The Science of Everything Podcast - Episode 3: Organic Agriculture Part 2

Episode Date: July 24, 2010

An examination of the perceived advantages of organic food in terms of safety, nutrition and taste, followed by a comparison of the costs and yield efficiencies of conventional versus organic farming techniques. If you enjoyed the podcast please consider supporting the show by making a paypal donation or becoming a patreon supporter. https://www.patreon.com/jamesfodor https://www.paypal.me/ScienceofEverything

to the Science of Everything podcast. This is episode three, part two of organic agriculture. I'm your host, James Fodor. And in this podcast, I discuss a wide variety of topics in both the natural and social sciences, exploring the many fascinating insights that the scientific method yields about the world around us. Now, as I said, the topic for this week is organic agriculture, part two. Now, in this episode, I'll be looking at the issue of organic food. Is it of a higher quality? than conventional food, and I'll be comparing the efficiency and costs of organic versus conventional food. Now, these are two issues of probably the most controversial aspects of organic food. Last week I focused mostly on the historical background of organic agriculture, the methods used,

and the environmental impact of organic agriculture, and those things are fairly uncontroversial. Not too many people would dispute the fact that organic agriculture does have environmental benefits. But food quality is much more controversial. So let's get into that. Basically, there are three main arguments made as to why organic food is of a higher quality to conventional food. And they are that it lacks pesticide residues, which are found on conventional agricultural products. Second one is that it tastes better. And the third one is that it's more nutritional, high nutritional content. It's better for you. So pesticide residues. Pesticide residues are found on conventional foods in much higher amounts than on organic foods, though it should be noted they are not entirely absent on organics either,

both because organic agriculture still does use some pesticides, and also because there are going to be pesticide residues found in all soils as a result of spread of this through the water, through the air, and also just pesticides that are still found in the soil, as there's a lot of previous agriculture in that area. But, as said, more pesticide residues are found on conventional foods than organic foods. However, the amounts of pesticide residues, that are allowed to be on foods are closely regulated in the US and all developed countries,

and the levels of pesticides that are actually found on foods are almost always well below the levels that are considered dangerous. Now, in the previous podcast, do you remember that I mentioned the fact that everything is a poison? It just depends upon how much of it you have. If you have very low quantities of a substance, it's not necessarily dangerous. So, you know, if you ever hear people say something to the effect of there's mercury and or there's lead in that or there's arsenic in such and such. That doesn't necessarily mean anything, because if there are only tiny, tiny trace amounts of it, really a non-issue.

All of these chemicals, drugs, vitamins, minerals, heavy metals, anything, only have a negative impact if they are in a sufficiently high concentration or dose. And so just because there are pesticide residues found upon foods does not mean that they pose any risk to human health. So, for example, in a 2003 study, the US Food and Drug Administration detected pesticide residues in 37% of domestic food samples and 28% of imported samples. However, for pesticides, for which a tolerance level had been set,

only 0.4% of domestic samples and 0.5% of imported samples exceeded these levels. Based on findings by the European Commission in 2003, This is a different study, chronic exposures to individual pesticides range from 0% to 0.2% of accepted daily intake levels. The same study did share, however, that acute exposure in some individuals with the worst combination of risk factors, so for example, individuals who consumed a lot of a particular food item and had various other risk factors that predisposed them towards these sorts of things, could exceed their intake could exceed the acceptable daily intake by up to 150% of the 50% of the risk factors. and 900% for toddlers. Obviously children are a much greater risk for these things

because they have smaller bodies, and so the same amount of pesticide residue is going to have a larger effect for them. Another total diet study by the FDA, which covered all ages from toddlers up to the elderly, determined that for virtually all of the 38 pesticides that they tested, the highest rates of exposure were less than 1% of the acceptable date, daily intake. And none of the pesticides came in at more than 5%. This is a quote from the

journal Food Science. To put such values in perspective, the ADI typically, the average daily, the acceptable daily intake typically represents a value 100 times lower than the highest level of exposure to a pesticide given to the most sensitive animal species on a daily basis throughout its lifetime that has not caused any noticeable toxicological effect. A typical human exposure of 1% of the ADI, therefore represents an exposure 10,000 times lower than levels that do not cause toxicity in animals." Basically, in order to come up with these acceptable dietary intake levels, studies are made on animals, so they feed them these pesticides or food with pesticide residues

on them and continually increase the dosage until they find a negative health effect. And then they take that level and they divide it by some safety margin. factor. And this factor depends upon a whole bunch of things. It depends on exactly what is being measured. But in these cases, it seems, for General of Food Science article, that the safety factor is about 100 times. So basically that means they do test on animals with these pesticides. Find that the dosage which only just starts to have an effect on the animals, then they divide that by 100, and that's the level of a maximum daily intake of these pesticide residues that they set. Which means that for the studies that we've been looking at above, where pesticide intakes were like 0.2% of the

