Organic food is a politically acceptable way to brag to your neighbors that you can afford to pay double for your food, and smile about it.
Organic food consumers are as careless of the environment as the drivers piloting those massive Humvees around our city streets. Both are wasting money and natural resources to gain snob appeal — with no other benefits.
Almost everyone realizes that the $100,000 Humvees that get 9 miles per gallon are in the cities to impress the waitresses at the local sports bar. Few of those vehicles ever take to the rough off-road environment for which the Army designed them. If the Humvees did get driven over rocks and stumps in the wilderness, the resulting dents and scratches would offend the parking valets at the fancy restaurants.
Organic food is also a snob-appeal ploy. Organic food is a politically acceptable way to brag to your neighbors that you can afford to pay double for your food, and smile about it. You can claim to care more deeply about your children and the environment.
Unfortunately for the organic customers, no consistent, significant nutritional advantages have ever been documented in organic food, during the more than 75 years since a German racial purist named Rudoph Steiner first dreamed up the organic concept in the 1920s. Instead, plant researchers tell us the variety of carrot you plant makes more nutritional difference than whether or not it is grown organically. So long as the carrots and broccoli have nitrogen, phosphorus, potash, and 26 trace minerals in their soil, they will produce the nutrition dictated by their DNA.
The environmental impact of organic food is actually dreadful. It takes organic farmers roughly twice as much land to produce a ton of food, primarily because they refuse to use nitrogen fertilizer to replace the nitrogen taken from the soil by their growing crops. That means huge tracts of land must be used to “grow nitrogen,” either as cattle pasture or planted to non-food legumes such as clover and hairy vetch.
Humans are already using 37 percent of the Earth’s land area for farming, and we’ll need at least double today’s farm output to feed a peak human population of 8 or 9 billion in 2050. Thus, an all-organic farming mandate for the planet would mean clearing all 16 million square miles of remaining forest to plant more low-yield crops.
Most of that newly cleared forest is rough land that would erode swiftly once there were no tree roots to hold the steep soils. Farming steeper slopes to get half the yield per acre would at least triple the world’s soil erosion. The latest low-till farming, which uses herbicides to control weeds instead of plowing, has one-tenth the soil erosion of an organic farm. Thus, all-organic farming would be more environmentally destructive than replacing the planet’s whole current fleet of 500 million cars with Humvees.
What about the CO2 from producing nitrogen fertilizer with natural gas? Virtually all of our recent warming occurred before 1940, and thus before much human-emitted CO2. Meanwhile, ice and seabed cores have shown us a moderate, natural 1,500-year climate cycle which has pervaded the last 1 million years of Earth’s history. The CO2 theorists must not only document that our planet is warming — but demonstrate that it’s something other than part of the natural cycle. The Medieval Warming ended in 1300, and the Little Ice Age ended in 1850.
Even Cornell University, which tends toward supporting the trendy and politically correct, says organic farming is somewhat worse for the environment than conventional farming because of the fertilizer problem, and because it relies more heavily on pest-killing compounds that permanently poison soils, such as copper and sulfur.
We doubt that many organic consumers will ever trade their high-mileage cars for bulky and expensive Humvees. So, why in the world are they buying the organic foods?
An authentic type of conservatism has always supported environmentalism, in the sense of conservation – see the same etymological root. I’m not saying we should support big-government, international style environmentalism, but a local type of preservation is certainly required. Russell Kirk was an adamant supporter of conservation.
And organic foods are just simply better for you. I’d prefer free-range chicken any day to a chicken bloated with steroids and water.
The environmental impact of organic food is actually dreadful. It takes organic farmers roughly twice as much land to produce a ton of food, primarily because they refuse to use nitrogen fertilizer to replace the nitrogen taken from the soil by their growing crops. That means huge tracts of land must be used to “grow nitrogen,” either as cattle pasture or planted to non-food legumes such as clover and hairy vetch.
Oh heavens, such a burden for the environment to bear, the production of vegetable matter. horrors
Well, at least we were not in the middle of some islamofascist/Israeli conflict for the duration of the “read” Thank You
“Thus, all-organic farming would be more environmentally destructive than replacing the planet’s whole
current fleet of 500 million cars with Humvees.”
It is interesting that this statement was written by a former “senior policy analyst for the US State
Department”. It seems that Avery has pulled this tid-bit from thin air and expects the reader to
accept it at face value because he doesn’t even attempt to back up this, or any other assertion he makes
here, with any facts. How environmentally destructive would 500 million Hummers be? How destructive
would all-organic farming be? Back to you, Dennis…
I beg to differ Organic food does not cost twice as much. Sometimes it is a few cents more others it is a few cents less. These kind of arguements are pointless and only serve as distractions.
Oh my word how deluded. National intelligence medal of achievement?? Who was the competition?
People choose organic becuase they believe it does less harm than intensive agribusinesss farming. Organically reared meat usually has a better quality of life than factory farmed animals. As to whether it is really any better for you this is certainly up for discussion.
