Organic Food War
So I keep hearing this debate. Many people feel that buying organic food is crap because the major organic farms are using pesticides that may be more harmful that the chemical version. Also, It would take more organic farms to feed the world than it would non organic. Nor would be would we ever be able to produce enough food to feed the population with out GMO’s! blar blar blar.
Just curious to know what you guys think or these arguments. ready….GO!
Comments
There’s no question that the “organic” food label is given far too easily. We’ve talked about this before, but while pesticides and hormones are undoubtedly a problem, they’re merely a symptom of a much larger problem: industrialized farming. It’s no surprised that Whole Foods’ “Live 365” brand is getting called on shit. In order to put out as much food as they do to as many stores as they do, you have to industrialize and, in doing so, rely on artificial and often negative production methods.
But the solution is easy. Buy small. Buy local. Hit your local farmers market or butcher. Can you guarantee there was no pesticides or hormones used? No. But in supporting small food producers, you reduce the need for anyone to use those sorts of practices.
Small farms and backyard gardens with a shift to a more vegetarian diet will produce more than enough food to feed everyone without hormones, GMOs, or anything of that sort.
John said:
Small farms and backyard gardens with a shift to a more vegetarian diet will produce more than enough food to feed everyone without hormones, GMOs, or anything of that sort.
Penn, Teller, and many others will disagree. Although I think thats propaganda crap marketed my monsanto, it’s a really heated debate and a valuable concern.
I feel like there’s a healthy amount of corporation hating from organic proponents, though plenty of legitimate health concerns.
I, for one, don’t see a problem with industrialized farming as a whole, though it obviously carries all the ills and corner cutting and such one would expect from a business, but there’s no avoiding that. Its a nice thought that everyone could grow their own food, or get it locally and eliminate the need for huge farms, but then we would have to abandon arid, mountainous, arctic, subarctic, and other areas not suitable to farming. We’d also have too stop living in cities, and even most suburbs. Dry spells or famine would become more acute, harm more people, and be less preventable. And a significant amount of the benefits of division of labor, the entire basis of human advancement would be diminished.
Industrialized farming is the modern incarnation of the move to sedentary, agrarian societies, whereas growing your own and buying locally resembles the societies of thousands of years ago, just moving out of the hunter gatherer lifestyle.
If anything, the time, money, and effort invested into local or organic would be far better spent finding greener ways to farm, developing less harmful pesticides, more efficient methods, or expanding genetically modified crops so that we can do more with less.
It’s progress, get into it.
Evan, you assume that all home gardening has to be done outside.
I’m leaving now, so I don’t have time to try to figure any number, but I think you would need a rather large house.
“but then we would have to abandon arid, mountainous, arctic, subarctic, and other areas not suitable to farming. We’d also have too stop living in cities, and even most suburbs.”
Last year I lived in the Subantarctic zone and food is grown there quite well. Maybe not everything you would want, but nobody is going hungry. I have also lived in cities and suburbs, almost always with access to a lawn or green space where food can be grown. I had a tomato plant on my front yard in Philadelphia that could have fed the whole block all summer. Imagine if everyone on Indian Queen Lane grew a different vegetable in their front yard?
Right now I live in a mountainous zone where farming used to be a way of life, until industrialized farms took over. Now people get by on pills and disability checks. If that’s progress, I will stick to being like the old days; say the 1940s when just about everyone had a victory garden, not thousands of years ago with the nomads.
Unless your tomato plant was the size of an oak tree, it would not feed your whole block. I don’t know how big your block was, or how much lawn space there was, but if you’re going local, you need three squares a day from what you can produce. I looked and found that a human eats about 5 pounds of food a day (I had trouble verifying this, I accept any better answers). Nearest I could find, tomato plants yield up to two pounds. Your plant certainly provided some tomatoes for the block, but it did not feed it.
True people can live in extremes and still work the land, I didn’t mean to say they will be uninhabited, but to a far less extent.
