The researchers reviewed the scientific literature and determined that conventional yields were up to 34 percent higher than organic yields. Notably, according to a Nature online news supplement the researchers found that “Organic agriculture performs particularly poorly for vegetables and some cereal crops such as wheat, which make up the lion’s share of the food consumed around the world.”

So, as organic food’s “health halo” lies shattered, new evidence keeps piling up that modern technology, not fashionable food ideology, provides a way to feed an ever-growing population. Even claims that people can avoid pesticides by buying organic food have been proven bunk. Those “organic” pesticides are still pesticides, after all.

Of course, typical levels of both organic and conventional pesticides found on fruit and vegetable skins are so low that the risks of sickness are vanishingly small, and a few more seconds under the faucet should make even those concerns vanish. But that doesn’t stop the usual enviro-activist suspects from raising a stink over trace amounts of conventional (but not organic) chemicals on produce.

Therefore it shouldn’t surprise anybody that organic movement leader Peter Melchett once said, “Science doesn’t tell us the answers so some of it we have to go on feelings.” When the science is against you, you go on whatever you’ve got.

When the world is presented with the task of feeding a growing world population, science might just be a better bet than some elite Western “feelings.” As one Foreign Policy magazine writer noted: “Without [a scientific system of food production], our food would be more expensive and less safe. In other words, a lot like the hunger-plagued rest of the world.” In the case of organics, we’re all too often left with empty rhetoric and false notions.

Despite considerable evidence that the “health halo” surrounding organic foods is just hype, many activists still claim that organic produce is healthier than conventionally grown produce. One of the reasons that organic evangelists propose to justify the cost of eating expensive “heirloom” tomatoes is that conventional products may contain chemical residue. The Environmental Working (Worrying) Group (EWG) even puts out a “Dirty Dozen” report that encourages people to substitute organic food for supposedly pesticide-laden conventional produce.

Yet a University of California-Davis study found that “consumer exposures to the ten most frequently detected pesticides on EWG’s ‘Dirty Dozen’ commodity list are at negligible levels” and that “consumption of organic produce should not be equated with consumption of pesticide-free produce.” So why might people wrongly think that organics are somehow chemical- or pesticide-free? Writing today in U.S. News and World Report, Joshua Guilder thinks it might have something to do with how (poorly) organic food stories are written.

Guilder notes that few reporters bother to ask activists how organic production resists insects, fungi, and weeds. The answer, of course, is “organic” pesticides. “All-natural” doesn’t mean harmless at any dose— there are plenty of “all-natural” poisons, like hemlock. And sure enough, in a high enough dose organic pesticides can be harmful. For instance, one class (pyrethrins) has been linked to tumors in rodents.

In high enough doses, almost any pesticide is harmful, whether conventional or organic. Of course, just like they didn’t rush to the papers to condemn lead traces in reusable shopping bags, we don’t expect the EWG to harp on any organic pesticide’s risks (however small).

In reality, the chances that a consumer will get sick from any pesticide residue are vanishingly slim, which is one reason that 79 percent of the members of the Society of Toxicology think that the EWG overstates chemical risks. (The UC-Davis researchers found that “consumer exposures to the ten most common pesticides found on the ‘Dirty Dozen’ commodities are several orders of magnitude below levels required to cause any biological effect.”) The dose makes the poison, whether the chemical in question is “organic” or synthetic. And the simple solution to any concerns is a few more seconds under the faucet washing that fruit or vegetable.

A favorite claim of elitist food commentators like Michael Pollan is that subsidies for farmers are contributing to obesity. Leaving a wider discussion on national farm policy for another day, some economists from Cornell University, the US Department of Agriculture, and the University of California at Davis actually examined that claim—and found it lacking.

According to a report in The Wall Street Journal, the foodies are on the wrong side of the facts. Indeed, researchers found that removing all U.S. farming supports would actually increase average calorie consumption:

[I]f all subsidies were magically erased— including trade barriers — the typical American adult would actually respond by eating about 3,000 to 3,900 additional calories a year: A cutting back on grains and meats, today artificially cheap, would be more than offset by the eating of more sugar and dairy products, now artificially expensive.

