Organicly Grown Foods: Is it really any better?
June 10th, 2008
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Note: This post only deals with plant-based foods and agriculture, not meat, poultry or dairy. Those are another topic to be saved for a later post, as this one is already long enough.
Organic farming has long been touted as a “lower impact” or “more environmentally friendly” way of growing crops. The whole concept of “Organic Farming,” however is something of a misnomer. The word “organic” is strictly defined within chemistry as being compounds based on the covalent bonds of carbon and hydrogen, but in agriculture, the definition is more fuzzy. For a food or product to be called “organic” it usually means that it carries the seal or certification of a regulatory body. In the United States, this means the USDA. Other countries have equivalent regulatory agencies with standards for what is considered ‘organic.’ There are also private certifications.
All the standards around the world are roughly the same and are based on the principles originally outlines by the International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements in the early 1990’s. In the United States, the EU and most other jurisdictions, for a food product to be sold under the title “Organic” it must have the certification of the local government that it has been grown within the restrictions of “organic agriculture.”
What it is:
The word “organic,” as mentioned, is really not a good description of the practice. Rather, the restrictions placed on agriculture that carries the “organic” label tend to dictate that no synthetic fertilizer is used for the growth of the crops, no genetically modified crops are used and pesticides use is strictly controlled, generally only permitting the use of chemical agents for small isolated insect problems, but allowing for the use of insect control methods which are not considered “artificial” or “chemical” in nature to be used without restriction.
One thing that is important to bear in mind is that organic farming IS NOT synonymous with small farms, family or mom and pop operations. Organically certified food can be, and often is grown on giant farms owned by large corporate entities. Organic farming also in no way restricts the mechanics or methods used for farming, so massive tractors, giant diesel-powered reapers, backhoes, enormous irrigation operations and alike are all fair game.
What Organic Agriculture Operations Use:
First, it’s important to note that “Organic Farming” is really a restriction. The fact that a farm is not organic does not mean it does not use composting, reduced insecticide or other methods associated with organic farming. In traditional agriculture the farmer is free to pick and choose what methods are best suited for a given situation. If it is decided to use composting to help increase water retention or because suitable material is available, the farmer is free to do so. The farmer may also use non-organic means to achieve the best results.
The fertilizers used by traditional farmers are often produced by various chemical means and provide concentrated nutrients which can be applied in a variety of forms. When used properly, they can aid in keeping the soil nutrients in balance while keeping runoff to a minimum. Organic farming is limited to “natural” materials. This includes materials like manure, compost, sewage sludge (if its composted first), agricultural waste, guano, seaweed, food processing waste and almost anything found in nature, including minerals. Thus, organic farming can use something like lime, even though it’s not technically an organic chemical.
This is the part where it gets ridiculous: A traditional farmer might use potassium nitrate (also known as saltpeter) as a fertilizer to provide potassium and nitrates, both of these being important nutrients for crops. Potassium nitrate for fertilizer usually is chemically refined and thus an organic farmer cannot use it. However, if they get the potassium nitrate from a naturally occurring deposit of saltpeter, then it’s just fine and dandy. It’s the same damn chemical compound, but it has to “come from nature” to be considered organic.
Potash is a common raw material for potassium fertilizer. Potash can be produced from wood, but it is more commonly mined. Potash is a mixture of potassium salts and other potassium compounds and in most modern fertilizers, the raw material is processed to remove any inert other materials and to concentrate the more desirable compounds and then render it into a form which is easy to apply as fertilizer, such as small pellets. Organic farmers can use potash, but only if it is applied in the raw form, as it was shoveled out of a potash deposit. It must be applied rocks and all, and if it were separated, dissolved or concentrated that would not be “organic.”
Similarly, while conventional farming might use urea-based fertilizers to provide nitrogen to soil, an organic farmer could not do this, but could accomplish the same thing in by using urine as fertilizer, such as that collected from the runoff from livestock pens. This is one reason why guano is valuable in organic farming. Guano, also known as “bat s**t” is a natural source of nitrates, phosphates and ammonia. Since organic farmers are never allowed to use these compounds if they’ve been artificially produced, extracted, concentrated or otherwise altered, they have to rely on bats to do it in their poo. Of course, guano also contains a lot of inert material which is neither here nor there for fertilizer, but that comes with the territory and is the reason why larger amounts of fertilizer are required and more tilling and mechanical working and breaking down of the material is a necessity.
Insect Control:
When it comes to pest control, organic farmers are free to use any number of methods as long as they don’t involve any “chemical” methods. Traditional farmers may use chemical methods or other methods of insect control. The idea that insecticides are indiscriminately dumped on fields is not accurate, however, and those which are used are all approved for safety and strictly regulated. They’re also used conservatively simply because of expense and the fact that large amounts are generally not necessary. In many cases, disease and pest resistant genetically modified crops may reduce or eliminate the issue without the use of insecticides.