If you live in an area where the land isn’t terribly productive, less usable food can be extracted from the land but with the same or higher input. Therefore, after the farmers are fed, there is less to go around for the non-farmers. There will certainly be no factories or office buildings or large businesses, and therefore less commerce. You may be fine with that, but your village/town/city/society/country will be at a great disadvantage to those who maximize their efficiency in any way possible.
Right now I live in a mountainous zone where farming used to be a way of life, until industrialized farms took over. Now people get by on pills and disability checks.
Pills and disability checks sounds like hyperbole, but I’d have to ask, what are they disabled from? Working elsewhere, doing a different task? Somewhere that affords the ability to build a complex society where the dividends of specialized labor can be pooled and used to aid those who are unable to contribute to the workforce?
I’m all for victory gardens and everyone growing their own food, but it’s naive to think it will allow us to abandon a food system that has helped build us into the most powerful nation in the world. Just look at places in Africa where the still go on subsistence farming. They have famine and starvation, we’re forced to decide if we want pizza or burgers. That may not speak well of our priorities when it comes to the human condition, but it speaks volumes about our preeminence.
But Ev, is it sustainable? You knew that word was gonna come up at some point. Isany of this preeminence-supporting industrialized farming sustainable? From what I’ve read, all sign point to “no.” Whether it’s the eventual destruction of our fresh water sources, skyrocketing feed prices, the need to remove government subsidies, or something else I’m not thinking of, is there any way the farming practices you’re supporting can last us another 50 to 100 years? I know that might seem a little more long term than most people would like to think, but better now than before it’s too late. If our kids or grandkids are going to have to learn to grow their own food, cure meat, and jar/can their summer and fall harvest, shouldn’t we start relearning these skills now?
Burgers won’t be cheap forever. They can’t be. Beef is simply not an energy efficient food source. I’m not advocating veganism or class warfare, but maybe some foods should be luxury foods simply because there isn’t (or shouldn’t be, by all rights) enough to go around.
You claim that ethical, non-destructive industrialized farming is possible, but your suggestions are vague and very much relying on the free market incentive which, I think, the past decade has shown is unreliable. Do you propose we regulate farming more to encourage these sorts of things? Can you ever really be sure a pesticide isn’t going to completely fuck everything up before you go and spray it all over Iowa?
Meanwhile, people who seem to know what they’re talking about are suggesting that we can go back to more localized, unsubsidized farming coupled with backyard gardens and produce as much if not more food than we’re doing now (and for less money). It’s true that I have a healthy distrust of big corporations. But given the two options, I’d soon throw my support on the latter.
I think it’s a much needed adjustment. So maybe all of the claims about organic aren’t necessarily true or correct, but it’s shedding light on it, and making people look into it more.
In the meantime, local farmers are making out better, I see it here, the Acme has a big display with locally grown produce, with the names of the farms each product came from. (yes, I bought from them)
here’s a link for where to find locally grown food in Philly: http://www.localfoodphilly.org/cg_retailers_phila.php
I don’t at all think the current model is sustainable for the next hundred years, much like the model of 1900 was not sustainable for 100 years. It’s unrealistic to look at what we have now and assume the will be zero advancement and we’ll simply drive ourselves off a cliff. My objection is to the notion that somehow the way to move forward is to go backward. Humanity is forever moving forward, hell, on this topic alone, settling down to build huge farms is the entire basis of civilization. We would be nowhere without the few feeding the many, and while I’m well aware the harm it does the planet, its silly to think we’re going to go backwards to solve the problem.
For one thing, that model is destined to fail. You build your society on sustainable subsistence farming and low impact life and you’ll soon be tilling my fields to feed the army I conquered you with.
More importantly, and I wonder this out loud because this comes up so much, why is this problem one that seems to never draw any forward looking solutions? The best I know of, that being genetically modified foods, are seen as some sort of weird abominations; efficiency in farming is never discussed, nor is pesticide research, better preservatives, etc. Everything is looked at as horrible health and Earth hazards, but instead of building a better mousetrap, the solution is to let mice run rampant?
And the failure of our hyper-complex financial system says nothing about the idea of a free market, largely because there was nothing free (or open) about it. You can eliminate the economy altogether and free markets will still rule. In some ways, it’s the non-biologic embodiment of natural selection. The best ideas win, the bad ones disappear.