ADI levels, that's, as that previous quote said, it's like 10,000 times lower than levels which show toxicity in animals. It's the chances of that causing any harm to you are so low, it's almost certainly not worth even considering. And even when we look at the worst-case scenarios of those individuals with the worst risk factors I talked about before, levels of 150 or up to 900% maybe there's some degree of danger there for the very highest ones and perhaps but even so I'm I still doubt that there's a significant issue there just because the there's such a large safety margin talking two orders of magnitude below the animal studies levels that were shown to cause any effect and just remember that when we're talking about risk all risk is relative you know living is risky

getting up out of bed in the morning poses a risk people die all the time from such simple things it's falling down the stairs, drowning in backyard pools, burning themselves in the kitchen, and of course, one of the most common causes of preventable, of accidental death is through car accidents. So everything we do in our lives is risky. And so just because there is a certain statistical risk of pesticide residues causing harm and foods, it doesn't mean that that's really something that we need to worry about. So now briefly, I want to look at some other contaminants that may be found on conventional foods. One concern of of organic agricultural proponents is that residues of animal medications, medications and vaccines

and so forth that are given to animals may be found in the meats that people eat and that could have harmful impacts. Now, in regards to that, the UK Food Standards Agency has said, quote, all veterinary medicines must be assessed for the safety of any residues. There are also controls over their use which apply to both organic and conventional farming. The use of medicines does not imply that residues remain in food, nearly all samples tested are free. of residues, end quote. So basically, the idea of veterinary medicines contaminating meat supplies, it's a non-issue. These things are carefully regulated in both organic and conventional farming, and it's not something we need to worry about. Once again, it's a matter of dosage,

the amounts are so small. In fact, this study said that most samples are free of residues, but I imagine probably you could detect some of them if you really tried, but once again, they're not significant, so it's not something that you need to worry about. Now, other studies have shown that there are high levels of nitrates in conventional agricultural soils and products compared to organic produce. Remember, nitrates are the molecules that are found in soils which store nitrogen. Well, you know, nitrates implies that nitrogen is part of the molecule, and they're necessary for the plants to take up the nitrogen which they need to grow. It's an important nutrient for plant growth. But we don't want too high levels of nitrogen

of nitrates in foods because that can be damaged into human health. So there is some evidence that nitrates may be found in higher levels in conventional compared to organic foods, and that's not so surprising if you consider that artificial fertilizers are basically dumping large amounts of nitrogen onto plants, which then gets converted into nitrates into the soil, and that doesn't happen in organic agriculture. So that could be an issue, but once again, it's probably not that significant.

And conversely, there's actually some evidence that the non-use of pesticides may actually stimulate the production of natural plant defensive toxins in plants. And those could potentially be damaging to human health. Now, the studies that I looked at, that's probably not too much of an issue, but it just goes to point out to demonstrate the fact that, you know, just because something is natural, it's not necessarily safer. You know, there are risks to using nitrates and pesticides on in conventional agriculture, but there are also risks. to not using them. For example, these natural plant, defensive toxins. So other contaminants, probably not too much of an issue either way. Now, let's move on to taste comparisons. Proponents of organic agriculture say that organic food tastes better than conventional food. Now, you'd think that this would be relatively easy to study, you know, just do a blind taste

test and see what the results are. And such studies have been conducted, and generally most show no difference. There are some evidence that maybe organic orange juice and apples or a few other things may be slightly preferred over conventional foods, but most studies show either no difference or inconsistent pattern of difference. So, you know, some organics preferred, some conventional preferred. And that's actually what you expect in any study that has a significantly large number, a sufficiently large number of products being compared, you know, just by chance you'll have movement preference in one direction or the other. It seems, from the body of research that probably there's no significant difference in taste between the two.