In the case of organic farming, genetically modified crops are not allowed, except, of course, for those produced by selective breeding and cross pollination. Organic agriculture generally relies less on “chemical” insecticides, but exactly what is defined as “chemical” is so damn convoluted it borders on the absurd. Just about anything that can be defined as a “plant extract” is fair game. Pyrethrins are probably the most potent insecticide in the organic arsenal. These are compounds extracted from plants and they are used in some consumer insect sprays as well. Many organic certifications consider this a “chemical” but allow it’s use for limited control of pest outbreaks. It tends to be expensive as well, which reduces it’s general use.
Other pest control substances used in organic farming include neem, an extract from an Indian tree which is also highly toxic to mammals as well as nicotine sulfate, an extract from tobacco plants. Nicotine sulfate seems to be the most common general purpose plant-derived insect control substance for organic use. It is effective, but usually breaks down quickly after applied. That’s a good thing, though because the stuff is really pretty nasty stuff, which will irritate skin on contact and which can produce vapors that are hazardous to inhale and can irritate eyes. Mineral oils are also used, as are soaps, which apparently is okay, even though they are produced artificially. To control both pests and fungus, substances like sulfur and copper sulfate may be applied. The later of these can build up to toxic levels in soils and is highly toxic to fish. It can also irritate skin and is hazardous to human health.
Exactly what logic is used to justify the use of these substances beats the hell out of me, but it seems that things which are considered “traditional” or “low tech” are generally considered okay. However, there is no restriction on methods of pest control that don’t use chemical means to repel or kill pests. Thus, insect traps, vacuums, hot steam sprays or other mechanical means are all fine, no matter how much energy they may use or whether they could harm other species or not. Likewise, importing massive amounts of predictor insects or natural fungi or other biological controls are also fine.
Food Quality:
There’s no evidence that they taste better, or contain any more nutrients than traditional crops, and if anything they may contain less due to the less concentrated fertilizers. The claim that they are safer is at best dubious, as fertilizer residue would not pose a problem to humans and insecticide residue on traditionally grown crops tends to be very minimal, and has not been proven to be of any health concern.
If anything organic foods may be more dangerous to human health, because although modern insecticides are tested for safety and normally only present in trace amounts, major biological contamination incidents such as E. Coli. tainted spinach or other foods. These contaminants are well known to be associated with manure, and other “organic” materials may carry equally harmful pathogens. After the big spinach incident a couple of years ago, the Organic Food Association came out fighting, and although it’s true that E. Coli bacteria can certainly come from sources other than manure-based fertilizer, major outbreaks of E. Coli have been linked to the use of s**t, spread all over food crops.
And the runoff from organic farming is not exactly 100% safe either. In addition to copper sulfate, organic farming carries many of the same runoff risks as other farming methods, since many of the compounds used are really the same, only less concentrated and derived from natural sources. In addition, one of the worst E. Coli outbreaks in history was traced to runoff from manure into the local water supply. While this was not caused by an organic farming operation, it does illustrate the potential dangers from substances which are claimed to be “safe and natural.”
But what about the enviornmental aspect? Better? It would seem not. Actually, it may be significantly worse in some respects.
How organic farming can be WORSE for the enviornment:
More Energy Intensive – Since organic farming generally requires more working of soils, larger areas of land and more intensive management of crops, and a greater volume of fertilizer to spread, it can be more energy intensive than conventional farming methods and thus produce more air pollution and consume more energy resources. Whether or not this is offset by the use of less processed fertilizers will vary, but it in many circumstances, there will be a net increase in energy used.
More Land Needed – Organic farming tends to produce less yield per acre of land and thus a greater amount of farmland is needed for the same amount of crops. This may force more land to be cleared and will also generally lead to less farm land being left as reserve or allowed to revert to a more natural state. The effect on the local environment is thus often significantly greater than conventional farming methods.
More Greenhouse Gasses – Organic farming relies heavily on composting and use of waste materials for fertilizer. Encouraging the rapid decomposition of this material, such as is done with composting can produce enormous volumes of methane. Agriculture represents the single largest source of methane produced by human activities. This accounts for more than 7% of human greenhouse gas equivalent. Although methane is produced whenever biological materials decay, the fact that organic farming promotes rapid decay by composting and spreading can increase the total methane for a given amount of crops.
Agriculture is also the largest source of manmade nitrous oxide emissions, producing more than 60% total, representing about 5% of the total relative greenhouse gasses produced by human activity. Increased nitrous emissions can be the result of mechanical displacement of soil and tilling. For this and other reasons, reduced tilling agriculture and even no-till farming can cut nitrous emissions greatly, but these practices generally require artificial fertilizer, genetically modified crops or other measures. Organic farming tends to be very intensive when it comes to tilling, as this is needed to work the low density fertilizers into the ground.
This does not even include the increased energy needed for organic farming.
More Water Intensive – Fresh water is one of the most important resources and one which does not get nearly the attention it deserves. Irrigation requires enormous amounts of water and providing it can require enormous amounts of energy for pumping and distribution. Additionally, many areas have seen farming consume so much of the local water resources that entire rivers are diverted entirely to agriculture. This can result in catastrophic changes to the local water ecosystems.