I think the tendency to look backwards for a solution on this is because of an ideal that people want: that of the biosphere. And I dont’ mean the Pauly Shore variety. No, we live on a planet that, for millions of years, was self-sustaining. Everything evolved into a perfect balance where everything feeds everything in relatively perfect harmony. The problem, essentially, is us.
Up until this point the ecosystem has worked primarily through evolution and systemic population control (e.g., there isn’t enough food, there is mass starvation until the food supply can support the population or the population adapts to more novel food supplies). We, through advances in civilization and medical sciences, have effectively killed natural selection. Population control is a hazard to be avoided, not a balancer.
So you could phrase the problem as “how do we feed our population.” Or, you could phrase it more holistically, “how do we restore balance to our biosphere (without population control, natch).” Now, as you know, I’m rarely if ever one to subscribe the “it’s been done for thousands of years so it must be good” mindset of things. In particular, this is often used as a defense for religion/philosophy and medicine. But where those areas differ from that of food production is that recent scientific advances have shown those old ideas to be faulty and illogical. On the contrary, recent scientific advances are only showing that our current food production methods are harmful, not the old.
In short, I’m just supporting that which appears to make the most sense based on our current information set.
I’m not one of these people who is inherently anti-GMO. I am against what Monsanto is doing, but not because I think their GMO crops are going to give us all cancer. Rather, I find it abhorrent that they’re producing seeds you have to buy every year and parasitically take over crops that would normally have grown annually, forcing third world farmers to buy their GMO seeds because their once-annual plantation stopped growing every spring. This, again, strikes at the heart of my distrust of corporations. They may be run by ethical humans, but they rarely, if ever act accordingly when profits are involved.
If there was some sort of government or non-profit take over of the food industry, maybe that’s something I could support. But I think that’s far, far more unlikely than a shift to more localized, seasonal, small-plot farming.
I’m not so sure. Cars and energy production are harmful for the environment, but rather than people advocating for a return to non-industrialized times, we’re making more and more advances in energy efficiency and production. Hell, there are pie in the sky aspirations for things like fusion that are far beyond our grasp, not to mention irrational hopes like free energy and perpetual motion. Our imaginations are full of ideas about the future, and we constantly are moving forward.
I always wonder why when it comes to energy we can imagine and hope for an endless stream of advances, but the same thing doesn’t exist for food. Why is PETA, a bunch of lunatics, the only group ever to imagine things like (real, mass produced, nutritious) synthetic food? It just seems to me like this is one area where our own capacity for innovation and advancement is discounted.
And to be realistic, while our old methods of food production were much better for the environment, they certainly are not better for us, as we’ve far exceeded a human population that could harmoniously exist in the biosphere. Unless some big culling happens soon, there’s no way we’re getting by without some incarnation of the current system.
And there’s that (justified) corporation hating.
Problem Solved.
So long as Pauly Shore isn’t allowed in.
History repeats itself. I feel this is why people often look to the past for answers. I’m convinced that going back to a hunter gatherer mind set is needed to create a more sustainable lifestyle. Course…I don’t think we would have it in us to go completely back….every man for himself kinda thing…but a more communal way of thinking could get us pretty far.
I think it’s really naive to assume backyard gardening couldn’t work. One garden could feed a lot of faces. And yes it can work in a city. Many cities offer gardening space, though its not much, every little bit helps. Also, Aquaponic gardens do not require much space and it could be easy for city folk to start a garden.
I don’t think we can just do away with farming….nor do I think that would be a good idea…save that argument for the crazy raw foodist. However I do think backyard gardening will help to lesson the amount of corporate farms.
Farmers can go to hell, once Willy Wonka resolves a couple of minor issues we won’t need their antiquated services.
I don’t say it isn’t good and wouldn’t do a lot to alleviate the problem. I say there are too many living humans on the Earth and too much specialization in the world economy to abandon our reliance on a factory system.
And there you go, aquaponic gardens. Science to the rescue.
I can’t find a picture of the instant meal thing from 5th Element, but that’s what I’m waiting for.
