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A report, due to be published this week in the British Journal of Nutrition (BJN) claims that organic food is demonstrably better for consumers.

It’s interesting because for many years organic enthusiasts have been making similar claims but without the hard evidence to back them up.

The study led by Professor Carlo Leifert from Newcastle University shows that organic crops are between 19 per cent and 69 per cent higher in a number of key antioxidants than conventionally-grown crops and are significantly lower in levels of heavy metals like cadmium.

The study also showed that pesticide residues were four times more likely to be found in conventional crops than organic ones.

It is important to say that the study is not without its critics and that it is an analysis of data in more than 300 other studies rather than a new piece of primary research. But it has been peer-reviewed and the BJN is a serious scientific publication.

I’ve always been very wary of claims that organic food is somehow ‘better for you’.

It’s partly because these claims are very hard to substantiate but also because for me it misses the most important reason for producing food organically.

Of course I don’t want to eat any more pesticide than I have to but my main motivation for growing organically is that it is better for the environment.

Conventional farming uses a great deal of energy – most of which comes from fossil fuel.

It may be incredibly productive in terms of the return you get for the land you use but it can also be very hard on the environment.

Huge fields of one single crop may be productive but they don’t provide much food and shelter for wildlife or for pollinating insects.

And intensive animal production produces industrial quantities of effluent.

The chemical pesticides and fertilisers used in conventional farming also use vast quantities of energy in their production and distribution.

Organic food production takes a more holistic approach which is gentler on the environment and more sustainable.