anyone who wants for organic food wants to lead a healthier life but can bio be better with conventional farming taking place all around it it's a bit like with a smoker and a nonsmoker one person lights up while someone else is still eating and they suffer . the organic foods business is lucrative and fraudulent labeling is not uncommon. and test there's a lot of sense in having a test procedure to show that an egg really is a bio product is in fight. so wouldn't it be better to have only bio produce this get in free fruit doesn't exist it's merely a question of the dosage. butt. the situation has to change we have to act before we we have an disaster. in germany phenol is harvested in autumn stefan palmer has been growing it for many years for a baby. but the organic farmer has a problem the wind blows pesticides used in conventional farming on to his fields strict limits apply to baby food in fact the e.u. plans to introduce the stringent limits for all organic foods it would mean bio farmers like chef and palmer could no longer sell their produce as organic. and stronger to me where the use of environmental toxins and pesticides is concerned we totally approve of being told by brussels for instance that we need to meet lower limits because we would like to do that but it's not our fault if our land is contaminated by all these chemicals with such limits in place we would be held responsible that really could put an end to eco farming. of guns clogging. the baby food manufacturer found residues of a certain pesticide in fennel from stefan palmer. conventional farmers spray it in autumn as soon as they have sown their when to seed. in doing so they contaminate fields a long distance away. the active agent it seems can be carried by the wind for weeks now stephan palmer harvest his final earlier than he used to. finding your mum i don't see a thing often for a year now we've gone to the trouble of threshing our fennel before it has reached maturity that's why we have to spread it quickly and dry it in this moisture state as fast. as we can the federal gets warm within two hours in the past we used to let it dry normally like grey and tip it into our normal drying plant the disadvantage of that process however is that it would take another three or four weeks and in that time the herbicide in the air would accumulate more and more in the fennel and make it a marketable. on. the chemical which wafts across the fields in autumn is called pending methylene and it can travel for many kilometers stefan palmas farm lies in the middle of a huge organic farming community where no one as has been proved uses the herbicide rudolph burger from brandenburg office for health and the environment is aware of the problem using cabbage leaf samples he wants to find out how long the agents can be detected in the environment isn't sure no means it's a phenomenon that didn't really attract too much attention in the past and it was the probably underestimated in recent years however we've received numerous indications countless new test results that call for an urgent reassessment of the way certain agencies are permitted to in the middle to last so long before the leash mohan throughout the winter fergal examines cabbage leaves for pending methyl in contents we know very little about the ecological impact how ever the fact is that we still keep finding the agent in crop samples know who did it so naturally because they can cause serious problems with regard to the high quality standards in other words in the dietary stipulations that organic produce has to meet pesticides used in conventional farming spread and become a problem for the entire organic sector if the e.u. introduces stricter limits for residues this will prevent many products from being sold as organic and at higher prices even though they have. infomed organically this is why stephanie is calling for a general ban on certain pesticides yamazaki flush if you have or weeks ago we harvested part of our crop prematurely the rest has been left standing so we'll have to see what the pesticide values look like. or does it sort of this is our problem we'll have to see how these agents can be kept out of the environment and prevented from accumulating because sales of pesticides are rising considerably year by year. this was a stark. environmental engineer frida hoffman is a specialist in error analysis by examining residues in the bark of trees he can reconstruct the path taken by herbicides he has been commissioned by the state of brandenburg to carry out a study. for cost reasons the german government stopped the nationwide monitoring of volatilized pesticides back in two thousand and three. even we now will have no idea of the aerial distribution of herbicides and pesticides on a national level because we have however provided fairly clear answers on a regional basis we have shown that the spread of the herbicide penda methyl and is not restricted to the immediate area through a few hundred metres but it could on a ten kilometer scale this also confirms published reports on the issue the question is can all get nicked through to still be produced anywhere in germany. hoffman has found eleven pesticides in the bark two of them in alarming concentrations. not only pending methyl in as expected but also a weed killer called pro salt carb conventional pesticides pose a real problem for bio farmers when i mean for them some rethinking has to be done even if it means some people suffering a bit financially but somehow we just have to face reality that really two things or within. each year conventional farmers spread around nine kilograms of pesticides protect their these weed and fungus killers make life easier for them without these chemical agents the argument goes the world's population could not be fed. me. the pesticide