Organic farming rejects all genetically modified crops, although many were created with the purpose of requiring less water. This combined with the increased land usage and lower density of fertilizers means that organic farming may require considerably more water than other more traditional agricultural methods.
This can also lead to increased runoff, and contrary to what may be reported, organic fertilizers are not necessarily harmless to water resources.
More Soil Loss Problems – Organic faming often claims to be a better method of soil management. In some cases, the practices associated with organic farming may have some benefits for management of soil, but it also carries some acute disadvantages. The greater use of water can lead to more soil erosion and the requirement for more land, greater tilling of soil and lower density of crops can also reduce soil retention.
Some Methods Can Have Greater Local Impacts – Organic farming commonly uses the claim that it is more friendly to the local enviornment, but in practice many techniques which are common in organic farming may actually be more disruptive. The fact that farmers are restricted from using modern and effecient methods of agriculture can lead to dependence on more disruptive techniques. For example, importing large numbers of predator insects can disrupt local ecosystems, insect traps or other methods of control can be harmful to bees or other beneficial species which are found around the same plants as agricultural pests. In many cases, properly used insecticides may have less of an effect on insects that do not feed directly on the plants. Also, the importation of large amounts of manure or other organic fertilizers can cause water quality problems or infestations of flies. Compost and manure from agriculture can make for a very unpleasant situation for neighbors.
Less Efficient For Providing Food for The World - Organic farming is, if nothing else, an attempt to take mankind back to the old days where fertilizers were natural, crops were unreliable and famine was common. One thing many people do not appreciate is that modern agriculture has resulted in more bountiful food with less impact than at any time in human history. The idea of imposing these restrictions on a world which already is seeing food shortages is ludicrous. As for “sustainability,” modern advances have made it possible to feed more people more efficiently and with less consumption of limited resources. The Haber–Bosch Process is a mechanism for nitrogen fixation that can efficiently produce nitrate fertilizers from nitrogen in the atmosphere, an effectively unlimited resource. This process alone is often cited as the primary reason that it is possible to provide food to the world population. Without it, at least two billion people would face starvation.
More info:
The costly fraud that is organic food
Insecticides used in “Organic Farming”
“Organic” Foods: Certification Does Not Protect Consumers – From Quackwatch
Busting The Myth Of Organic Food
Organic Food Myths Debunked – From our good friend Ron Baily at Reason magazine (addresses health and taste as well as other factors)
This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 10th, 2008 at 9:17 pm and is filed under Agriculture, Bad Science, Enviornment, Obfuscation, Politics, Quackery. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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June 10th, 2008 at 9:43 pm
“Organic” Foods has just become a marketing buzzword to sell environmental indulgences to the SUV crowd and aging hippies at a premium. Like bottled water and “fair trade” Foods, it is a triumph of appearance over reason.
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June 11th, 2008 at 12:33 am
One of your best posts! I’ve always wondered what the hell was up with associating organic foods with somehow helping global warming. I hear a lot of “we need to work to reduce greenhouse gases by using less energy and going organic.” or just some other association. I have no idea how you could possibly justify it with saying it’s better for greenhouse emissions. I think you’re right that it’s probably worse in most cases.
Also, I agree that some techniques they use in organic farming are good or useful or can help environmentally, but you make a good point that “organic” means “restricted” so the farmer does not have the freedom to use whatever tool is best and has to use ones that are approved even if they are worse. I think it should be obvious that being approved does not have anything to do with being good for the enviornment or food safety or anything.
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June 11th, 2008 at 1:44 am
Hear, hear! “Sustainable” and “Organic” have been debased to the point of becoming meaningless. At least the cunning capitalistic corporations can contribute to the economy by leeching money off the trendy fools by selling the buzzwords.
Unfortunately, keeping up this illusion is ultimately sh@tting more on the environment… *sigh*
(What I really despise is the debasing of the word “responsible” to the same level of inanity.)
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June 11th, 2008 at 2:14 am
Well fertilizer runoff is a problem and that’s for sure, but I’ve heard a lot that it can be solved or reduced a lot by using fertilizer properly and ditches to catch the water running off and reuse it for irrigating the crops, and also to irrigate them properly so there’s less runoff.
I guess that might work, because it seems like the kind of thing that might be more from overuse or improper use, but I’m not convinced organic methods solve the problem because as you say they use the same stuff sometimes but less concentrated and also it has other problems.
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June 11th, 2008 at 2:47 am
Great posting! I guess I see now why there were none the past two days, because this is five stars and worth the wait. I’m forwarding this to four of my friends, so I somewhat expect four angry responses!
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June 11th, 2008 at 3:28 am
Great post.
Minor nit, it’s “bear in mind” as in “to carry”, not “bare in mind” as in “to expose”.
