides, but less toxic doesn't mean nontoxic, and even such lower-impact chemistry has a nasty habit of hanging around in soil and water longer than you want it to. "Organic farming may represent only 2% of the total of all farming," says McWilliams, "but what if it became 20%? The chemicals are used only sparingly now, but they wouldn't be then."

Organic fertilizers are less of a problem, since they consist mostly of manure, as well as other relatively benign materials like peat, seaweed, saltpeter and compost. Humble as such substances are, however, they can become awfully pricey, because you need very big quantities to pack the same fertilizing punch as synthetic brands do. "It can take four tons of manure per acre to raise food," says McWilliams. "When you know that, a bag of synthetic fertilizer starts to look pretty good."

Wallet and Palate
But for most consumers — even those who think of themselves as environmentally conscious — the critical considerations in deciding to go organic involve the far more personal matters of price, flavor and nutrition. Last year's nutrient study had a lot of organic partisans wincing — and a lot of commercial growers feeling smug — but one paper is hardly the whole story. The real difference between organic and nonorganic produce is in the relative presence of micronutrients such as copper, iron and manganese, as well as folic acid, none of which were included in the study. With these, the results are mixed. (See whether you should buy organic or conventional food.)

In a meta-analysis conducted by the Organic Center, a nonprofit group in Boulder, Colo., organic produce was found to be 25% higher in phenolic acids and antioxidants. "It's these components that are deficient in American diets, so that makes this finding especially significant," says Charles Benbrook, the group's chief scientist. But the organic label alone is not enough to ensure that all consumers get the same boost. "The real nutrient value in produce comes from the soil," says Kirschenmann. "So that's a mixed deal unless you know the farmer and know how he's managing his soil."

The farmer also plays the biggest role in determining the most subjective of all variables: taste. You can start a lot of arguments about whether organic crops actually have better, fresher, more complex flavors than industrial crops do, but without a double-blind taste test, there's no way to know. On a few points, most people agree: a freakishly large, overly engineered tomato or strawberry designed to ripen en route to a distribution center will never come close to the taste of its vine-ripened, fresh-picked cousin. The Red Delicious apple is the poster fruit for what can go wrong when commercial growers manipulate their product too much. Bred and rebred for an ever redder skin and an ever more tapered shape, the apples became mealy, juiceless and all but unpalatable inside. (See the results of a farm vs. supermarket taste test.)

That, however, is not to say organic growers don't also try to prettify their produce before revealing it to the world. "Green markets can be a kind of food pornography," says Manny Howard, author of My Empire of Dirt, about his experiences with backyard farming. "You buy a big bushel of beet greens without a wormhole in it, and that's just not what farm food looks like."

There may be flavor to be found in lovely and unlovely food alike, and a lot of things have to go right to raise the best-tasting produce. It's not just the quality of the soil that's at work, says Kirschenmann. "Selecting the right variety of plant and using the right mix of compost are important too. With farm-to-table food, the farmers are in many ways the chefs, as opposed to, say, molecular gastronomy, in which so much happens in the kitchen."

The kitchen, of course, is the center of everything for families too, and this is where the shouting of the food partisans fades to babble. Eating an apple is almost always better than not eating an apple, no matter where it came from. And getting the whole brood into the habit of sitting down to a meal of lean meats, lots of veggies and judicious amounts of carbs and starches is hard enough without bringing politics into the mix. Farmers' markets are undeniably great — if you can afford them, if there's one near you and if you have time between the job and the kids to make a special trip when you know you can get everything in a single stop at the supermarket. The food industry undeniably churns out all manner of dangerous and addictive junk without a shred of real nutritional value in it, but there are also food companies that manage to get healthy, high-quality food to market and keep the cost of it reasonable.

The answer, ultimately, is for the two sets of producers — and their two sets of customers — to find a better way to co-exist. It's important to crack down on the industry's most egregious and polluting practices — to say nothing of its punishing treatment of animals — but we need to make sure the food still gets to the stores. It's important too to support the local-farming movement not only to make more fresh foods available to more consumers but also to boost a growing economic sector and perhaps bring down prices as efficiencies of scale come up.

"If we all had to concentrate on raising our own food, we wouldn't have time to do anything else," says Howard. Happily, we don't have to do that anymore. But that doesn't let us entirely off the hook. We still have to get smart about what the people who bring us our food are selling, to find the right mix of the commercial and the local, the organic and the industrial. There's a lot more than just groceries on the line — there's health and long life too.

The original version of this article, which appeared in the Aug. 30, 2010, issue of TIME, has been updated to reflect the egg recall.

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