It’s funny you mention transportation, Ev, because there is a growing and already sizable “bike nut” community of people trading in their cars for pedal power. Mostly in cities, as you can imagine. There, it’s not just a gasoline/energy thing — it’s an open spaces thing. Cars take up a lot of room and when you’ve got a huge, mostly empty vehicle transporting one person to and from work, well, you’ve got an issue to be solved.
Anyway, PETA’s definitely not the only group advocating for “grown” meats. Hell, I had a conversation with some of my vegan friends about this a while back and they actually all said they’d have no problem with eating it (though they probably wouldn’t cause it’s been so long it’d be too weird).
Aha, your biking example is perfect, because I think what you’re all talking about is steps individuals can do, to their own extent and pleasure, to reduce their own reliance and impact on whatever.
What it sounds like you’re saying, however, is that everyone needs to get in on it in place of what we do now, which is unrealistic and unlikely.
I wish that saying the folks in Eastern Kentucky get by on pills and checks was hyperbole, but sadly it’s true. People get checks for all different reasons, mostly because they are no jobs here and it’s pretty easy to get a check. There are several folks around here who will “diagnose” you appropriately enough so you are guaranteed a check. I’ve never heard of anyone who wanted a check not getting one. The pills either come before or after the check but they usually go hand in hand. The other day a neighbor offered me a working ATV for some pills. It’s too bad that a lot of the stereotypes about Appalachia are true but they keep proving to be.
As for the tomatoes, my block wasn’t that large, but I really did have an abundance of tomatoes. So if I had planted a few more plants and everyone else did the same, we could have gotten by. Just like we did before we put family farms out of business and made people think they can’t fend for themselves if they need to. I think this country went to ruin with the invention of the interstates because all of a sudden some of us had access to everything we wanted and way more than we ever needed. It turned a lot of farmers into truck drivers. Which do you think is the healthier occupation?
I think an excellent example for producing your own food successfully is the Amish. They are relatively self sustaining with little government interaction. How often are they praising the choice between pizza or burgers while not starving to death?
I don’t know your background Evan but you should check out a real working family farm sometime, just to see what goes on and the abundance that can come from it. Also if you are ever in the Monterey area of California, you can check out the Dole farms and see the difference. I think there are a lot. And think about that if there was ever a real food crisis, who would be more likely to help out his neighbor, Dole or the guy with the small plot in his backyard?
John said:So you could phrase the problem as “how do we feed our population.” Or, you could phrase it more holistically, “how do we restore balance to our biosphere (without population control, natch).”
Conversation over. We’re fucked. There needs to be less people, and anyone that thinks it’s possible to reform the practices of the billions that are already here is insane.
Jay hit on my favorite (and least favorite) argument, that humanity never gives up the good life for the long term good. But to cite the Amish? Seriously? They most certainly can fend for themselves, because they are a self contained society. Also, they are religious fundamentalists leading a life for the most part detached from the outside world, essentially a peaceful version of the middle ages.
I don’t see how the poor quality of life in Appalachia can be fixed by this. Is the idea to abolish factory farms so that local farmers can flourish? Ignoring that it would cost more to the locals, because they would be thriving now if they could compete, then what? The local economy flourishes, those farms grow and suddenly they’re the new powerhouses.
I recut a bunch of those old biography programs at work recently. Frank Perdue, if I remember correctly, started out as a teenager buying a few chickens he raised himself. Colonel Sanders owned a kitchen at a truck stop. Ray Kroc bought a restaurant from the McDonald brothers. Monsanto sold saccharine to Coke, Conagra was a few grain mills. The mega food companies all started out as family farms. To do what you suggest would require altering human nature in such a way that people would stop at some point and say “OK, I think I’m successful enough, that’ll do.”
Family farms are a niche market in today’s world, and though even I have a great distrust of ConAgra and Monsanto, if I had to put my money on the solutions to food crises, I’m going with them, even if I’m buying my dinner from Ma and Pa down the street.
I’m in Monmouth county NJ, there are plenty of family farms, and they do fine. But if the trucks from out west stopped coming, they couldn’t begin to handle the demand of the local population, to say nothing of the more urbanized areas farther north.