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June 11th, 2008 at 8:01 am
Bottom line: it’s pure superstition and magical thinking. The only distinctions that can be drawn between organic and non-organic farming are on form and appearance, not substance. Genetic modification by selective breeding? No problem, as long as no scary scientists and test tubes are involved! But we’d rather see the third world starve than feed themselves with GM crops.
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June 11th, 2008 at 9:04 am
I’ve always thought that locally grown has more important than organic, although even that is obviously fairly arbitrary. I love walking into the grocery store and watching people choose between conventional garlic grown 1,000 miles away, and ‘organic’ garlic grown in China. Guess which one most people choose? China it is.
Also, I think I’ve read that conventional farming uses more manure/compost on average than organic farming, but I can’t find an actual stat so I won’t stake a claim to that argument.
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June 11th, 2008 at 10:30 am
All good stuff. I agree with Colin that local source is more important than organic origin. I also make efforts to rely on seasonal produce, and tailor my menus accordingly. Soft fruit in summer, root vegetables in winter; that sort of thing. I’m writing a cook-book at the moment, will advise details upon publication. My gravest concern about food supply is the Haber-Bosch process’ reliance upon increasingly expensive natural gas, and the moves by ExxonMobil et al to push LNG as a solution to crude oil market tightness – what alternatives do we have? Night Soil?
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June 11th, 2008 at 12:03 pm
McGlashan said:
Wonders will never cease – McGlashan and I agree on something.
Yes it’s going to be a big issue soon. Milorginites and other sewage based sources have issues with passing plant viruses around; it would seem bell peppers have been widely effected by this sort of pathogen vectored this way. Swine manure is the next best thing because of its inherently high available nitrogen, so I’d guess that it will become an importaint source in the future.
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June 11th, 2008 at 12:42 pm
colin said:
I’m not entirely sure that “locally grown” can really be justified in terms of purely enviornmental terms. It would depend on the circumstances, because you could probably make the argument that bigger farms would be more effecient in terms of resources.
Obviously there are certain items which you really can’t get “locally” – stuff like pasta, cereal, sauces and so on. That stuff does come in “organic” these days though. Local I think would probably be limited to produce.
Still, whenever possible I often do buy fruit, corn and other vegetables from a local orchard or farm stand. I find them to be fresher in general, which you’d kinda expect considering they’re grown about 200 yards from where they’re sold.
Also, the people who live next to my parents house have a tree that bears very nice apples in the autumn and it has a large branch which crosses over the property line and they seem to agree is fair game for picking.
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June 11th, 2008 at 12:46 pm
I guess that’s why “greens” generally have not much of a problem with coal power plants. After all, the plants from which coal originated, were grown “organic”, without artificial fertilizers and pestizides. In contrast to that, uranium is non-organic and chemically and physically refined from minerals -> bad.
Same with “natural” gas. It says right there in the name that it is natural. How can it be therefore harmful?
“Organic” and “natural” are the Ctrl-Alt-Delete of the brainless crowd.
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June 11th, 2008 at 1:15 pm
A very interesting post. There’s a lot of hype about organic foods. It’s like other kinds of foods don’t matter. During this time of food insecurity, every option must explored to ensure there’s enough food for everybody.
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June 11th, 2008 at 1:29 pm
drbuzz0 said:
It’s definitely at least a somewhat arbitrary choice on my part. I prefer to keep local farmers in business so they don’t sell their land and leave me watching it turn into McMansions and strip malls. That said, I also happen to prefer their product. Generally speaking, a farmer which grows for a local market has a larger variety of crops to choose from. They can grow a tomato that isn’t designed to last for a week while it rattles around on the back of a truck.
But I live in New England, and when winter rolls around I definitely buy my share of produce grown far away, and don’t shed too many tears over it.
I’ve noticed over the years that a lot of the arguments against GMO food have really lost their track. It used to be that the major concerns where economic – the main problem with terminator crops isn’t their GMO nature, it’s that Monsanto uses them as an economic weapon. Same thing with rGBH milk. Somehow the fairly rational arguments against such things from an economic standpoint have turned into woo-woo arguments that are just plain silly and wrong. Same thing with ‘organic’ food.
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June 11th, 2008 at 1:36 pm
I can understand the mentality that it is good to have crops that are grown local because of freshness and support for your community. However, I also do not see how there is a problem directly with people buying foods which are imported in circumstances where they may not be in season or in a city where they are not grown in the local area or such as oranges which are not growing in nontropical areas.
My question goes to those who are not in the situation of luxury where they want the best food which is reasonable for them to get, as for children. What if you have a child who does not eat their vegetables and wants only sweet things? Maybe a parent will buy this child fruits or sweet peas or fresh carrots to get them a better diet, this is responsible.
Now, do you condemn this parent for buying such foods if they need to be imported out of the growing season? I would not. And my point is that to provide the best nutrition and foods, it may be necessary to bring them in. I will not say this is wrong. I too enjoy some fruits which are not native.
Thank you for the information.