Additionally, the researchers found that agricultural subsidies were in decline while the obesity rate rose, making claims of a causal link implausible. These findings illustrate that foodie peanut gallery is guilty of over-simplifying the food system.

And of course, farm price supports aren’t the only place where the foodies go wrong. For all the hype about “eating local” and the “100-mile diet,” analyses have shown that by taking advantage of different growing seasons (for instance, by shipping New Zealand apples picked in the Southern Hemisphere summer to the U.K. during winter) carbon emissions can be reduced below “locavore” levels. Foodies are also wrong when they claim that older production methods meant that we didn’t have to worry about food safety. In fact, since 1900 deaths from foodborne illnesses are down by about a hundred-fold. Likewise, their claim that organic food is healthier is just bunk.

Whatever one thinks about farm subsidies (and there is a lot to think about), there isn’t convincing evidence that ending them is a magical cure for obesity.

There are food elitists, and then there is Mark Bittman of The New York Times. He raised some eyebrows with his recent call for the government to further regulate what can be bought with Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits, otherwise known as food stamps. More scarily, he argued that changing the basket of allowable items in SNAP should be “part of the bigger question”; namely, regulating what he called “dangerous foods.”

To back that up, the Times’s food-snob-in-residence argued that sugar was “habit-forming” and asked only whether Robert Lustig’s proposed draconian sugar regulations were “necessary.” That caught the eye of Reason magazine writer and longtime consumer-choice defender Jacob Sullum, who argues that in a free country that’s the wrong question to ask. Instead, he argues that one should ask whether such regulations are legitimate uses of government power. Sullum also hits Bittman for his (well-documented) elitism:

[...] Bittman suggests that people are addicted to sugar, which he thinks means they have no choice but to consume it and therefore must be rescued from this self-destructive habit by benign overseers like him […] Bittman knows that we do not really want to eat sugar, or at least that we should not want to eat sugar, which in his mind is more or less the same thing.

Of course, this isn’t the first time Bittman has dabbled with the bogus “food addiction” theory. (Nobody’s holding up the corner store for a chocolate fix.) And of course, there’s no reason to believe Bittman and the rest of the food police will stop if they get sugary food out of SNAP.

The authors analyzed over 300 studies comparing organic and conventional crop yields, and in what shouldn’t be a shock found that conventional crops had higher yields. Additionally, the researchers proposed that at larger scales (such as the scale needed to reliably feed billions and billions of people) conventional yields outperformed organics to an even greater rate. This isn’t the first time researchers have found the policies of feel-good foodie activists lacking in practical utility.

Indeed, experts argue that the world can’t feed its ever-growing population on organics alone. Harvard professor Calestous Juma warned that organic activists’ campaigns against biotechnology are blind to rising food prices and political unrest in the developing world. And at home, squeezing out conventional production will raise food prices. Oh, and the claim that organics are healthier has been thoroughly debunked. (No wonder British organic movement leader Peter Melchett once said that “Science doesn’t tell us the answers.”)

There’s a reason why the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the late Nobel Laureate Norman Borlaug, architect of the “Green Revolution” which significantly increased crop yields and fed billions, have endorsed biotechnology. (“USDA Organic” certification forbids biotechnology use.) The goal of ending world hunger (especially without turning vast tracts of forest into farms) depends on the efficiency that conventional production provides.

Unfortunately, well-funded activist vegans and cookbook authors turned animal rights sympathizers don’t offer all of the facts. Instead, they would rather reinforce urbanites’ erroneous beliefs about what is best for animals.

Bittman, for example, dismissively writes that it’s “nonsense” to say that individual housing can prevent sows from attacking each other, an argument put forth by crate defenders. It’s interesting then to read the website of one artisan farmer (who doesn’t use gestation stalls) who writes the following while analyzing a recent HSUS “undercover” video:

[HSUS doesn’t] tell you that the scrapes and scratches on the pig shown at 1:32 are probably from fighting with other pigs. (Look closely, that pig is in a pen with others. And those marks are classic fight scratches.) Or that fighting amongst a herd can leave the submissive animals in a constant state of not just stress, but fear.