However, one factor to bear in mind is that there may be a tendency for organic goods to be sold and purchased at a high level of freshness than conventional foods, and that could be a confounding variable in real world comparison. So if you, for example, personally feel that organic food is of a higher quality of taste better or whatever, that may be because you're buying it from a farm's market or whatever else where it's fresher than a conventional food. So that's not really, there's nothing intrinsic about organic that makes it fresher. It's just you're buying it fresher. And that's maybe a real-world factor which makes people think that it's, um, organic food is of a high quality when in fact it's, that's not an effective organic agriculture at all.

So this is a quote from, um, one of the studies that I read, quote, there is yet to be convincing evidence that organic produce differs in sensory terms from conventional produce, let alone that there is some taste advantage. However, as noted earlier, without considerably more well-controlled research, it cannot be proposed that such differences may not be apparent for some foods under some growing conditions." End quote. This will come up again in the nutrition comparisons, but the taste of food, of fruit, grain, whatever, is highly dependent upon the climate in which it was growing, the exact soil, in which it was

growing the exact nutrients it was exposed to, the way in which it was stored, the way in which it was handled, the way in which it was prepared. There are so many confounding variables that really not very meaningful to say, and that organic or conventional could even be superior to the other. For example, if you consider the fact that if I eat, if I have a rotten piece of food or a bruised apple or a way of ripe banana, you can tell very clearly that these are inferior to your average, you know, your ripe banana or your non-brused apple or your non-rottent pear. There's a very clear difference. That very clear difference does not exist with organic versus conventional foods. You know, there

maybe studies have been conducted, but there'd be no clear effect. That shows that if the effect does exist, it has to be fairly small, because if it was really big, it would have been detected earlier, just like it's really easy to detect the difference between a bruised and a non-brewsed apple. So it's most likely that differences in climate and handling soil nutrients, etc., have a much higher impact, and also a degree of freshness, have a much higher degree of impact upon taste than whether it's organic or conventional. Okay, now let's look at nutrition. Proponents of organic agriculture claim that organic food has

high levels of nutrients. It's better for you. Now, studies comparing crop nutrients over time and also between organic and conventional food are fraught with difficulty. Now, this relates to what I just said before. Climate transportation and storage methods, particular crops that are chosen, how you measure the nutrients. All of these things have a big impact upon the outcomes that you get. And many of the sources that I read, in fact, pretty much all of them stated that more rigorously controlled studies are needed because the studies that we have at the moment are just not adequate. However, that being said, the body of evidence, the balance of evidence shows that there is no significant difference

between organic and conventional food in terms of nutrient quantities. For example, this is a quote from the UK Food Standards Agency. Quote, consumers may choose to buy organic fruit, vegetables and meat because they believe them to be more nutritious than other food. However, the balance of current scientific evidence does not support this view. It is true that some scientific papers reach this conclusion, however others find no difference. As in any field of science, to reach a robust conclusion, it is necessary to evaluate the weight of evidence across a range of published papers. Care should be taken in over-reliance on single papers, end quote. And that's an important point.

Just because one paper says something, that doesn't really prove anything. You need to examine the body of evidence. And that's what I try to do in researching for this podcast. I tried to, as I mentioned in part one of the organic food series, I tried to ignore anything that came from advertly pro-organic agriculture sources. Because quite frankly, if an organization states on its website that their mission is to promote the adoption and use of organic agriculture, then I hardly doubt that they're going to come out with it.

any study which shows anything other than that organic food is better in all respects than conventional food. And looking at that body of evidenced, it seemed that pretty much the conclusion was that there is no difference in nutrient levels. And I've got quite a number of references on the notes page if you're interested. And I won't read them all out now because they all state pretty much the same thing that some studies show slight excesses in some areas for organic, some conversely show slight benefits in conventional agriculture, but overall there's probably no difference. Also, freshness levels, storage conditions, crop variety, the particular type of crop you're planting, soil conditions, weather conditions, how animals are fed, processing methods, soil microbial

populations, crop rotation methods, all of these things impact upon the nutrient levels of plants and also meat and are likely to swamp any difference that you get from pure, you know, organic versus conventional agriculture. It should be noted also that the plants themselves do not change. It's the same species being grown in either case. So it's really just the conditions it grows up in, you know, the nutrient levels, soil conditions and other things that I just mentioned that affect its nutrient levels. And there's no basis in any evidence that we have at the moment

