Getting Over Organic

Why many of our country’s best farmers will no longer even use the word

by Michael Pollan

Published in the July/August 2003 issue of Orion magazine

As a consumer who generally tries to do the right thing, I’ve always thought the decision to buy organic was a no-brainer. But in recent years organic has grown to include paradoxes such as the organic factory farm and the organic TV dinner. And now, there is even organic high-fructose corn syrup. We are not far from organic Coca-Cola.

Now these aren’t absolutely good or absolutely bad developments. As offensive a concept as organic high-fructose corn syrup may be, a product like organic Coke will sponsor a lot more organic acreage in this country. But this is certainly not what the founders of the organic movement had in mind.

It’s worth remembering what they did have in mind. There were three legs to the original organic dream. One was growing food in harmony with nature—a nonindustrial way of farming that treated animals humanely and did not use chemical pesticides. The second leg was that our system of food distribution should be different; food co-ops, farmer’s markets, and community supported agriculture could replace the national agricultural system. And the third leg was the food itself. We shouldn’t be eating red delicious apples; we should be eating ten different kinds of apples because biodiversity in the apple tart means biodiversity in the orchard.

For all sorts of reasons—some good, some mistaken—the organic community decided more than a decade ago that it needed federal recognition and regulations. Big companies wanted to sell organic products nationally, but they needed standard rules. And farmers thought that a standard label would give credibility to organic, which it did. But once we had an official federal organic standard, small farmers lost control of the niche.

Today the organic dream is in peril. In fact, many of the best farmers in this country no longer even use the word organic. The USDA developed a set of rules—and they got pesticides, hormones, and many drugs out of the system. All wonderful. But if you look at the new rules, that’s all they address. There is nothing written about the kind of food that may be called organic, or its distribution. There is no rule against high-fructose corn syrup. A myriad of synthetics are allowed in processed organic food. And we find ourselves with an organic transcontinental strawberry: 5 calories of food energy that use 435 calories of fossil-fuel energy to get to a supermarket near you. This is organic food forced through the industrial system, shorn of its holism. What has been lost is that one key insight about organic: that everything is connected. The organic dream has been reduced to a farming method.

The way we spend our food dollars is one of the most important votes we cast, and the choice we consumers are increasingly going to be faced with is not organic or conventional, but local or organic. I come down on the side of local. When you buy local, you’re voting for a short, highly legible food chain—one that supports all three legs of the original vision. This shorter food chain brings the consumer and producer together, and the producer gets to tell her story. Organic label or not, it had better be a good story: clean food, grown without pesticides, the animals being treated humanely. Another reason to buy local is that farms produce more than food—they produce a kind of landscape too, which your food dollars help to conserve.

The lesson to be learned is that consumers of all kinds, but especially eaters, are producers in the most important sense. With every food purchasing decision, we are helping to create the world we want to live in, one bite at a time.

Top 10 Benefits of Eating Organic

Green-living blogs, including mine, espouse the benefits of eating organic foods, but skeptics remain. While there are conflicting reports about whether organics offer more nutritional value than non-organic foods, there’s no doubt organic farming is better for human health, local wildlife and the planet in general.

There’s a picture that has been branded on my brain: A farm worker spraying fields with pesticides; he’s wearing a contamination suit and a gas mask. I remember being shocked when I first saw the image. I associated that sort of get-up with highly contagious viruses and industrial chemical leaks—not food.

1. Waterways aren’t contaminated by chemical run-off from farms.
2. Pesticide-related health risks to farm workers (and anyone living in the area) are eliminated.
3. You will dramatically reduce the amount of pesticide residue you ingest on a daily basis. Pesticides ingested by pregnant women may be linked to birth defects and health issues.
4. Biodiversity is increased with the use of buffer crops, and by avoiding killing or harming insects and other wildlife that is not a threat to crops.
5. Pesticides are responsible for a staggering amount of greenhouse gas emissions.
6. You can avoid eating any genetically modified foods.
7. Reduced reliance on chemical and agri-engineering corporations is good for farmers.
8. Organic farming is healthier for the soil.
9. Organic dairy cows are not injected with milk-boosting hormones such as recombinant bovine somatotrophin (rBST)—which may increase insulin levels in humans.
10. Organics taste better. It’s just my humble opinion, but I’ve noticed a difference in the taste of strawberries, peaches, grapes and leafy greens, so if you’re still skeptical, I dare you to put your faith in conventionally grown foods to the test.

Cara Smusiak writes on behalf of Naturally Savvy.com about how to live a more natural, organic and green lifestyle.