industry has a turnover of billions but at the expense of the general public the chemicals are not only found in food when it rains they see into the soil and end up in the ground water the best earlier third from from it out here soil samples are being taken to a depth of fifteen meters thick in the past water companies focused primarily on nitrates occurring as a result of over fertilization. doesn't tartars milliwatts nitrates are already a major problem and we now know that pesticides could also become one we're keeping a close watch on as we take regular samples to see whether levels are increasing from year to year on the kinds of. the main problem is that many pesticides do not decompose once sprayed they remain in the environment for years this is legalised environmental pollution on a grand scale and it also threatens our drinking water filtering out pesticides is extremely time consuming and costly and this purification is paid for by everyone who uses water. again we do not assume that farmers are at fault when these agents appear in the groundwater farmers must be able to have confidence that highly effective active agents purchased at considerable expense will have the required protecting a fact in the topsoil but then break down and no longer appear in the groundwater as water suppliers we expect the chemical industry of the twenty first century to manufacture active agents that have an excellent effect and are affordable but no longer appear in ground water because they've already decomposed it. like everywhere else in germany here at the weekly market in organic produce is in the minority only nine percent of germany's farmers grow by zero produce their produce costs up to thirty percent more than the produce from conventional competitors the price difference can be a temptation to engage in fraudulent labeling young. we have already heard of conventional fun is selling their eggs as they produce customers have come to as one complained that the eggs lack the appropriate stance so go back and exchange them we say we reported that incident and it caused a real stone cases like that make me really angry because i always think that at some point people might stop believing. in two thousand and fifteen the sales of organic foods in germany rose by eleven percent by one point three percent in austria and by five point two percent in switzerland nobody just is organic healthier. i think it is but i don't know. in my experience it is i've been blind by a further twenty yes so i believe in it sometimes i also by conventional products because you can't always get hold of bio projects but i notice the difference at once well you ought be free of one it's not for me cost more in the end there's no difference because under the street under all. conventional farmers like the whole can brinks from the moon the region doubts whether organic is always better. is really off here i too would be delighted to know that one soul was particularly good and would enable me to lead a healthy life and lift to a ripe old age without business i'd hear my twenty five years of professional experience tells me that both the good and the new year. in this is i'm about biden and the local farmer as a guarantor of quality many people regard locally grown produce and trust as more important than an organic label also because buyers cannot recognize the supposed benefits of organic farming on the actual product frick switzerland for more than forty years now scientists here at the research institute for organic farming have been analyzing the differences between ecological and conventional farming. today they advise the european union they also make recommendations regarding optimum organic farming. they were the first to prove that all gun equally grown apples contain more antioxidants than conventional apples and didn't boost our immune system. but the institute's director who is niggly warns against equating organic produce with a healthy diet. he says after to see the city from a scientific point of view our diet is extremely important. to me to see opes a healthy diet contains a high proportion of fruits and vegetables a smaller proportion of meat and few fat and products that are rich in sugar and i think the us must use wind of us naturally if we eat lots of fruits and vegetables the primary advantage of organic produce is that there are no pesticide residues by and the proportion of antioxidants is higher than even who and if you hold it down on. who is niggly is not only interested in possible differences between individual products he sees the big advantage of the overall concept behind organic farming to be sustainability. of each organic farming is the type of agriculture we will have in one hundred years time and organic farming has made tremendous progress nature is a cornucopia of the possible solutions we can also apply in agro ecosystems course in research we also experiment with this cornucopia with which nature tackles problems to toot loose woman saw not to meet but we try to develop solutions in such a way that farmers can use them and saw saw to and to be convinced the laundry and even knutson can. in order for sustainability to succeed persuasion is called for in vienna the. institute's austrian branch is working on winning over even more consumers to buy oil products. especially where meat and sausages are concerned consumers are still reluctant to purchase bio products because prices are much higher reinhard gefilte has invited consumers to one of his special organic excursions in an industrial area and dispels the illusion that organic means the same as rural times have changed in the past people were closely linked to family everyone had someone in the family who ran a farm and they could experience their whole thing was produced today especially in