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June 11th, 2008 at 2:30 pm
colin said:
Not to hammer on my fellow Asian brothers, but I’d really be cautious about “organic” stuff from China. *grin*
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June 11th, 2008 at 3:03 pm
McGlashan said:
Absolutely worth concern. The Haber-Bosch process is one of those things that most people know nothing about but is truly a pillar of modern society and a marvel of industry. It’s vital. Nitrate fertilizer is the most important to growing food crops and atmospheric fixation and ammonia production just blow away other sources of nitrogen. Manure and natural nitrates are too low density, too difficult to use and transport, not avaliable enough etc.
The thing about the Haber-Bosch process is that it does not necessarily need natural gas. What it needs is hydrogen, and that typically comes from natural gas through steam reformatting. It can be made from water and believe it or not, there was a time when electrolysis of water was a major source of hydrogen for the process.
The famous “heavy water raid” in WWII stopped some heavy water from going to Nazi Germany which came from a Norwegian hydroelectric plant which produced it as a byproduct of hydrogen production. They were producing hydrogen because the plant was originally feeding an ammonia plant. So, it can be done that way too.
One reason for this would be the fact that sulfur is a poison to the process, so this may have been why it was preferable to use water. Natural gas is very low in sulfur, but it still would destroy the catalyst and poison the process, so natural gas needs to go through cleaning stages to make sure there is zero sulfur in the mix before it is used as feedstock.
You could also use steam reformatting of coal to make the hydrogen, but you’d need much more cleaning of the gas because it would be much higher in sulfur, so I don’t think they do that in general.
It’s like most things though, you can use almost any feedstock as long as you have enough energy. Electrolysis needs a huge amount of energy which is why a hydroelectric plant was almost completely dedicated to the process.
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June 11th, 2008 at 4:14 pm
I live in a semi-farm community where we get lots of good fresh produce. The corn and strawberries right now are amazing.
When I get them I drive 7 miles down the road to the corner stand, buy a few things, and drive home. Total gasoline usage: ~1 gallon.
That kinda negates the theoretical environmental advantage of not driving them across the country.
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June 11th, 2008 at 4:24 pm
Distance alone does not tell you how environmentally friendly a product is. Giant container ships are about an order of magnitude more efficient than a truck and the distance travelled by the final product does not tell you anything about the distance travelled by inputs(e.g. fertilizer) or the amount of inputs required.
Fuel is obviously expensive, so is labour, land, irrigation, refrigeration and many other things. It’s not perfect,
but many of these factors get conveniently rolled into a single index called price and unless you have some special insight into how a good was produced I suspect that buying the cheapest good of a given quality will be more likely to be the environmentally favourable choice rather than just minimizing distance travelled.
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June 11th, 2008 at 4:42 pm
Gregor, there’s some people working on ammonia production directly from water and nitrogen gas isolated from the atmosphere. They reckon they can do it more efficiently than via electrolysis by quite a good margin(see for instance http://www.energy.iastate.edu/Renewable/ammonia/ammonia/2007/SSAS_Oct2007_Final.pdf ). Ammonia is also being looked at by some as an energy carrier, either for hydrogen fuel cells or direct ammonia fuel cells.
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June 11th, 2008 at 5:28 pm
I have to disagree with the use of pesticides. When I was teenage I had a couple of bad reactions with pesticides. In my local area during the summer a lot of local kids go blueberry raking. Most of the day you are bent over in contact with the leaves and other parts of the plants which are damp because of the dew. Your skin absorbs the pesticides and you breath them in also, what happened to me is that I had a severe asthma attack that placed me in the hospital for a week. The next year I went blueberry raking again and again I ended up with week long asthma attack, I tried one more year and ended up actually falling out pick of pick up truck that was transporting us to the the field that day, and taht was that for that job. Some people do have problems with prsticides so some other choice must be made avaible.
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June 11th, 2008 at 5:33 pm
Soylent said:
Yeah, I was referring to the historical large scale stuff, but making ammonia can be done in a number of ways or recovered from where it would be waste otherwise, like in fish farms or potentially even from sewage. it’s a simple compound, and neither hydrogen or nitrogen are anything you can’t easily get or using water or some other compound.
I appreciate that they note at the end the need for a large economical energy source like nuclear energy, because that is the thing with any of these synthesis reactions to make this kind of chemical. You can make gasoline out of water and graphite or even water and mud (containing a decent amount of organics) or garbage. You can make gasoline, diesel and even food-grade paraffin wax or baby oil out of sewage.
It is always an issue of energy. If you want to do it on a large scale, it’s fairly easy aside from the need for enormous amounts of process heat.
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June 11th, 2008 at 5:35 pm
davidlpf said:
May I ask about when this was, like what year, and also what general area? If you know the kind of pesticide used, that would be even better, but I’m assuming you don’t know exactly.
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June 11th, 2008 at 5:37 pm
It was early Ninties in New Brunswick Canada ,no I do not know the pesticide used.
