I am in receipt of an interesting email exchange between a Skeptoid listener who prefers to remain anonymous (let’s call him Gump in retaliation for his anonymity) and a professor, Jim Corven in the Organic Agriculture program at Bristol Community College in Massachusetts.

Gump read on the school’s web site the following:

Organic agriculture is one of the fastest growing segments of U.S. agriculture. Its earth-friendly, resource-gentle approach to providing food and fiber attracts a generation who worries that the overuse of synthetics and agribusiness techniques deplete the earth’s health and resources out of the world. The sustainable farming movement uses fewer nonrenewable resources and in that way nurtures not only our bodies, but our earth.

All perfectly reasonable statements. The doomsday scenarios described are indeed worries that some people have. But the web page continues:

Learn the techniques and science behind the movement with the new Organic Agriculture Technician certificate at Bristol Community College. The certificate is designed to prepare people to use ecological production techniques that minimize pollution and create a healthier, tastier product.

Whoa, horsey. Healthier? Tastier? Obviously this is a tired old claim that organic proponents have been making for decades, but it’s neither been evidenced nor is it plausible. And where do they get “minimize pollution”?

Gump began by emailing Professor Corven with a reasonable question, one that all too few people seem willing to ask:

I was reading the front page about organic farming. I read the sentence about how organic farm produces tastier and healthier foods. I am wondering how that comes to be. Does organic farming alter the foods DNA in someway making the foods tastier or healthier in someway? Is there some test that can prove the foods are healthier? I find it disingenuous that organic farming is being promoted as something that is better than modern farming techniques which use less land to produce more food.

Professor Corven had a most un-professor-like reply:

I’d like to suggest that you might like to study some scientific literature and read up on the issues of soils, agricultural productivity, and nutrition before making the kinds of erroneous comments contained in your email.

What are these “erroneous comments” he charges Gump with? I see nothing other than quite intelligent questions, except for the final sentence, in which he observes that modern agriculture produces more crops on less land. This is, of course, the most obvious characteristic that distinguishes agricultural progress through the centuries.

If reading isn’t in your interest you might want to see the new movie Food, Inc.

We should have seen that coming. May I rephrase? “You challenged my dogma with questions, therefore you’re too stupid to read, therefore you should watch my alarmist anti-science propaganda movie.”

Of course, if you were only interested in venting your opinion and criticizing something that you obviously don’t like or understand then you may not actually be interested in more objective information.

May I rephrase again? “I invite you to take my class, it would be great to explore these questions together, and I think you’d be fascinated at some of the progress that organics have made.” Oh wait, no, that’s the wrong translation. My mistake, sorry.

Professor Corven made no effort whatsoever to answer the student’s questions. But of course, he was under no obligation to reply to Gump at all. (Gump is not in any of his classes.) He made snide underhanded attacks against the student’s integrity, intellectual honesty, knowledge level, and willingness to learn. Maybe Jim Corven is a fine fellow, and this student’s email came to him on a bad day. I don’t know. But I don’t think his email represents the best of Bristol Community College’s efforts to enlighten and educate students in a positive atmosphere.

Jim, he asked you to explain what he doesn’t understand. I get it if you don’t want to answer him; no doubt there was an argumentative undercurrent. Fine, delete it. But why go on the defensive and fire back so much personal vitriol? Do you have the answers, or are the questions really so hard that personal attacks are easier to mount?

Maybe Gump (and agricultural science as a whole) is completely wrong, and the past century of modern agriculture has indeed been a health and ecological catastrophe that simply hasn’t shown its symptoms yet. If this is Corven’s contention, he is invited to enlighten us. Until then, Gump’s simple questions to the organic lobby remain thoroughly evaded.