But I love to hear stories of farmers bucking the system and reaping the rewards. Take George and Kate Heathcote.

The publicity shots from the British reality TV show, A Farm Life, for which they agreed to be guinea pigs might make them look like an old-fashioned cliche, but this is a thoroughly progressive family in so many ways.

George does most of the cooking and the lion’s share of child care of their three kids aged three to seven, while Kate works as a registrar surgeon in Portsmouth. 

The farm is also largely George’s responsibility, although they all muck in, literally, when required.

And, unlike so many others on the land, the family is doing well, thanks to a savvy decision to float modern farming methods.

Warborne Farm is organic, from its 300 varieties of vegetables and 100 varieties of fruit, to the myriad animals it produces.

The couple uses crop rotation, rather than chemicals, to sustain the soil that provides their livelihood. While the more labour intensive farming method requires more bodies than usual, the Heathcotes make up for it by cutting out supermarkets and selling their produce direct to customers. 

“Supplying supermarkets was a soul-destroying enterprise,’ George told the Daily Mail ahead of the show’s launch. “No one seemed to care about quality. We were given rock-bottom prices for lamb, for example, which meant we had to cram as many sheep as we could into fields to get maximum yield.

“Overstocking meant sheep were poorer quality. It was also bad for the environment, because the land was overgrazed. I knew there had to be a better way. I wanted to grow food in season that I was proud of, for people who cared and appreciated it. I also wanted to protect the environment.” 

Within a few years of going organic they sell 200 boxes a week. Okay, it’s not going to earn them a listing in Forbes rich list, but it does earn them a good living and they do a world of good at the same time. What a lesson for their kids, too (and all without a television in the house).

More power to them and their kind.

And so it was with the passing of Paul Newman at the weekend, with many describing him as having lived an “exemplary life”. The difference, however, is it’s hard to argue with that or any of the accolades that have been bestowed upon the owner of those sparkling blue eyes since the world learnt of his death from cancer at 83.

He was certainly more than memorable in many a flick – hustling the best in Cool Hand Luke and The Color of Money (for which he won an Oscar); knocking back booze and hurling insults in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof; or as one half of a dynamic duo with Robert Redford in The Sting and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.

But Newman also clocked up plenty of brownie points off-screen. Yes, there was his celebrated 50-year union with Joanne Woodward (“I have steak at home, why go out for hamburger?”); his sense of humour and love of practical jokes (he once had a crushed car installed in Redford’s house) and car racing (one of his last screen credits is as the voice of Doc in the animated Cars); and the founding of the Scott Newman Center, set up to warn of the dangers of alcohol and drug abuse after he lost his son to a drug overdose.

He was also a passionate liberal who was thrilled to find himself on Richard Nixon’s list of enemies.

But it was in the unlikely realm of the kitchen where Newman had his greatest impact. He turned his homemade salad dressing into a global brand that dishes out all of the company’s profits to those most in need. Started in 1983 with his friend and writer A.E. Hotchner with the motto “shameless exploitation in pursuit of the common good”, Newman’s Own has given away more than $250 million around the world, courtesy of that dressing and some other well-chosen ranges – all overseen by the man himself.

Newman has also been credited with helping to bring organic food into the mainstream, although he would have been the first to admit it was his daughter Nell who was the driving force. In order to convince her dad it was a good idea to launch an organic range, she prepared him an organic Thanksgiving dinner. It must have been delicious because it worked.

Bearing the slogan “great products that just happen to be organic”, Newman’s Own Organics came out at a time when organic was about as far from the mainstream as modelling is from world peace. The branch of the company, which is headed up by Nell, now has a product line of 55.

“He did a great job of endorsing the product and bringing it to a mainstream audience,”  Viella Ship, director of marketing for the California Certified Organic Farmers, told the San Francisco Chronicle. “He was an authentic guy, and that helped the product. Now if it were Donald Trump trying to sell organics, I don’t know if it’d work.”

Most definitely not. Unlike the bouffant one, Paul Newman was the genuine article. “I’m not running for sainthood,” he once said of the charitable work that gave him the most satisfaction. “I just happen to think that in life we need to be a little like the farmer, who puts back into the soil what he takes out.”

The site dedicated to his charitable business was brought to a crashing halt by the flood of wellwishers, visitors temporarily having to make do with a well-worded tribute to the man who began it all. A modern message for a truly remarkable man who will be missed for more reasons than a star on Hollywood’s much vaunted Walk of Fame might suggest.