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June 11th, 2008 at 5:40 pm
Actually southern New Brunswick around the town of St Stephen, there are number of small producers in the area
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June 11th, 2008 at 5:54 pm
Another small comment the best thing no matter how the produce is produced is wash it before you use it. That will take off most of chemical or e. coli that is on it. The blueberries in the area are fine it us just that pesticides can be bad for people with allergies or breathing problems, and for peoples yards I would rather see a few weeds then drop dead from walking by it.
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June 11th, 2008 at 6:24 pm
davidlpf said:
Fenitrothion was used to control spruce budworm in New Brunswick at that time wasn’t it? I recall that they were soaking the Provence down in it from the air, to the point where some pregnant women were leaving for the spraying season, and that there were issues with it drifting into populated areas.
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June 11th, 2008 at 6:37 pm
That could be it, yes they spaying the forest budworm at that time and actually the fields are located a lot closer to the woods so probably more likely to for it drift to the blueberry fields then into the town.
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June 11th, 2008 at 8:19 pm
davidlpf said:
Always good advice and a good thing to do regardless of whether its organic or not, any produce should be well washed. Not only for fertilizer, insecticides and such, but you never know who’s grubby hands have been handling it in the produce section of the supermarket or whether it fell on the ground while being picked etc. Since you are going to presumably be eating the skin, and it’s not in a controlled, sterilized package, washing is a good thing regardless.
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June 11th, 2008 at 9:06 pm
I’m wondering how they justify standards which are so convoluted. You can use insecticides? and they can be very toxic? But only if they’re approved as being “natural”????
Why is it you can mechanically separate and refine a substance from a plant but you can’t from a mineral?
What about copper sulfate? Does that occur in nature in big monolithic deposits? I’m thinking not. Even if it is in nature I’d think you’d need to refine it down to the material alone and then apply it. So why is this okay for that but not for phosphates or potassium? I mean, they’re actually LESS hazardous!
Along with other stuff, I just don’t get this as being anything other than a list of things that you can and can’t do that someone pulled out of their ass with no actual justifying logic.
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June 12th, 2008 at 2:12 am
davidlpf said:
Yeah, well there are a lot of good reasons to limit pesticides because of the fact that they can kill off beneficial insects like pollinators or because they often have enviornmental side effects. I’d have a hard time saying they should not be used, but used within reasonable limits. A lot of pest control involves insect traps or using some kind of non-chemical agents that just smother them or stop them from being able to cling to plants or something like that. I think this is becoming more popular as insecticides are more regulated now than in the past.
But I can’t really just disagree with their use at all. I don’t know that we want to just douse crops in copious amounts, but there may be some circumstances when they’re the best thing to use. If there was a locus outbreak, I’m sure you’d change your tune.
Sometimes it might be best to use chemical pesticides, like if there is a part of a crop which is being attacked by an insect, then if you hit them with pesticides and kill them all off right away, you could stop the problem from getting worse with more crops.
I don’t see how this is in any way a justification for ‘organic farming’ because for one thing they use some potentially nasty stuff that it sounds could irritate your skin possibly worse! Plus, organic farming strongly opposed GM crops entirely, and my understanding is that some GM crops which have been modified with proteins that repel or inhibit insects actually have lead to dramatical REDUCTIONS in pesticide use on crops that traditionally need a lot of it.
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June 12th, 2008 at 4:45 am
El Dorkorino said:
Most policy driven by pure politics and environmentalism are the same way. I haven’t had any public office experience (and heaven forbid I do), but it seems like professional advice is almost always trumped by ego stroking and emotional altruism.
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June 12th, 2008 at 7:47 am
One of the finest posts in a long line of fine posts. Just when I think about breaking down and giving up my aversion to organic fad… er… food, something like this comes along to remind me that I must not patronise this fraudulent industry.
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June 12th, 2008 at 5:25 pm
When I first saw the bottle of “organic water”, I started laughing. Still can’t stop. Sorry.
BWAHAHAHAHA.
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June 13th, 2008 at 3:24 pm
Some very good points, some being eye openers. On balance, however, there are some points that don’t stand up on their own, and a blanket dismissal of buying organically certified produce as a preference is perhaps unfair. And why has the word “****” been starred out? Are we all 8 years old today?
The point that I take most issue with is that of taste. My own experience, and that of acquaintances, is that organically certified vegetables and fruit, in the majority of instances, taste better. Whether this, albeit anecdotal evidence, is influenced by the perception that it it organic, ergo must taste better, is up for debate – I’m not aware of any blind or double blind tasting trials that can be referenced. I do know that my father-in-law prefers the carrots that I buy, to those that my mother-in-law buys.
I also find, again, based on personal experience and anecdote, that certain non-organic soft / thin skinned fruit, have a detectable chemical trace, manifesting in a burning in the mouth after eating. Again, who knows whether this is psychosomatic, or a real effect. Peaches and melons, for example, leave me feeling like I’ve eaten a mild chili.