cities like we are now where we are now people have no idea whatsoever about food production engine hopping around. in austria black pudding is a popular speciality whether it has to be organic is a different matter the organic product is free of glutamate and contains other spices organic farming is extremely cost intensive meat and blood come from organic pigs which had more space to move around in were fed fewer antibiotics or not at all and were slaughtered under less stressful conditions. nick black pudding is prepared differently from conventional varieties vine had gasol uses the excursion into the meat processing section to explain and dispel prejudices organic production is a tough business and farmers are under great economic pressure. conventional farmers focus on big profits while dunnit farmers work in harmony with nature. so why can't the two systems benefit from each other. carlo life it from germany had an experimental farm run by newcastle university in britain he is looking for possible overlaps between conventional and ecological farming but it's a complex field and surprising results are not uncommon combining organic fertilizer with pesticides from conventional farming for example even increases the residue of the weed killer as in field crops you can determine the interactions between mineral fertilizers and pesticides if you change to totally organic fertilizers but without abandoning pesticides a few interesting facts come to light and for instances when an organic fertilizer is used the past aside content of the produce increases and so in order to enjoy all the benefits of a switch to work dammit farming the changeover has to be comprehensive in two thousand and nine the organic farming sector was shocked by a report from britain's food standards agency it found no relevant difference between organic and conventional products life it doubted this and reacted with a counter study of us. and what my studies revealed has to be proven to others that were so the entire matter analysis had to be done all over again it on the news in the. it took some of my colleagues not me personally two years for me and they worked continuously on it for more than eight hours a day continuous. in them to. life a team evaluated studies from all over the world. they found that organic fruit vegetables and cereals contain more antioxidants which boost the body's immune system and far fewer pesticides. conventional foods are more often contaminated with heavy metals. like that so his findings confirmed. khan's amende as a consumer i started buying organic produce because of my concern about pesticides and as an agronomist i have never found a past aside which was introduced at some time or other and did not arouse any health concerns ten years later of being good just humans do you consider that was always one of the reasons why i spend more money on organic produce make it also given that simply contains fewer pesticide residues nuveen has to teach them to ten games. early in two thousand and sixteen life it published a second study it confirms the differences in quality between conventional and organic meat and dairy produce the eco products containing around fifty percent more on the good three fatty acids. the hope going to see it depends mainly on what animals are fed organic standards stipulate that cattle pigs and so on must have a certain quantity of raw fodder in their diet and for ruminants that is very high to put it simply we know that a cow produces better milk when it is fed grass than when it is fed grain this has been apparent for a long time but it's in the best image as for monday macleod and it is the swiss will tell you that if dairy cattle are not allowed to graze but instead are given concentrated feed their milk cannot be used for a hard cheese like a typical m. and tal if it had been done kinds of diminish. and the same thing holds true for omega three fatty acids is just him for he only got the. omega three fatty acids i said to provide a protection against arteriosclerosis so organic meat is healthier than meat which is produced conventionally it is all the more important therefore for consumers to be certain that a product labeled organic actually is organic especially where meat products are concerned the well being of the animals is an important reason for consumers to buy organic produce but you can't tell just by looking at an egg whether or not the hand that made it was happy checks carried out by yacc a million dollar fund for elves in hands i'll get to ensuring that kelley farm is a dia to bio died lines. for me to do in order to and check out all the documentation. controls will be needed long after i've retired simply because it's not only about the end product we monitor the entire process to make sure that everything takes place as stipulated in the regulations. the franken housing facility in the castle is run according to organic guidelines focus and hands begins his inspection in the open air enclosure for seven hundred laying hens. it's nice to see all the hens looking spritely that's one reason why eco inspections are fun and. he's satisfied with the amount of space and the vegetation in the outside enclosure. in the shed elson hands relies on his experience and his senses. sees from the ground it smells fine as it is for your nose tells you of course where you are but it is definitely a good smell can you pick one up so i can take a look at it anyone will do. not even fold hands can tell if a hen is happy but he can judge whether farming conditions a causing the animals any suffering. stand. as not to mention that it's a bit dirty of course but i notice that when i press here the hen doesn't flinch if it hurt she'd be really annoyed that's always a sign that the litter is loose and not just today i'm french nor void