I would much rather see local farmers being the big powerhouse and spreading that wealth in town than it all going back to Monsanto and ConAgra. I don’t care if it’s not realistic or practical, to me it’s a better solution than what is happening now.
And I seriously don’t understand your problem with the Amish. If they weren’t religious, would that make them a better example of what they already are?
At least we agree that if the trucks stop coming from out west, urban areas in the north and everywhere else would be fucked. I am trying to make sure that doesn’t ever effect me, no matter where I live.
My point was that the industrial farm giants began as small family businesses and eventually, whether by growth, acquisition or mergers, became what they are today. That’s the way it goes; a successful Ma and Pa of today could be the massive corporation of tomorrow. If it’s not realistic or practical, it can’t really be a better idea.
And my issue with your Amish comparison is that they live in a bubble devoid of the influences and effects of the modern world, not their religion, though I’m not sure if they would be able to exist the way they do now without the protections they receive from the government in the name of religious freedom.
I disagree that something needs to be realistic and practical to be the best. Ma and Pa businesses do not have to go big to survive; not every company wants to turn into Wal-Mart. There are many local and regional companies that are successful in their own right. I will continue to patronize those companies the best I can.
I have never heard of the Amish complaining about the government that allows them religious freedom. Did you know that the Amish don’t shun all technology, only things that they feel are unnecessary? I think it’s fantastic that they have been able to make effective choices appropriate to their practical lifestyles. Here. here and here. are some good examples of Amish successes in the modern world.
To answer Brit, I think it’s wrong to buy exclusively organic if it’s not local. I think it’s always best to support your neighbors, never mind that local food always tastes better. Why spend money on food, organic or not, that doesn’t taste good? In Philadelphia, I like these guys. They are around the corner from the Amish vendors. You shouldn’t have a problem getting through the bubbles.
local food does not always taste better. thats ridiculous
It is my opinion, which can’t really be ridiculous, that local produce and animal products taste better. Yesterday I ate fresh sausage from a pig that was raised down the street, eggs from chickens in the backyard and two types of tomatoes from the garden. The milk and butter come from the cow who hangs out with the chickens.
Instead of just saying it’s ridiculous, tell us about some foods that taste better when they come from far away.
It can be the best in maybe a hypothetical sense, but if it fails to hold up in the real world then there’s a problem. I certainly don’t mean to imply that small business needs to go huge to stay alive, what I mean is that some will do so, and succeed, often to the detriment of those that do not. Capitalism!
I was referring more to the Amish not needing to pay into social security or getting lax treatment on child labor laws, etc. Considerations that you or I or most anyone else would have to factor in. And I didn’t say they complained about anything, I don’t think they believe in complaining. Religious tolerance!
Granted that’s your opinion, I disagree with the local food always tasting better, partly because that’s an unprovable hypothesis, partly because I’ve had plenty of delicious things from afar that I could have gotten local, and yet were better, and partly because certain things cannot be grown, or grown properly, local.
For one thing, steak, which rules, can vary greatly on where it’s from, based on what cow species, what they eat, how they’re treated, etc. While it’s not usually my first choice, a lot of people will pay damn good money for Kobe beef before they ate anything else, local or not.
I like, on my big family beach vacations, to have me some king crab legs. No way that’s coming local.
You’re also swaying into a local versus natural area, where things are grown locally that maybe shouldn’t be. What are you’re thoughts on fish farming, for example? Say local farmed (kind of fish not normally indigenous to your area) versus the same kind from it’s natural habitat far away. I don’t think I’d be able to tell the difference, but I’m sure Luke can. Probably also disagree with me about beef.
I am okay with the Amish not having to pay social security taxes, because they don’t benefit from that program. I also think lax child labor laws on farms are okay and the norm everywhere, not just with the Amish, especially if it’s a family business. And considering that a lot of industrialized farms use low paying migrant/illegal immigrant labor in terrible conditions, I’ll take the pre-teen kids helping out mom and dad.