that organic is significantly different to much less better than conventional food. Just one final comment that I wanted to make about microbial contamination. Now there is an argument that the use of animal manure as a fertilizer for organic agriculture has the tendency to lead to higher levels of bacterial microbial contamination, particularly E. coli. That is a danger. However, such things are regulated, just as the pesticide residues for conventional agriculture is regulated, and if the levels of microbial contamination exceed those levels, then basically you can't sell the food. If manure is composted, correctly then it should, there should be no reason for microbial contamination, basically because if, in the process of

a feces turning into manure, the process of composting, the sufficiently high temperatures are reached such that most of the microbes die. And so this microbial contamination should not be too much of an issue, and indeed empirical studies have shown that it probably is not very significant. So that's an actual argument against organic agriculture, but once again it doesn't seem to stand up to empirical testing. Let's move on to the question of is organic agriculture much less efficient than conventional agriculture? And I say less efficient because generally the main argument against organic agriculture is that it's much less efficient, you know. One quote I read that was that a couple of decades ago if you mentioned organic agriculture in, you know, a conventional university setting and biology or agricultural departments, the response you'd get was something

to the effect of organic agriculture equals world starvation or something like that because of the argument that it produces significantly lower yields. Now here is a quote from a nature article quote. The elimination of pesticides and herbicides does not seem to reduce yields as much as you might expect. Because pests tend to prefer particular plants, the crop rotations favoured by organic farmers help to prevent insect populations from accumulating to damaging levels. Continuous cover cropping in winter also helps also helps to keep weeds down so that soil accumulates fewer weed seeds. Natural pesticides and mechanical weeding finish the job, end quote.

So, from that quote and from also other sources that seem to support that, you don't really need pesticides and herbicides to keep pests under control. Crop rotation, cover cropping, natural pesticides, and mechanical weeding can do a pretty good job. However, it should be noted that there are pests endemic to certain regions, such as a certain centipede in the northwestern United States. for which no organic eradication method has been found. Organic methods of eradicating pests are generally pretty effective, but not always. So in terms of fertilizers, once again, it seems that manure is a pretty effective means of keeping the soils,

manure and crop rotations, seem to do a pretty good job of maintaining soil nutrient levels so that you don't really need artificial fertilizers. Organic raising of cattle, however, is notably less efficient than conventional methods, with less milk per cow requiring more cows to produce the same amount of output, and hence ironically more methane emissions for the same level of output. So in this respect at least, organic cattle could result in an increase in greenhouse gas output. Now the ultimate question is, though, aside from all these sort of theoretical questions, is what does the data show about yield differences?

Now this is between conventional and organic systems, and this is very controversial. We get studies saying all sorts of things. One study I saw showed that there was basically no difference in yields between the two, but that came from a website whose about purpose was to promote the adoption of organic agriculture. So I pretty much ignored that. Studies that I found from government and scientific journals were pretty consistent showing that, on average, it seems that the difference in yield output is somewhere between about 10 and 50%. Standard values I saw were around 30 to 40% reduction in yields.

Yield refers to basically the amount of crop you get per area of land. But of course, the difference in yields varies wildly between crops. So it's different for grains, different grains, it's different for fruits and vegetables. It's different for meats. Generally, the effect on meat is greater than it is for grains and fruits and vegetables. but the overall effect seems to be something around 30, 40% reduction in yields. However, that said, organic farms do consistently outperform conventional farms in times of flood drought and other adverse conditions, generally with 70% to 90% greater yields, so there is a big effect

there. And the reason for that seems to be that the higher soil quality of organic farms provides a sort of reserve that the plants can tap into in hard times. They also seem to preserve water better in the... the soil over to the higher organic content. However, one point that should be noted is that organic agriculture has not received as much research attention or funding as conventional agriculture, so yields may well improve as more work is done in this area. But overall, it does seem that organic yields are lower by maybe 30, 40% than conventional yields. That's the best data that I

could get from the research. Now, more important, though, than yields is actually the cost of organic fruit because remember yields only tell us how much output there is per land area and that that's not really so important because you also have to factor in you know inputs of fertilizers, inputs of machinery, inputs of labor, those are all important. Ultimately it comes down to how much does it costs when all of the inputs are factored in how much does it cost? Organic costs are lower obviously in terms of fertilizers and pesticides because you know they don't need them but they're generally higher for machinery, labor and seed. Also, economies of scale do not seem to be as significant in organic competitive conventional farms,