As for the nutritional value, again, I’m not aware of any like-for-like tests. My experience is that the organic foods are generally of a higher quality, but my suspicion is that this is economic – There is a shorter supply, prices and margins are much higher, the demand is more discerning – All factors that would require a farm to produce better quality product (where taste, for example, is more important than yield per hectare).
On that basis alone, I will continue to shop for certified organically produce food, where I can, knowing full well that even the certification may not be worth the paper that it’s written on – The alternative, however, is a complete lack of knowledge. My preference to that would be locally produced and marketed food, as there I can ask the grower what they have used on the crops. If they say kitten blood, carbolic and ecstasy, I will know to avoid their lettuce.
I always find the argument that chemically-intensive farming is necessary to feed the world’s population to be rabidly socialist. World hunger is a specifically political issue, not of a lack of supply. Subsidies, tariffs and criminally dictatorial governments are to blame for the most part. Just for the sake of mooting, however, and because everyone loves a straw man – If demand really does outstrip supply without using synthetic and intensive farming methods, we should really be taking the soylent green route, and providing the hoi polloi with a nutritional aggregate, with the full daily does of fats, carbs and proteins, topped up with all the minerals and vitamins a body needs. People optional.
As for environmental impact – In the absence of any qualified evidence, I’m unconvinced by the proposals put forward, although I’m prepared to accept them as a possibility.
Overall, ever since the term “organic” was adopted by the larger supermarket chains, it would appear that they have co-opted it as a marketing label, allowing them to market a higher margin product. They are highly successful in this, as they have targeted the a higher income consumer, who apparently has been sucked in by the marketing, and who doesn’t really thing about what they are buying in the first place.
I’ve always been a big fan of organic salt.
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June 14th, 2008 at 3:07 pm
How in hell can salt be organic? And how does that differ from sea salt or rock salt which seem very “natural” and low-tech already?
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June 14th, 2008 at 4:48 pm
Soylent said:
Salt isn’t, of course, but Borganic belongs to the same group that think gold plates connectors make a sound-system perform better despite being unable to measure any difference. These ‘Golden Palate,’ like their ‘Golden Ear’ brothers are able to detect fine differences that ordinary mortals, and sensitive instruments cannot.
Invariably, the fact that one has paid more, or gone to more trouble, seems to make the final product better. At least in the circles that you find in the windmills of their minds.
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June 14th, 2008 at 7:49 pm
Soylent said:
salt can be organic. He must be talking about salts like potassium citrate or maybe some kind of acetate based salt. Those would technically be organic.
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June 14th, 2008 at 10:32 pm
drbuzz0 said:
I stand corrected.
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June 14th, 2008 at 11:03 pm
DV82XL said:
I have a feeling that’s not what he’s talking about at all. That would be an example of a chemical salt, yes, but this dude seems to not be caring too much about chemistry.
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June 15th, 2008 at 12:02 am
This is a horrible website and it is full of horrible people. You should all stop with this. What is wrong with you? Go away! This is the worst thing I have ever read. It’s just a PR assault on the organic food world by the big companies loosing big money. Shut up! Go away!
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June 15th, 2008 at 12:04 am
Borganic said:
I thought he was trying to end on a humourous note…
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June 15th, 2008 at 12:17 am
John Doe said:
Failtroll.
On the matter of salt, the only “organic salt” I’ve ever heard of is stuff that’s been evaporated straight out of the ocean without (or with little?) further processing. Never checked the validity of that, nor have I heard it used much. That is, take it with a grain of… salt.
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June 15th, 2008 at 12:15 pm
“Borganic belongs to the same group that think gold plates connectors make a sound-system perform better despite being unable to measure any difference”
Holy straw man, Batman. Perhaps I should do you the same discourtesy of discounting all that you say, on the basis of some criticism that I decide to fabricate? And then you proceed to paraphrase a point that I have already made. What group of people does that imply you belong to?
In any case, who are you to pass judgment, on a matter such as taste, which is intrinsically personal and based on individual perception. If you wish to draw parallels between those that buy food labeled as organic (on the basis of taste) to those in the audiophile crowd that buy tungsten and platinum blushed connectors (on the basis of audio quality), you might want to do so with some of the similar tools that you use to demolish the basis of their perception – such as double blind tests that show no benefit to connectors containing rare and precious metals or specious electro-magic.
Although it pains me to need to explain the organic salt reference, it’s apparent that it has been misinterpreted by all and sundry (save for Brad F). The post preceding mine (Stingray, June 12th, 2008 at 5:25 pm: When I first saw the bottle of “organic water”) was a comment on the inconsistency of use of the term organic. My reference to salt was in the same vein.
And just so that we are all on the same page: organic, in the chemistry sense, refers to a myriad of carbon, hydrogen, phosphorus etc. compounds. I don’t pretend to offer a definitive description, as I’m not a chemist.
Organic in the food sense would appear to have a number of definitions, but mainly appears to refer to produce that has not been subject to any intensive chemical treatments (be they organic in the pure chemistry sense or not). I believe the article points to a number of valid inconsistencies in this definition, such as the use of potash and other naturally(ish) occurring phosphates, but I don’t believe that a strong enough case has been made to denounce “organic” farming as a philosophy, either from a growers or a buyers standpoint.