of funds so the hens aren't walking in mush and that's important because. if. every organic farm has to be checked out at least once a year by an eco monitoring center the inspectors often turn up unannounced. is the amount of fodder adequate for the number of hens did any diseases occur if so when antibiotics dispensed you know indoors compares receipts documentation and guidelines if everything tallies he's happy. with if people only focus on the end product without realizing the social benefits of organic farming climate protection ground water protection nature protection and animal welfare there will of course be a problem on the end under such a heap of getting it. on dry and windy midsummer days feels inches because stine are a hive of activity. martin not mesnick is harvesting his organic wheat . he manages the ritz at our state insurance because stein. home. it was purchased seventeen years ago by entrepreneur going to feel money and converted to biodynamic agriculture. but driving over the field and knowing that something healthy is growing and it becomes more and more of a joy far better than holding a spray gun full of fungicide or pesticide and knowing that you're breathing in the air that is unhealthy as yields on organic fields are around twenty percent less than in conventional farming but can this difference be offset in other ways for his doctoral thesis laws be an artist comparing the greenhouse gases from organic and conventional farming spiced outlets and i'm good with conventional pharma introduces nitrogen into the system in the form of mineral fertilizers especially after such fertilizing high emissions of nitric oxide can be recalled in organic farming where mineral fertilizers abandoned things are slightly different their peaks are not so pronounced autocue reaction and. the benefits of organic farming nitric oxide is a greenhouse gas and about three hundred times more harmful to the climate than carbon dioxide. it is also because of such aspects that the sector would one day like to have a system which would provide absolute proof that just food stuff really is organic or not. a senator has a bill would be great to have such a method because customers in our farm store do ask questions and. they would love to have proof that our produce is biles or. a test which would prove that bread was baked with organic wheat a possibility or just an illusion. not for a laboratory in you. marcus bona searches for traces which the two types of farming leave an animal for the vegetables and grain one crucial difference is the use of fertilizer organic farming opts for organic plant remains in conventional farming the mineral fertilizer. mineral fertilizer consists of nitrogen which plants need but mineral fertilizer has a totally different isotopes signature from bio for analyzer for instance we can determine this with our measuring techniques and thus ascertain the origin of organic or conventional farming ultimately this bio product also goes into fodder so an egg from a hen that has been eco reared and given bio fodder must also reveal this nitrogen isotope as long as the nitrogen isotopes have not been broken down marcus bona is able to determine the origin escape little some products like milk pose a problem in a cow is nothing other than a large bio reactor in other words we can no longer detect mineral fertiliser because the animal repeatedly changes these isotopes used to be martyrs. but with many other foodstuffs his method allows marcus boehner to determine what was used to fertilize livestock fodder all fruits and vegetables on its own though the choice of fertilizer says nothing about food quality. you can argue at length about quality but you must always remember that a bio product is a sustainable product in other words we no longer over exploit nature on the contrary the soils are products growing will still be of use for the next fifty years seen in this light a bio product is most certainly a better product in. the bio experimental farm belonging to kill university. it's on the baltic echo for. the linhof is run like any ordinary farm it has to cover all its costs through the sale of its produce. chevy news is the forms manager along with eighty dairy cattle and seven south she also keeps one hundred friends in free range husbandry. local novas carnitine animals kept ecologically can only be fed bio fodder comprised entirely of bio constituents down mrs e. and i also love movies furthermore they must always have out to access the writing programs used in some conventional laying systems are inadmissible muslims as a woman's and they are designed to enhance performance and give the birds the impression that it is some of all the time and that it never gets stuck in the helices can see out of the beach and must have an outdoor area of four square metres and eighteen centimeters of push space at its disposal so being a moose sells her eggs for forty cents each eggs from conventional production cost only half as much in our hens lay less not a lot less but that's fine because the price per egg is a lot higher and it is certainly acceptable when you can market directly in keeping the profit moreover if you optimize your operations so that you don't work so much as in conventional farming two it is most definitely a worthwhile business enormous pressure for such but the good price for bio eggs is also an inducement to cheat. and testify i think it would be sensible to have a testing procedure for a something to prove that an egg has been produced ecologically consumers in retail outlets could then be given verification and know why they are paying money for and . put could appropriate fine. methods and for to really be proved. vaga named in the netherlands is home to one of europe's leading research facilities for food safety. in the