So, Mark Bittman, how long have you been a hog farmer? (We’ll guess approximately 0.0 days—after all, this is a guy who self-admittedly was trespassing on farms in Iowa just a few months back.) Another pork producer (who does use stalls) recalled how in group pens sows were at the mercy of a “bully sow” which kept the others from eating their feed, causing all sorts of animal-welfare complications. Dr. Jodi Sterle, an Iowa State University professor of animal science and expert in swine reproduction, confirmed this, telling The New York Times: “When they [sows] are raised in groups, there is competition for food, water and space, and especially for food.” Dr. Sterle also noted that “no easy alternative to sow stalls existed.”

It’s sad when urban activists like Bittman and HSUS claim to know how to farm better than the farmers themselves. But it’s worse when companies help perpetuate those misconceptions.

If you were watching the Grammys on Sunday night, you may have seen this Chipotle advertisement aptly named “Back to the Start.” The burrito chain’s ad, which has been around for a while, made it seem like the best way to raise pigs was in an outdoor, free-range setting. That plays into the regressive nostalgia of urbanites like Michael Pollan, but it’s worth asking: Why did farmers move to their current systems?

Some hog farmers have found that this “idyllic” system makes life worse for the pigs. One recalled that some pigs kept outdoors died of heat exhaustion (pigs don’t sweat effectively) in the summer and others trampled each other to death while huddling for warmth in the winter. Modern livestock housing offers farmers the opportunity to control climate throughout the year.

There are tradeoffs to every system. But to the activists, nuances don’t matter. Chipotle hopes to capitalize on urbanites’ lack of knowledge about animal behavior with sentimentalist sunshine and rainbows to sell a few more burritos. And HSUS may claim that they are interested in animal welfare, but in reality they are committed to “pursue on all fronts the … establishment of the rights of all animals.” (It’s not like McRibs and carnitas will be served at HSUS meetings as long as veganism is the defining philosophy of the group.)

In one of his periodic screeds against the hardworking men and women who produce America’s beef, pork, and poultry, Bittman said that people needed to “better understand industrial animal-rearing techniques.” We couldn’t agree more, and that better understanding should start with Mark Bittman. Bittman and his urban readers need to understand the careful thought that goes into choosing a husbandry method. Farmers look at all aspects of animal welfare based on their experience handling livestock every day. A New Yorker’s sunshine-and-unicorns view of an unrealistic animal agriculture Nirvana (much less a vegan activist’s dreams of eliminating animal agriculture altogether) isn’t an effective path to understanding animal welfare issues.

The passage of time also doesn’t mean that Kennedy hasn’t continued making a fool of himself (he said that hog producers were “a greater threat to the United States and democracy than bin Laden’s terrorist network” only a few months after 9/11), this time by peddling dangerous conspiracy theories about vaccines and hypocritically trying to keep the “green” energy he professes to love from getting too close to his family’s estate. (Most of us have houses—it must be nice to have an “estate” or a “compound.”)

The latest target of the Waterkeeper Alliance’s lawsuit machine is the poultry farming community on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, who (like hog farmers) were treated to a “summit” complete with insults from Kennedy. Unfortunately, the Waterkeepers have the ear of Maryland’s Attorney General, who encouraged the assembled Waterkeeper supporters to step up the citizen lawsuits that could bankrupt family farmers.

In keeping with this new targeting, a local Waterkeeper accused the Hudson family (fourth-generation poultry farmers) of allowing runoff from a pile of chicken litter to enter the Chesapeake Bay. The Maryland Department of the Environment (MDE) investigated the allegation and found improperly stored treated fertilizer, not poultry litter. Indeed, MDE inspectors reported that “no animal manure piles were observed outside.” The Hudsons promptly complied with an MDE directive to move the fertilizer. Case closed, right? Wrong.

That didn’t stop the Waterkeepers from suing the Hudsons (and Perdue, whom the Hudsons supply). Even more outrageously, the Waterkeepers have used taxpayer-funded law clinics to do grunt work for their campaign against these family farmers, drawing an objection from Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley (D).