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June 15th, 2008 at 12:16 pm
Hmm. May I suggest that the organic fans might be interested in sprinkling some uranyl acetate on their food? That’s an organic salt! Just make sure it’s not the “depleted” kind because that means man has had a hand in the isotopic concentration and therefore it will form evil nanoparticles and kill little children!
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June 15th, 2008 at 12:17 pm
As for the existence of salt in the certified organic sense, and not the organic chemistry sense, Sung Li Kim has quite neatly provided the example.
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June 15th, 2008 at 2:48 pm
Borganic said:
Let me be as blunt and as direct as posible; if you believe after reading the main article, that anything labeled as ‘certified organic’ is different than that which is not, you are in fact struggling under the same delusions. You also know precious little about what practices impact the taste of produce.
Most cultivars come in several varieties, and have been bred to meet certain demands, one of which is that they grow to market size as rapidly as posible. When this type of produce is grown, what actually is happening is that water is being taken up and retained by the plant tissue at a rapid rate, and thus the other constituents are effectively being diluted, thus making the vegetable a bit tasteless. This is less due to the inputs of nutrients (from whatever source) and more due to properties bred in to commercial seed-stock.
In the case of some fruits, like tomatoes for example, they are also bred to be picked green so that they are firm enough to be machine handled, and expected to ripen on the way to market. There is no comparing these to a vine-ripened, tender type like ‘beefsteak’ that needs be hand picked and whose plants will yield over several weeks.
It goes on. and I could write pages of examples. So when someone tells me they prefer to buy from local truck farmers (that know they had better show up with a superior product) because of the taste, I will believe them. But ‘certified organic’ crops simply will not be better just because of the steps that are taken to get that name are not the ones needed to make better food. That was the whole point of the original post. These standards were set by agra-business, not science, not taste-tests. It is just more complex than what is being touted by this stupid certification, and if you or anyone else claims to taste a difference, it is all in your head.
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June 15th, 2008 at 7:44 pm
DV82XL said:
By being blunt and direct, you mean contentious and argumentative. Perhaps I should have made my point a little more obviously, with regards the basis of comparison being different. We’re not comparing apples with apples. We are comparing massed produced, sprayed Red Delicious, and “organically” grown Cox’s Orange Pippin.
(And, just to avoid confusion, the use of apples in the example was as much analogous as it was a real example. I wouldn’t normally feel the need to point that out, but seeing as how so many missed the humour in the salt reference, subtlety seems to be misplaced here.)
My point from the beginning was that the organically certified product is of a different strain / breed / root stock to the run of the mill variety. I had originally conceeded that I had no like for like basis for comparison, a point that you have either missed, or selectively ignored.
As for organic farming methods producing a better tasting end product from the same stock, who knows. I didn’t make that claim. I stated that the economics of the matter were such that the varieties were likely different, given the different target market and factors of production. The crap that is grown to be quick to market is not the same that is grown to have an organic label slapped on it. Perhaps you know precious little about the factors that go into crop selection. I wouldn’t know if you did or didn’t, however, and I certainly wouldn’t be arrogant enough to suggest either way.
My point about the soft-skinned fruit still stands, however. Take fruit from the same seed stock, grow one with herbicides, pesticides, insecticides, or whatever else they spray, paint or drop onto them, and there will be detectable traces of chemical inside the fruit. Like for like, I’ll take the fruit that doesn’t have the taste of burning. I would be interested to know if I’m being delusional there, and still hearing lossless sound quality from my gold plugged ear jacks, or if I may have a valid point, and that the ingestion of insecticides, no matter how safe, may not be preferential.
Perhaps there is a misunderstanding in translation – After all, I refer to the UK situation, where the Soil Association is the main certifier of organic produce, and was originally a non-agribusiness institution. That they have slowly been subsumed by the major distributors (i.e. the supermarkets, not the growers), and the credibility of the certification brought into doubt, although this is tangential to my point. I realise that the article is US centric, and that there is a different balance of influence at play.
On the basis of what is available in shops, with the UK as my frame of reference, there is a marked difference in the quality of produce marked organic, than is otherwise available.
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June 15th, 2008 at 9:17 pm
I have to base my response on what you have written
Borganic said:
Borganic said:
Under the organic certification, Nicotine sulfate and Pyrethrins can be sprayed as pesticides, it strikes me as being moot exactly what the source of these chemicals are. If you can detect a difference between Pyrethrins that are extracted from plant sources and those that are coal-tar derived, it is only in your imagination.
Now just so we are crystal clear on this matter please understand that I think you are a deluded fool and an ignoramus if you are basing your selection of produce on it having an organic label on it rather than a close look at exactly what cultivar is being offered and exactly how it is grown.
As for your attempt at humor, please don’t expect to make stupid remarks in one part of your comment and expect us to know the difference when you try and crack a joke.
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