Worse than 500 million Humvees, that just isn´t possible. Your arguments have no real factual basis. Is this what passes for intelligence in America? Hmm let´s see. A needless and unwon war in Afghanistan. A needless war to remove a dictator put in place by America in Iran. Total unwavering support to a country that aggressively attacks it´s neighbours and was itself born out of a terror campaign (Israel was bombed into existence by terrorists in the 1950´s).
Oh and a political system that is heavily influenced by religious sentiment (as there is no god this is not a very smart move)
Fuel made from corn pollutes less than petrol based fuel, but making fuel from corn uses more energy which means more pollution…
So the ” clean” and
” ecological” solution in the end is not so good,
I believe in certain cases there must be similar problems with organic farming, but I don’t think we should reject everything,
Between over use of chemicals that can end up in our plates and the total stubborn avoidance of anything not “organic” , there must be a middle ground.
It is not one or the other.
Think eclectic.
organic foods have been shown in many cases to be more harmful to humans. How? because they are not protected by human applied pesticides the fruit and vegetables must produce their own defenses resulting in harmful chemicals the plants themselves manufacture. Also, it takes more acreage to produce a given amount of vegetable or fruit because organic growth is so much more inefficient. You cannot argue with the years of mass produced crops that have literally fed the world. You can fool yourself into paying more for organics but to say they compete with mass produced crops is an out and out lie.
Comment by Dean | August 2, 2006
I’m pretty sure it isn’t organic gardeners that are causing the dead zone in the Gulf of mexico or the fertilizer pollution in our waters. But then, bovine flatulence, now there’s another matter.
Mr Avery:
I suggest that you grow a few vegetables in your backyard or keep backyard chickens instead of writing a 10 paragraph theoretical tract. Once you have tasted the produce you might think a little differently on the subject matter.
Judith Sylvester
I've tasted both and organic is a waste of money, as far as the dead zone in the gulf goes, to say pesticides caused it is a little like the now proven fallacy of DDT. But go ahead believe the cause du jour. You people seem to want to believe whatever little trendy belief comes your way instead of thinking for yourselves.
…”thinking for yourselves.” Now there’s an original idea. So I decided to do a little of that, and found this pithy piece of the author’s perspicacity online ” Free Range Chickens and Ducks Dangerous to Humanity.” I printed it out an put it on my office door, in hopes of forewarning others who may not be aware of the threat we are actually facing.
Judith Sylvester
I’ve been reading this book on creative thinking, a Pete Singer book I think, so here goes some thinking “out-the-box”… What if all the people driving Humvees ran over all the people purchasing organic food. The drivers would be sent to jail. Organic food purchases would plummet. We could confiscate the Humvees and drive the elderly in bad neighborhoods to the bank, rec outings, and church. We could drive kids in bad neighborhoods to clean parks, athletic leagues, community centers, and church. I have other ideas, too. We could take all of Ted Turner’s money and help whole African Countries. We could free all monkees and do medical experiments and cosmetic tests on all the members of N.O.W and N.A.R.A.L. I also think conservatives need help, too. I think there are few of us who giggle too much when a talking head segment on Fox airs and the young, hot, but clearly dimented liberal woman is debating, in the “fair-and-balanced” way, with a title under her full lips that reads, “Former Assistant to President Clinton”. We need counseling to stop us from giggling , “..Assistant? With what?!..” Some of us act like we are 12 sometimes and we should stop..:)
I converted to eating organically raised food this year and glad I did. The food tastes much better. For instance, my wife and I ate steak and zucchini this past week. Not only was the filet mignon cut the best I’ve ever tasted but the zucchini, usually a dull vegetable to eat, was a great delight to eat. I also prefer to do business with local family farmers than some nondescript factory farmer or corporate meatpacker who probably employ illegal Mexicans. Corporations are corrosive of conservatism, especially the cultural variety.
I am happy that so many posters to this thread support the historic conservatism of Burke, Kirk, Belloc, Chesterton, the Southern Agrarians and Chronicles magazine.
I produced a film called “Organic Gardening Made Easy” from concept to reality. It sold out at a recent weekend convention which gave me a chance to survey raw public on organic foods. From that event, I got a distributor and it is now on the shelf in a few stores. I then went to a film festival and have signed contracts with 13 countries for distribution in different languages. The dvd is good. I tasted all the vegetables as I was filming and there is a HUGE difference between that and veggies grown with pesticides. The dvd is being used in 3 elementary schools in a “grow your own lunch” program for children. There used to be 4 feet of growing soil in the ’50′s and now there is 1′ so this dvd shows how to replenish and build back the soil that has been ruined by pesticides and erosion. I am happy to know the data and feel useful about passing it along to make this a better planet for all. It’s actually cheaper to grow organically. If you want to have your own copy, let me know and I will ship one to you. Best to all, Kathy
What is this article doing on this website? I eat (mostly) all-natural and organic food because it doesn’t contain the vicious toxins and is produced the way God intended. I can’t add anything else to the other comments made here. This article misrepresents and misses the point of why many eat naturally.