In its response to the Federal Government’s Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme Green Paper, the country’s largest organic business and farmer representative group has urged the government to take eco-friendly farming practices into account.

“While we applaud policy moves towards reduced carbon pollution, discounting agriculture from a proposed ETS omits what could arguably be the biggest single optimal positive impact on carbon abatement and sequestering: Soils,” BFA director Andrew Monk argues.

BFA says that better carbon soil sequestration by landowners using biological systems, minus emissions-intensive fertilisers and other chemicals, was of huge benefit to the environment.

“Organic and biological farmers should be given the opportunity to opt in to an emissions scheme from 2010,” says Dr Monk. “Organically managed soils are active models of an agricultural system which can deliver carbon sequestration and emission reduction benefits right now.”

The BFA says soils under organic management have the potential to store carbon for up to 1000 years. In addition, the fact that there are no synthetic chemical outputs from organic farming methods means a reduction in harmful CO2s of up to 60 percent compared with non-organic practices.

“Organic farmers have to date internalised the costs of a production system that provides environmental benefits,” Dr Monk says. “It’s now time for stronger policy and R&D recognition of the merits of organic production in Australa.”

For the full text of the BFA’s green paper submission, click here. 

It all starts here: A healthy soil, free of nasty pesticides, is the only way to grow. Picture: Aramanda

For many people reading this, there is nothing alluring about soil, not even the sweet, consistency-of-crumbled-chocolate-cake organic variety. Like a jolly good pair of wellington boots, you can’t sex it up either. The idea of plunging a hand into tilled soil, deeply inhaling its richness and marvelling at the worms that twist about inside it probably has about as much appeal as the prospect of an intimate medical procedure.

So it can come as a surprise to learn that soil – and, more specifically the microscopic life it supports -    still plays a pivotal part in our physical wellbeing.  And now more than ever before, it plays a leading role in the health of the planet.

Subsistence farmers across the globe have probably known intuitively for centuries what a world-first study into organic farming concluded back in the 1940s; that the health of humans, animals and soil are one “indivisible whole” and that biological balance begins and ends with a “truly fertile soil”.

British organic farming stalwart Lady Eve Balfour published the findings in her book, The Living Soil, at a time when agricultural systems worldwide were moving away from the very “back-to-nature” concepts that organic farming espoused, towards high-input, high-yield production.

Her claim that conventional farming worked against, rather than with, natural systems, depleting the fertility of soil and the nutritional complexity and punch of the foods it yields, placed her right out there on the lunatic fringe.  It is a reflection of the changed status of the organic industry worldwide that Balfour and the likes of Prince Charles, once considered an odd and eccentric mascot for the British organic movement, are now widely seen as visionary campaigners in the global push for more sustainable farming.

The organic difference

So what, exactly, is it about organic soil that distinguishes organic produce from mainstream fare? Richard Mee, who runs an organic farm near Leicestershire in the United Kingdom, believes organic farming’s lower yields (production is between about 30 and 60 per cent less than conventional farming) and the “microscopic wildlife” in fertile soils holds the key.

“One theory is that foods grown in organic soil absorb more health-giving trace elements because there are more nutrients available and fewer plants competing for them,” he says.

Higher nutrient levels are the result of a system of crop rotation in which grass and clover lay down the foundations of the soil, introducing the life giving nitrogen that chemical fertilisers mimic. As one organic farmer put it: “Nitrogen from plants harnesses energy from the sun rather than from fossil fuels, which are used in chemical fertilisers.”

The grass and clover is grazed by livestock and nutrients from their waste provide further fuel for the soil, preparing it for planting. A single organic cycle starts with grazing livestock and ends after two to three years of crop growth – a process that takes seven years, with each cycle adding another layer of fertility to the soil.

“Conventional farming may have higher yields but the soil nutrients are diluted because there are more plants taking up the good stuff,” says Richard.

Microscopic organisms in the soil facilitate the plants’ absorption of trace elements but they are adversely affected by chemical sprays and fertilisers, he says. “The wildlife in the soil is what earthworms live on and the earthworms break down the soil, making it easier for plants to absorb the nutrients that are there.”

Soil alive with great bugs

According to the US-based Organic Trade Association, a single teaspoon of compost-rich organic soil can host between 600 million and one billion helpful bacteria from 15,000 species. The chemically treated equivalent can host as few as 100 bacteria.