Meanwhile, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. stands by an article alleging widespread collusion to cover up a link between vaccines and autism (a theory based on junk science) for which Salon.com issued multiple corrections and later retracted. In addition, Kennedy and Louis Moore Bacon, a hedge fund baron Kennedy called the Alliance’s “single largest supporter,” publicly advocate to keep the “green” energy the Alliance promotes away from their estates.

Want to see more? Head over to our updated ActivistCash.com profile.

The waitress goes above and beyond to prove the restaurant’s “intimate knowledge” about the chicken, even producing a folder with a bio and photo of the exact chicken (named “Colin”) they would be eating. If this wasn’t absurd enough the couple decides to leave the restaurant and drive to the local farm to see it for themselves, resulting in a rather, shall we say, interesting experience. (You can probably find the whole episode on Netflix.)

While this over-the-top skit is funny, like most good comedy it isn’t that far from the truth. There’s a variety of food myths floating around out there. Let’s break a few of them down:

“Going local” is better for the environment.
Not quite. In 2006, researchers at New Zealand’s Lincoln University compared the emissions and energy performance of their country’s domestic agriculture industry. They found that shipping lamb from New Zealand to England was four times less emissions-intensive than serving the Brits lamb produced right in the UK. The increased efficiency gained by comparative advantage more than makes up for the jet (or truck) fuel burned to bring products to market. (Similarly, fresh flowers grown in Kenya and shipped to Europe have a smaller environmental impact than flora grown more locally in Holland and sold in neighboring countries.)

Eating organic is healthier.
While organic snobs might not frown at having their food grown in manure, it certainly isn’t making a difference. A study from the UK’s version of the EPA said there is no nutritional difference between organic versus conventional vegetables. And if you are really trendy and buy “raw” (unpasteurized) milk, you’re 51 times more likely to suffer from a dangerous listeria infection. Sounds healthier doesn’t it?

So watch the trailer, have a laugh, but don’t be led around the nose by the latest fad.

He writes:

Implicit in the argument that local farming is better for the environment than industrial agriculture is an assumption that a “relocalized” food system can be just as efficient as today’s modern farming. That assumption is simply wrong. Today’s high crop yields and low costs reflect gains from specialization and trade, as well as scale and scope economies that would be forsaken under the food system that locavores endorse.

Sexton’s estimates are more staggering than his arguments, which rely on widely accepted economic theory about the division of labor and efficient production. He estimates that “a locavore-like production system would require an additional 60 million acres of cropland, 2.7 million tons more fertilizer, and 50 million pounds more chemicals.” We knew modern industrial agriculture had strong economies of scale, but the degree of efficiency in modern agriculture is notable. The land saved by doing things the non-locavore way, by Sexton’s estimate, is larger than the total land area of Utah.

So locavorism may not be wonderful for preserving wild lands or green space, but it’s at least less carbon-intensive, right? Wrong. Sexton cites a Harvard economist who suggests that “going local” would not reduce emissions from transportation (the supposed environmental justification for the “100-mile diet”). That doesn’t even include any emissions from producing an additional 2.7 million tons of fertilizer and 50 million pounds of chemicals, or the emissions from the tractors and combine harvesters tending additional farmland.

Reducing the land-productivity of agriculture is bad not only for the environment but also for people. Sexton says that “experts estimate that in the next 50 years, the global food system likely needs to produce as much food as it did in the previous 10,000 years combined.” It is only thanks to agricultural innovators like the late Norman Borlaug that Sexton can write, “From roughly 1940 to 1990, the world’s farmers doubled their output to accommodate a doubling of the world population. And they did it on a shrinking base of cropland.”

With the world’s population passing 7 billion on its way ever higher, now is not the time for trendy activists and first-world foodies to “turn back the clock” on agriculture. The world’s poor can’t afford it.

As our senior research analyst told host John Stossel on Fox Business last night, “[consumers] are letting themselves be led around by the nose … to a certain extent.” Watch the video below for the full interview.

Watch the latest video at video.foxbusiness.com