Good point about the local versus natural area. When I think local eating, I think natural area. I think farm fishing is gross. The other night a friend made this awesome soup that had all local ingredients except for the shrimp. I was glad to hear that he wasn’t getting shrimp from Kentucky shrimp farmers. But my farmer friend is pointing out right now that most of the stuff we grow was brought to the United States from somewhere else, just a long time ago. Isn’t it weird that in hundreds of years, farm fishing could be considered natural? Do you know of other foods that are being grown “locally” out of an obviously natural habitat? I can’t think of any others right now.
I was really lucky to live in an area where I did have a local supply of king crab and it was delicious. I had a fisherman friend, so it was cool seeing the money go right into his pocket. I haven’t had any crab since I came back from Chile, so I can’t say for certain, but it may be ruined for me now. Same with steak. I think steak in Argentina rules, largely because it’s from Argentina. And now living on a farm, eating fresh sausage, eggs, butter, etc., it’s going to be really hard to spend my money and taste buds on something else.I am not a purist, and will gladly eat what someone else serves me, no matter where it’s from. But when I am doing the shopping, I am just more comfortable with my food not having to travel so far to get on my plate. For me, fresh is best, especially when I just have to go into the yard to get it. More kobe beef and king crab for the rest of you!
I don’t really mind children working either, probably keeps them from sassing you when they know there’s a field to till if they get out of line.
As to out of natural habitat, I think really all animals count for that. If you’re looking at the undomesticated ancestors, turkeys are the only animal indigenous to North America, corn and beans the only plants. Cattle, hogs, sheep, goats, wheat, and rice are all from different parts of Asia, though they seem to fit in here just fine.
Argentinian beef is very nice, even when it’s shipped all the way here.
alycia said:It is my opinion, which can’t really be ridiculous, that local produce and animal products taste better.
just because something is local does not mean that it is better. sure it’s great to jump on the trend to eat local food and many times that means something that is, at the very least, fresher. but being local does not equate to better.
i have no doubt all of the things you mentioned taste 10X more delicious than their factory farmed counterparts. but it has much more to do with the fact they were grown or raised properly than it does with their proximity to your house.
as a chef, i’m sorry… i want the most delicious product i can find and i don’t care if it’s local or not. if a farm in california raises better beef or lamb than the farms in pennsylvania, then i’m going with the california beef.
if wild maine blueberries taste better this month than the new jersey blueberries, than i want the berries from maine.
the eat local trend is great. and if it’s connecting more people to their food sources thats wonderful and i’m all for it. but i refuse to sacrifice flavor just because something is local.
and besides, the ingredients i utilize the most aren’t local anyway. so the whole idea is flawed.
olive oil, chocolate, vanilla, salt, pepper, spices, parmesan, wine, citrus, vinegar, nuts, just about anything from the sea, etc etc the list goes on forever
As a chef, I’m not surprised how you feel Luke. I am sure the meals you create are excellent. I also think some chefs are making tasty food using local ingredients.
I like the list you have at the end because those are all products that I think ship well and do not need to be eaten fresh. As for tomatoes and eggs, beef and fish, I still prefer to eat the kinds that don’t spend a lot of time on a truck or anytime on a ship. I am glad this isn’t just a trend for me, but a common sense way of eating.
How do you feed 7 billion people without putting food on a truck?
I have no idea how you feed 7 billion people without putting food on a truck. That’s why I said that for certain types of food, I prefer they don’t spend much time on a truck.
And I don’t think 7 billion people need to be fed by trucking food in. I think a lot of people in other countries get some or most of their food close to their homes. Until the end of World War II, that’s how most Americans ate. Maybe we can try that again.
Evan, here’s some progress:
That’s something everyone can and should be doing. It’s also time we got rid of these ridiculous laws about not keeping livestock. It should be my right to raise a certain poundage of chickens, goats, pigs, or whatever, based on my land size.
Note to self, stay upwind of Hutch’s house if said laws are repealed.
Yeah, pigs really stink. But chickens are awesome. Grow your own chickens and you won’t have to deal with egg recalls! John, are you not able to have chickens in your town? What about if you just wanted hens, no roosters?
Good question. I’m not sure, but I aim to find out once our backyard is “done.”