"From the Soil to Your Table"

This video features two lectures, one from Dr. Joan Peters, the other Dr. Joan Dye Gussow. Peters is a former Oregon State University professor who focuses her lecture on clearing up the misunderstandings when it comes to pesticides in soil and their effects on our food. Other topics that Peters talks about include carcinogens and nutrients in food. Peters feels that research needs to be conducted in order to understand the benefits of organic foods and how they relate to nutrition. 

Gussow has many roles, such as author, researcher, food policy expert, environmentalist, and professor at Columbia Teacher’s College. Gussow, a proponent of the organic food movement, focuses her lecture on when is the right time to react to concerns, in this case it is our food production. She shares her experience of her time on a cancer panel and the rigidity she faced when making her case about testing chemicals in pesticides. She states that while we cannot definitively prove that chemicals used to get rid of pests we can show that there has been in an increase in pests since man-made chemicals were introduced into our food. Gussow’s main take away is this: we cannot wait for there to be enough evidence that pesticides are harmful to our health, rather if there are concerns, they must be addressed, and credible research needs to be one of the tools to address them.

Digitized from a Umatic original held in the Oregon Tilth Records (MSS OrTilth), Special Collections and Archives Research Center, Oregon State University Libraries.