although that may be just a tendency and not, you know, because the organic movement's generally caught up with bi-local and selling to local farmers' markets or so on. So that may just be a tendency and not anything intrinsic to organic agriculture. Organic farms also, it seems to be they need more management, more close management, than conventional farms. Because, you know, they have to carefully manage the cover crops, the undercrops, the crop rotation, the timing of putting manure on and all of these other factors. Whereas in conventional farms it seems like, you know, it's just sort of you dump the pesticides, you dump the herbicides, you dump the fertilizers, and then you harvest.

I mean, I'm obviously oversimplifying, but the indication that I got from the research is that there's more careful management that needs to go into organic farms compared to conventional farms. And that actually makes organic farming sound superior, but it's actually not superior because simpler is better. You know, if the more work that has to go into something, the more resources are being used up and therefore the less efficient it is. So it's actually a good thing that conventional agriculture seems to be simpler than organic agriculture. However, we need to take all these things into consideration. And studies have been done comparing the, um, the price differences of organic versus conventional fruit. Once again, the prices vary greatly, um, between

foods, between brands, between products, etc. They generally hire, uh, the price differences they're generally higher for processed foods and for meats than they are for grains and vegetables. However, once that I saw was that average prices in the US were about 50% to 60% higher for organic foods than for conventional foods. And in the EU it was somewhat lower than that because organic agriculture has subsidies in the European Union, whereas it does not in the US. So let's say about 50% higher price. Now some of that will be reflective of higher production costs and lower yields. some of it though will be reflective of simply a price discrimination effect. Basically it means that price discrimination refers to the fact that

if your consumers are willing to pay more you have an ability to charge more and people who buy organic agriculture are likely willing to pay more for their food because they believe it has a higher, it is of a higher quality even though our analysis showed that it probably isn't. They believe it is of higher quality so they're willing to pay more for it and so producers are able to sell it for more. Now that difference is significant because if, say, we completely switched over to organic food, everyone would have to buy organics, and so that price discrimination effect would go away,

and so prices would be able to fall, somewhat at least. So not all of that price differences due to pure differences in costs, although I say probably most of it is because price discrimination also requires a degree of market power, and the only way you can maintain market power in this case is if you have some kind of barriers to entry, of new organic farmers entering the market. And obviously there are startup capital costs, but I don't see the evidence for significant barriers in which. So, you know, if levels of profit for organic agriculture would significantly higher

than for conventional farms, you'd expect to see an expansion of the industry. And in fact, that is what we see at the moment. So perhaps organic prices will continue to fall relative to conventional prices. But the point is that if there was a huge effect, you'd expect much more rapid expansion of the industry. And so because the industry is not expanding that rapidly, you know, it's not like 300% per year or anything like that, then probably most of the price differential is due to cost differential and not, you know, higher profits through price discriminations. From what I read, it seems that a mixed approach is probably what's necessary. Now, there are environmental benefits to organic agriculture, but those come at a,

the cost of higher costs of production. Now, from some of the studies I read indicated that many of the benefits of organic agriculture could be achieved without actually adapting the full organic agriculture practice. So, for example, organic farmers eliminate weeds through frequent mechanical weeding and crop rotation and cover crops.

The same result could probably be achieved through limited use of herbicides combined with no-till farming techniques. Also, in Europe, higher years. yields of conventional agriculture permit some of the land that's saved to be used to plant trees on, and that's being done as a result of government subsidies in Europe. And these trees that are planted are harvested for wood, but in the meantime, while they're growing, they serve as sort of havens of environmental diversity

for different species, and also as carbon sinks. But you can only do that if you have the extra land available as a result of high yields of conventional agriculture. There are also techniques of integrated farm management, which basically incorporates some of the techniques of organic farming, but also using some pesticides and fertilizers. And that I think is going to be the way to go. Clearly, it seems that you can get very high yields, not as high, but very high yields,

without using any pesticides or herbicides, and without using any artificial fertilizers. So if we just used a little bit of these pesticides and fertilizers when necessary, that would bring up yields, probably to pretty much parity with conventional techniques, while still maintaining most of the environmental benefits of organic agriculture. And most of the techniques of organic agriculture, like, for example, cover cropping, use of manure, crop rotation,