Richard Mee says chemical fertilisers are deceptive. “These fertilisers promote lush growth but they make the plants much more susceptible to pests and disease. Our organic fields are not as lush but the plants we grow are stronger for it,” he says.

Truly fertile soil is the result of common sense and nature left very much to its own devices.  “It takes thousands of years to build soil up to this point but, unfortunately, only a few years to destroy it.”

According to the OTA, it takes 3000 years to naturally form six inches of topsoil and one inch of that is eroded every 28 years as a result of conventional farming practices. The association states that organic farming can produce the same amount of topsoil in as little as 50 to 60 years.

The idea that soils are complex and variable is illustrated by a single field on Richard Mee’s property, which incorporates three or four different soil types that relate directly to typography. Glacial soils on high ground contrast with low-lying soils that are typically “higher value and more workable”. Soils in valleys and swales emerged from ancient river beds and have higher drought resistance.

“Each soil type has a different degree of drought resistance, a different level of pest resistance built in to it,” he says, pointing out that organic farmers use these differences to their advantage rather than “throwing chemicals” at any shortfalls.

Cheap attitude costs dearly

The global push for higher and higher yields is playing havoc with the natural order of soils. “About 95 per cent of customers in the UK don’t care about the quality of the food they eat – they just care that it is cheap,” Richard says. “They would rather have another holiday in the year than spend their money on organic food – especially during an economic downturn.”

Organic butcher Jason Quittenton, 38, has worked on organic farms since his early teens and credits his unusual good health (he has never had a day off work due to illness) to the clean nature of the food he grows and eats. Raising a rare breed of short-horn cattle and growing his own produce on a farm near Coventry in the UK, he says cattle grown for the mainstream market are like a different species to the traditional breeds he raises for a select clientele.

“We go for quality rather than quantity – our animals grow slowly and we don’t hurry them along with drugs,” he says. “They graze on grass and clover grown in organic soil and you get nutrients from the soil in their meat the same way you get them from cows’ milk.”

Crops lose valuable nutrients

One of the world’s leading experts on soil microbiology, Dr Elaine Ingham, believes data from the United States Department of Agriculture showing a considerable drop in the nutritional quality of food produced in the US since the 1920s reflects modern agricultural practices.

A ten-fold decrease in micronutrients and proteins in commercially grown crops had occurred since inorganic fertilisers and pesticides were introduced, she says. While some argue this has more to do with new varieties of high-yield crops and food warehousing, others are less convinced.

David Younie, a senior organic farming specialist at the Scottish Agricultural College, believes high-yield crops produced today are lower in zinc, potassium, iron, magnesium, selenium and other important nutrients as a direct result of the widespread use of artificial soil fertilisers.

“With artificial fertilisers it is the crop that is being fed rather than the soil so you are only supplying the nutrients that are in the fertiliser and you are also creating an imbalance in the nutrient content of the harvested crop. The higher the yield of the crop, the lower the nutrients – there will be a deficiency one way or another.”

Land of plenty: Cattle producers reap rewards of organic practices. Picture: obebeef.com.au

It can be a challenging game running cattle on the rangelands of Australia. There is the extreme isolation, the heat and dust, the seasons are unreliable and even when the rain comes, there isn’t much of it.

But Scott Fraser, along with a couple of his fellow cattle producers in the channel country of far west Queensland and New South Wales, realised that with organic beef production, all those negatives could be turned into positives.

“One of the problems is isolation, but now it is a positive because we are away from industries and intensive agriculture,” he says. “Then we are in a dry zone which is good because we have no persistent pests like worms or buffalo fly and weeds, And the soil is very arid but once it does get wet, it’s very fertile and grows natural grasses that are very high in nutrients, this is recognised as the best natural fattening country in the world.”

The irregular seasons also mean the land is stocked at very low rates and much of it is naturally in fallow so feed is mulched back into the soil. “You dig into it and up comes an organic production cycle,” Scott says.

Hiqh quality exports

And so Organic Beef Exporters (OBE) was born, a grower-owned company that now supplies high quality grass-fed beef to markets throughout Australia, Asia and the United States with the highest standards of organic certification. Driven by a desire to have greater control over the price he received for his high-quality beef cattle, Scott was one of the founding directors of OBE, set up in 1996. “We knew we had a good product and we were sick of bundling it up into everyone else’s boxes,” he says.

OBE now has 32 shareholders and three directors, a company manager and two marketing managers. CEO Simone Tully says with a combined herd size of between 80,000 and 100,000 cattle, it is a multi-million dollar business, one of the biggest organic beef producers in the world.