laboratories of the rick elt institute food chemist saskia family group is working on methods of distinguishing organic foods from those produced conventionally. amos to make fraudulent labeling impossible. to. know products for organic products and to protect the farmers that are involved in this organic business we have to make sure that there are fair practices and consumers are getting what i paid for so that's why we need matter it's that can authenticate whether a product is or not. saskia found root places her faith in statistics she has analyzed the average composition of the yolk of an organic egg and amassed a vast amount of data the theory is that everything which influences an egg is noticeable in the yolk in the form of an analytical fingerprint the analytical fingerprint of fanatic when we would try to separate you from conventional x. is based on d.n.a. analysis of the yellow months and because we are looking at different yellow pink ones we call that an analytical fingerprint and together with statistics that calculation matters we try to discriminate between the group of the organic x. and the conventional x. because this pattern is fingerprint difference. that may be all the correct risk. van roots team collect data to determine a product's fingerprint when chocolate melts in our mouth additives are released which give an initial indication of whether it contains conventional or organic cocoa. outside the deficiency and it may be different so also how an organic product looks like. there's a lot of similarity it's also difficult to find for instance one mark or one who found a one aspect in which they differ so often you need multiple markers and if you compared to any you also need statistics so that makes it fairly complex. no matter how great the differences between bio and conventional farming methods might be in the produce itself they are very small and not always to the advantage of the consumer the obligation to give laying hens nothing but organic fodder means that many bio egg producers have to buy in fodder yet only when food controls are carried out does it become apparent that a supplier has cheated. frank felt who's in heads the state's office for food safety in mechlin board for common even if there has been no fodder scandal his inspectors nearly always find eggs containing substances which should not enter our diet. as a sawdust fear process results in dioxins being released into the atmosphere when it rains these airborne chemicals are deposited on the earth's surface. depending on the location of dioxins can occur in certain quantities and be consumed for instance by hands and thus passed on to their eggs dioxins are soluble in fact so primarily they are present in the factory components mainly in the yogis of these and in fact based on tire size and obsolete in my daughter's eyes. the quantities detected in controls are nearly always below the consumer protection limits set by the e.u. nevertheless the animal welfare concept pursued by the bio sector. often leads to a loss of quality in eggs in the form of increased dioxin. erin mclean but for a month we have discovered a slight difference between conventional and bio farmed eggs and the dioxin content of bio eggs is about thirty percent higher however it's not quite clear why we suspect it is because the hands which is intended spent more time outdoors standard greater chance of ingesting food from contaminated sort i mean you know this contamination is then passed on to their eggs and that's one possible explanation. happy cattle on lush meadows island seems to be a paradise for livestock owners especially conventional farmers along with romania and the netherlands island is the e.u. nation with the smallest area of bio pastures. bill o'keefe two is an advocate of conventional farming. the people are very want to have the best quality food going into that so we think we can create a bit of a nice share in r. and r. clean green image and the clean green reality really you know it's not just an image it is reality if we're out here in march for grazing grass we're producing high quality milk and we think there's a huge benefit to people if they consume those products through lies and that is. the advantage is that the cows eat grass which is important for milk quality they are outside for more than three hundred days a year to ensure that's enough for the growth bill o'keefe has to spread chemical fertilizer on his fields in spring and in autumn despite that here conventional is not synonymous with factory farming. on average convey. tional irish milk contains more omega three fatty acids in antioxidants than organic milk in germany the reason is the fatah organic farms in germany are allowed to add concentrated feed inside to enhance milk production with a detrimental effect on milk quality in other countries however like austria fixed standards already exist for hay milk and meadow graceville they stipulates how much hay a cow's overall fodder is allowed to contain an ideal situation organic production cannot compete with it is a good job if. you were going to really work at something that. was a joy a walk in the market and i think that is what i enjoy doing and i would go a long hours applying my new work but it was that because the weather what are your job. the carving season on bill o'keefe farm is from mid january to late february two hundred forty cows come up at the same time they then return to the field and milk production if his vet advises it just like his father before him o'keefe gives all his carbs antibiotics. we're happy with our system to. work on and we might it doesn't cycle for this farm at the moment where there's no reason at all. we don't feel obliged to farm money differently and we feel we feel our system of family is good enough to farm. bill o'keefe