are not dependent upon issuing the use of artificial fertilizers and pesticides. So there's no reason why we can't have a combination of organic and conventional techniques. And remember that the organic agriculture movement has its roots in philosophy of life and not in agricultural science. And that's actually a quote from one of the studies that I read. So there's no need to go all out organic agriculture. There's no reason to totally stop the use of artificial pesticides and fertilizers. Yes, they are causing some damage in terms of nitrate pollution and erosion and so on,

but there's no need to totally eliminate them. We can just reduce their use, and therefore get most of the environmental benefits, but not totally give up their benefits in terms of higher crop yields either. But really, at the end of the day, the problem is that environmental and social costs are not all factored into the costs of conventional farming. And the biggest ones of that are soil erosion, pollution of surface water and groundwater and hazards to human health, and also effective biodiversity. They are not all factored into current conventional agricultural production, basically because the farmer doesn't have to pay for them. You know, if he reduces biodiversity or if he pollutes surrounding rivers, he doesn't have to pay for that at all. The best way of solving this problem will be simply to, as the economic jargon is, internalize the externality.

Farmers are imposing external costs upon society. We need to internalize those costs by, for example, putting a tax upon use of fertilizers so that farmers have to take into account the costs that they are imposing in terms of erosion and water pollution on everyone else. And therefore, they will reduce their use of fertilizers and pesticides just, just by themselves because now they're having to pay the higher cost because of the tax that we've imposed. And I'll definitely talk more about this idea of externalities and taxation of externalities in a future podcast because I need to flesh that out in a bit more detail. But one of the studies that I saw tried to put dollar value on the cost of erosion and

pollution of soil and water bodies, and the figure that they came out with was about $55 billion per year. Now compare that to total food spending in US. households in 2003, which was about $600 billion. Now if we assume that organic food is on average going to be 50% more expensive, then if the US completely shifted to organic food, cost would be about $300 billion. Now this ignores the price premium effect, which I talked about before, and the possibilities of economies of scale for organic agriculture. So maybe, the real effect would probably be less than that. However, the estimated benefits of switching to organic agriculture based on these studies that I quoted before are probably only about $40 billion per year,

and that's based on about $15 billion per year costs of water pollution, which would be totally eliminated because organic agriculture doesn't use pesticides or fertilizers really at all. And $55 billion of estimated erosion damages would be reduced about in half, based on one of the studies that I read, which stated that organic agriculture has about half as much erosion damage as conventional agriculture. So if you sum all that up, it comes to about $40 billion of damage, environmental damage, that will be avoided through complete adoption of organic agriculture. And that compares to my $300 billion estimate of the cost of it. So it seems that organic agriculture probably isn't worth the price.

Now, the figures that I've stated are obviously very crude. It's very hard to measure these things, but when the costs are about an order of magnitude higher than the benefits, $300 billion versus $40 billion, that's probably indicative of the fact that these things are not worth it. As I've stated before, probably the best approach would be to adopt a tax on the externalities of erosion and water pollution, and then let the farmers themselves decide how much they should

raid in use of pesticides and fertilizers and how much they should use organic practices, or to the degree to which it's not worth using the organic practices, and it's best to stick with conventional. So my advice is that it's probably not worth buying organic food. The price is too high, and the risks to your health are not significant. The risk to the environment, yeah, they're real, but I guess it just depends upon how much of environmental consciousness you have. My take on this whole big debate about organic agriculture is that the organic movement does have some legitimate points about environmental pollution, and definitely we need to look at those things, particularly erosion. It seems like erosion of soil is one of the biggest problems. Soil is a precious resource, and we cannot continue to allow it to be eroded through negligent farming practices as is occurring at the moment.

That's all I have to say on organic agriculture. I hope that you've learned something from this podcast and also this two, part series on organic agriculture. It's a controversial subject and I tried to get to the bottom of the science behind it, which is what this podcast is all about. Now if you've enjoyed this podcast, please help to spread the word by posting a positive review on iTunes or any other podcast aggregate site that you come across, or by sharing the podcast with a friend. If you have any questions, comments or suggestions, please feel free to contact me. My email address is FODS12. That's F-O-D-S-1-2 at gmail.com. You can also find the show notes for this podcast and leave comments at Fods12.podbean.com. And I'll talk to you next week.