Early taste testing exercises convinced them they had a ready market for their organic beef and they quickly got orders from Australian restaurants, but to get the sales volumes they needed to make the company viable they realised that had to find export markets.

They now send four containers a month to the US and two containers a month to various markets in Asia, Simone says this also ensures there is a market for all the various cuts of beef. OBE also sells frozen hamburger patties and pre-cooked meatballs direct to catering firms in Australia and overseas.

From dry to big wet

Scott and his wife Paula run Nooyeah Downs near Thargomindah in the Bulloo Shire. The property has been in Scott’s family for more than 50 years and he was born and bred there. Located 1100km west of Brisbane, the station spreads over 84,000ha (208,000 acres) in the floodplains of the Bulloo River, part of the unique channel country of central Australia.

This vast inland delta is patterned with small creeks and rivers that are dry for most of the year but flood in the summer wet season when tropical rains to the north drain down through central Australia towards Lake Eyre. While rainfall is only 250mm a year (10 inches), around 70 per cent of Scott’s property is regularly flooded.

“The cattle are all right, they are pretty smart and they can swim out or get up on to high ground,” he says. His organic prime lambs can need a little more help to get out of the floodwaters.  “We keep them in the home paddock so we can keep and eye on them, but this year I had to get out on a horse and push them out of the water,” he says.

As the waters recede the once-arid soil is soon covered in lush grasses, perfect of fattening livestock quickly. The cattle are a cross of santa gertrudis, shorthorn and black angus breeds, especially selected for the conditions.

Keeping stock numbers down

Scott has a very low stock rate of one head to 40ha (100acres), partly due to the drought that has ravaged much of Australia for the past seven years, but also due to a deliberate strategy by OBE producers to look after the country by keeping stock numbers down – a long way from the traditional approach to running cattle which is usually “the more, the better”.

“When my father was here, I shudder at the stocking rates now, it was unbelievable,” Scott says.“You know, it’s not cheap to grow grass, but if you don’t overstock it, you can have a consistent through-put and ride the seasons a lot easier, with paddocks to spare.”

Scott says when the season is good, the temptation is there to restock but I just say: “No, just leave it there, it will come in handy, and it does. It is very satisfying, it is very exciting.”

And it is all possible because consumers are prepared to pay a premium for good quality, organic beef, he says. These days when he occasionally sends a conventional load of cattle off, “Oh, gee it hurts,” he laughs. “But we need a premium because you can’t just go and buy more organic cattle to restock when you want to, it is a slow process, breeding up again.”

Taste of the Outback

The fact that the beef comes from such splendidly remote and exotic country, on the edge of the Simpson Desert, is also integral to the attraction of OBE beef, which is billed as “the taste of the Australian Outback” and used to promote far western Queensland.

OBE’s founders were keen to ensure their enterprise benefited their community and future generations as well. It has a social justice policy that outlines a commitment to community and equal opportunity employment. Scott explains that both he and OBE chairman David Brook, had served time as their respective shires’ mayors. “So we came at it from a different point of view,” he says. “There was a commitment made that if we can do local, we will.”

Being a part of OBE also offers shareholders and their family members career opportunities in an agricultural business beyond the paddock. Scott says several are employed in OBE already and his own son and daughter are studying marketing – one at university and the other from a more ‘hands-on perspective’ at home – with a view to getting involved in the family business.

“I used to travel 30km, but these days the kids have to travel 200km to socialise. We have taken a view that if we move them further down the food chain they can still get out and get some social contact,” he says. “It helps to broaden the kids, there are aspects of farming which are really exciting. There is a bit more enthusiasm for farming, rather than just selling the cattle up the road at the saleyards, you can go overseas and see the product in LA or New York and then you can come home and enjoy working on it, you can see where your efforts are going.”

Appearances aside, these glasses are in fact worlds apart. The milk in one derives from a wide range of dairy herds. Like dairy cows throughout the developed world, the cows that produced it feed on pastures that have been treated with synthetic insecticides, herbicides and fungicides, and with solvent-based fertilisers. Many, possibly all, have been routinely administered antibiotics, worm treatment, fertility drugs and growth hormones. They might also have been fed genetically modified food and animal products.

