Aft AftV w w 9 w w 0 B The Michigan Daily - Wednesday, October 3, 2007 Wednesday, October 3, 2007 - The Michigan Daily B FOOD From page 4B smallerproportionofits income on country. But the affordability has food than in any other developed its own cost. Faced with an abun- Start Your Career in Accounting Northeastern's MS in Accounting/MBA " For liberal arts, non-accounting majors . 15-month program with 3-month paid residency . Proven track record of 100% job placement at leading accounting firms Stop our booth Graduate School Information Fair Wednesday, October 10, 2007 2:00 p.m. - 6:00 p.m. Michigan Union dance of cheap food, Americans have a high daily caloric intake and are beset with a host of food- related afflictions - a high inci- dence of obesity, diabetes, heart disease and stroke. I often hear the question - why is organic food so expensive? This is the wrong question. The right question is - why is regular food so cheap? Although the check- out price is low, the full cost is much higher. Agricultural sub- sidies, which now cost taxpay- ers over $25 billion per year, go to conventionally produced food. Conventional agriculture aggra- vates environmental deteriora- tion through soil erosion, runoff of synthetic fertilizers and pesti- cides into wetlands, biocide poi- soning of non-target plants and animals, greater greenhouse gas emissions and loss of native bio- diversity. Programs to reverse this damage are funded by tax- payers. And finally, most research funding, whether from federal or industry sources, is directed toward conventional agriculture. Thus we pay for conventional agriculture at many stages. In contrast, organic agriculture pays its own way. Ongoing research is revealing other benefits of organic food and farming. A recent study from the University of California at Davis showed that organically grown tomatoes had higher levels of anti-oxidants (anti-aging, anti- cancer compounds) than conven- tional tomatoes did. A long-term study of organic and conventional methods of raising grains at the Rodale Institute in Pennsylvania found that the organic system, usingcover crops, sequesters more carbon in the soil than the no-till conventional system. The conventional lore is that the yields from organic farming are well below those of chemi-, cally intensive farming - hence, organic food must remain a niche market in the global food system. A group of us on campus decided to investigate whether the yield data from the scientific literature supports this claim. On a field trip for a course I teach with Ivette Perfecto, called "Food, Land, and Society," we visited Garden Works, a small organic farm north of Ann Arbor. There, an impressive patchwork of veg- etables undergoes several har- vests each growing season. We asked Farmer Rob how much produce comes from his 2.5 acres each year. His answer was 27 tons. That's a lot. If he can grow 27 tons of produce on 2.5 acres, why can't organic agriculture feed the world? For a year, eight of us combed the literature for studies compar- ing the yields of organic and non- organic crops and analyzed the results. What we found differed from the conventional lore. Our results, based on 293 yield com- parisons of plant and animal foods, showed that organic agriculture has the potential to feed the entire human population based on the amount of agricultural land cur- rently in use. We also found that leguminous cover crops, grown between normal cropping peri- ods on current cropland, could fix more nitrogen than all of the syn- thetic nitrogen fertilizer currently applied. Our study was published in the June issue of the journal "Renewable Agriculture and Food Systems." The paper attracted attention at a conference on organic agriculture sponsored by the Food and Agricultural Orga- nization of the United Nations, and subsequently, several press releases reported that the FAO was supporting organic agricul- ture. We have received inquiries from all over the world about our paper, and the reception has largely been enthusiastic. There has also been a backlash. Both academic crop ecologists and a spokesman for a right-wing think tank have criticized the validity and accuracy of our data. Ironi- cally, their standards seem to dif- fer for the studies that come to the opposite conclusion from ours. A colleague at the FAO has notified us that lobbying on behalf of con- ventional agriculture increased after they circulated press releas- es promoting organic agriculture. Could organically grown food feed the world more efficiently? High stakes are involved, because global agribusiness corporations make billions of dollars each year selling synthetic fertilizers, syn- thetic pesticides and genetically modifiedseeds. Butmore andmore people are aware of the benefits of organic farming, of eating food in season, of supporting local farm- ers and of the impacts of farming, on ecosystem services locally and globally. So enjoy the bounty of the har- vest. Also, know that what you choose to eat will have a wider impact reaching all the way to the farmworkers, the farmers, the soil, the earthworms, the grocers, the Secretary of Agriculture, the mon- arch butterflies migrating to Mex- ico and beyond. Through our food' choices, we affect the world. - Catherine Badgley is a research scientist in the Museum of Paleontology and an assistant professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. And why your credit score is more important than you think apa John's Pizza gave out free pizzas a couple of weeks ago to University students. All students had to do was trek out to the pizzeria on Huron Street, show their MCards and then sign up for a credit card with the woman sitting at a discrete table in the corner of the store. The deal wasn't quite what stu- dents expected after reading fliers scattered around campus, which didn't mention credit cards. But several students applied for cards anyway. They'd made it out to Huron Street. They wanted their pizza. What thenew cardholders didn't realize was while they opened the accounts for free, it's likely their credit scores paid the cost. The credit industry is full of unexpected snares that lower credit scores, but for college stu- dents whose credit histories have barely begun, hits to their scores do more than tarnish their finan- cial reputations. Enough credit missteps could even put a recent graduate's career on the line. Sanyika Calloway, now a finan- cial adviser, said her original career aspirations were ruined because of the credit hole she dug herself into during college. After graduating early from Norfolk State University with a high grade point average, Callo- way had the qualifications to land interviews for several communi- cations jobs in New York City, but she couldn't get her foot in the door. Midway into another rejec- tion, she found out that her stained credit history was the reason why. More than 60 percent of employers look at applicants' cred- it reports when evaluating their employability, Calloway said, and it can make the difference between an offer and a rejection. She said students make the mis- take of thinking that little slip-ups will boost your score. "(Credit card) companies are very interest- ed in the amount of credit you're using compared to the amount you have," Det- weiler said. But instead of opening cards offered through pro- motions, Business School Prof. Sreedhar Bharath said you should gradually collect three or four big name cards over a couple of years. A conscien- tious credit seeker can find cards with good interest rates and pay- ment conditions. Applying for a new card only once or twice a year shouldn't do significant damage to your score, Bharath said. A good strategy for credit build- ing is taking out a few good cards now and usingthem regularly. One of the biggest boosts to a score is an account that's been open for years. Make sure you like the condi- tions of your first card, because closing an aged account will surely make your score dip. But you can't just hide a card under your bed. Not using your card for as little as two months could cause the account to deacti- vate, Bharath said. The credit card industry has many nuances. Even financial experts can have ahard time sum- marizing the calculation system used by credit bureaus. Getting into the game now isn't a bad idea. One surety is that a good, clean, long credit history is sure to deliv- er the benefits of a high score. But right now you're also the indus- try's prey of choice, and giving you ample opportunities to screw yourself over is only going to make them money. How your bulging wallet will deflate your credit score Contact us at: 617-373-3244 gspa@neu.edu www.msamba.neu.edu Northeastern U N I V E R S I T Y