plans to increase the size of his herd his milk is in demand and the quality is good without an organic seal. apples are usually grown as monoculture is funky and insects the real problem for fruit farm is where pesticide contamination is concerned the apple schools badly cause. a toxic heavy metal which stays in the sword forever is the controversial remedy of the organic sector conventional farmers also use it in addition they turn to various other pesticides in line with the motto the more the better. in tandem with eleven swedish universities the survey talks institute near stockholm is researching the risks from pesticides and other chemical compounds the findings are alarming. more and more substances are being identified as affecting our hormone system many of these endocrine disruptors as they are known come from agriculture. institute director aka bagman has been warning of these substances ever since two thousand and twelve e.u. has delayed the decisions very very much and we are in great need of having a number of chemicals regulate and air in relation to and in constructing properties and of course we need to look into those many i just mentioned one thousand and. thirty eight chemicals that are potentially e.c.s. . and take decisions on this are in three important that this gets in place and policymakers have a very important job to do initially arc a bare bones research team focused on plastic bottles foodstuffs and textile dyes but today they know that chemical active agents which affect our home and system are found not only in products but also in the air we breathe and controlling them is a problem only in dust we have measured around five hundred different chemicals and of course there is. a possibility there that some of these fits in to receptor or interacting in the hormone in some way and this is where we see an avalanche i would say of data on other chemicals and on other end points. endocrine disruptors are suspected of being responsible for a whole range of disorders including obesity infertility and even cancer and parkinson's disease the circulator a system transports them to every organ in the body the pick your trick line that produces hormones for metabolism growth and the formation of semen or egg cells and or crying just. raptors affect not only the gland but also the hormones themselves researchers believe that the chemical substances inhibit the flow of information in the brain that they block the sign ups but also kill individual information receivers in the nerve cells both disorders are symptoms of alzheimer's disease. is actually chemicals that can interfere with the hormone system in such a way that you you get their unwanted or negative effects hair and of course that this has to be on the whole animals or humans or wildlife so the experimental work is tremendously important in order to build a chain do we see a defect in the lab. do we see similar things in why like and can we see associations in humans between the deceased and the exposure scientists are called upon to act professor hartmann from the institute of organic farming in kiel is looking for ways to bring gauguin a can conventional farming closer together his studies have found approval throughout europe in his view the inconsiderate use of pesticides is out of kilter with the times s. and. we're talking about relics of the past we engaged in agricultural research and risk research back in one nine hundred seventy five and one nine hundred eighty but we simply had no idea of the dangers that lurk what this means that where pesticides are concerned today's generation of scientists and politicians must stringently apply the principle of preventive action why did you buy just one in a time for all the plants evangelists to ensure that enough healthy food stuffs can be produced in an eco conscious and sustainable way then in the final analysis it will be the customer who decides it's a nice conventional farming is not result in poor quality it has been seen that animal welfare aspects also play a role as in direct quality characteristics for the consumer too and recommendations regarding animal welfare requirements in the conventional sector which are now also coming from various supermarket chains are moving ever closer to the standards that already exist in organic farming we must always focus on how optimum quality can be achieved in both systems when you teach you by standards you . that's the theme of this year's architecture be enough to invent. the german pavilion wants to tear down. and the young chinese architect aims to revive rural villages. and respect. our special on. thirty minutes on d w. we make up oh but we watch as folks that funded budget cuts we are the seven seven percent. they want to shape the continent's future to. be part of it and join african youngsters as they share their stories their dreams and their challenges. to the seventy seven percent. platform for this majority. you can tell a lot about a society by its garbage. the foods worthless for the rich but for many poor people it offers their only chance of survival. and i could lunch for today just like. the reporters travel to nairobi and york and meet people who know the true value of garbage. it has created a thriving parallel economy plays much assume this means for economic inequality over the world you guys are starting place want to get the response to that statement should be yes we are starting to as want to play the rich the the truth exclusive british historian journalists on t.w. . close. at these twenty five people have been killed and many more injured by an erupting volcano in what amala the country's for a cobol can sent a stream of lava into a nearby town and blanketed the area and. thousands of undocumented from affected sound just southwest of quote a monster.