Full cream: Organic milk contains healthy fats. Picture: Kylie May

The milk in the other glass is the product of a single herd of organically grown and raised cows. They feed on pastures that are not treated with artificial pesticides or fertilisers and receive antibiotics only after homeopathic options have failed. During treatment, the cows do not provide milk for consumption and at no time are they given fertility drugs or fed genetically modified food or animal products.

Winning over the skeptics

Taking a closer look at the two glasses, I wonder to what degree fertility and growth products, antibiotics and agricultural chemicals show up in cow’s milk. The Internet seems to bubble with alarmist claims. Beyond the misinformation and hype, scientists generally agree that, like humans, cows excrete through their milk harmful compounds that they are fed or administered.

About 40 per cent of milk sales in Denmark are organic and the figures in the UK and the US are six per cent and three per cent respectively. As demand for organic milk increases, some farmers in the US in particular have been criticised by consumer watchdog groups for bending the rules, using high-intensity farming methods.

The weight of evidence in favour of organic milk has grown to the extent that many national food bodies, such as the UK’s notoriously sceptical Food Standards Agency, now generally acknowledge the nutritional advantages of organic over conventional milk.

The contents of the two glasses getting frostier by the moment on my kitchen bench betray none of the issues shaking up the dairy industry worldwide. They look the same, smell the same and appear to have the same consistency. Perhaps their disparate origins might be betrayed in a blind taste test.

Passing the taste test

My teenage daughter, a milk lover who has arrived in the kitchen after a thirsty day at school, is a convenient guinea pig. Does she have a preference between these two different “brands” of milk, I ask? Raising exhibit A to her mouth, she tastes the milk, rolls it around on her tongue, savours and swallows. Exhibit B gets the same initial treatment. But there is an appreciative pause mid-way through, a smacking of the lips at the end. The organic milk is declared tastier.

Lisa Togno runs an organic dairy on a lush property in south-western Australia. Since she converted the farm to organic two years ago, demand has increased from 300 litres of milk a week to more than 5500 litres. She believes consumers are wising up to unsustainable farming practices in the face of the global food crisis and environmental concerns, but “cleaner” food play a central role.

“Organic milk tastes like milk used to,” she said, adding that the only fertility treatment meted out to her herd are two horny bulls. “It’s creamy and the flavour is rich and pure.”

Glass full of antioxidants

But taste is only a part of the organic picture. One of the world’s most expensive studies on organic foods last year found that compared to conventional milk, organic milk contained up to 70 per cent more antioxidants, naturally occuring substances in plants that protect the body from free radicals, or harmful chemicals.

The four-year project, led by Newcastle University, cost 12 million pounds and prompted calls for the UK’s Food Standards Agency to concede that organic milk has a defined health benefit compared with nonorganic milk.

Richard Hampton, a spokesman for the UK’s biggest organic dairy farmers cooperative, Omsco, believes this official tick of approval is inevitable. He told Trustorganicfood.com that the agency had so far refused this request on the basis of insufficient research. “But we believe this will change in the long term as the body of evidence grows,” he said.

The co-ordinator of the Newcastle University study, Professor Carlo Leifert, said the research confirmed there were more nutritionally desirable compounds and fewer harmful ones in organic foods. “Our research is now trying to find out where the difference between organic and conventional food comes from,” he said.

Drinking good fats

In May 2008, results from a further study by Newcastle University showed that cows grazed on organic properties in the UK produced milk that contained significantly higher beneficial fatty acids, antioxidants and vitamins than their conventional “high input” counterparts.

The Nafferton Ecological Farming Group study found that during the summer months, one beneficial fat in particular – conjugated linoleic acid, or CLA9 – was found in 60 per cent higher concentrations.

One of the first studies to show an actual health impact from organic food consumption was published in the peer reviewed British Journal of Nutrition in 2007. The Netherlands research, by the Louis Bolk Institute, showed that the incidence of eczema in young children was reduced by 36 per cent among those who consumed organic dairy products.

Scientists generally agree that children may be more susceptible to pesticide residues since they have a higher intake of food per unit of body weight and are less able to eliminate toxins.

Convinced of the benefits of organic milk, how can consumers be sure they are getting what they pay that little extra for?  In general they are advised to become familiar with their country’s own peak governing body for organic standards, and the consumer logos that represent this seal of approval. In the UK, the Soil Association leads the charge.

In the US, the United States Department of Agriculture sets the standards, but a visit to the Organic Consumers Association or the Organic Trade Association website is well worthwhile. By buying products marked with these logos, consumers can be sure that the milk they are buying comes from an approved source.