Organic foods. sorry, really i wished it was true too.

it's all propaganda, but i'll err on the side of safety, voted down!

I don't buy this argument at all.

While I don't have doubts that the food that ultimately gets to our table is certified to contain safe levels of pesticides, this doesn't excuse the tactics used to grow it. Majority of the four key industrial crops grown, i.e. corn, soya, cotton, and canola, and many other crops are currently genetically engineered. Growing these genetically engineered seeds is a wonderful thing -- no need to worry about pests or affects of herbicides! Guess what, without those worries, the "farming" can be then taken down to a simple "patented" process where all one has to know is when to spray toxins to ensure that the fields are sterile, drop seeds "on" the ground (nothing is alive to eat them before the seeds germinate), and, then, follow a prescribed regimen of one poison after another to ensure that your monoculture GE crop doesn't catch one disease or another parasite. This is the catch -- your field after field after field all over the U.S. is one and the same crop. No genetic variation to worry about because 1) farmers don't own the seeds -- Monsanto does; 2) because you depend on pesticides and herbicides entirely to ensure the survival of the crop. Environment is destroyed, but farmer is happy because the profit margins for conventional farmer are miniscule, all due to the seed licensing costs and pesticides/insecticide costs.

As soon as weeds or pests adopt, hence the term "superweeds" or "superbugs", you are ready to run to Monsanto for the cure -- now Monsanto is coming out with stacked gene traits in their GM seeds because RoundUp no longer works and farmers must brew their pesticide "coctails" of whatever works.

So, "conventional" agriculture, the way that the big agra-business sees it, is total warfare with no middle ground and organic agriculture that focuses on working with environment is the only sustainable answer.

Read http://www.gmo-journal.com.

Still, whats is the worse evil, the increased energy to cultivate and transport organic crops, or the pesticides and herbicides of conventionally raised crops?

That being said, I know that when I go to my local organic farm, buy their locally grown organic fruit and vegetables, I know that it is indeed better for the environment and me. No pesticides or herbicides in the ground, water, or me; and that food hardly had to travel anywhere.

You can't beat local organic food.

I side with the organic side. And no I do not blindly fallow it.
First people have said that organics use more resources to produce the same amount of food.
-this is true but only if you look at the directly used resources. The impacts to human health,the environment, and the animals health far outweigh any resources that were saved from non organic farming
- For instance non organically raised cows are usually fed corn (which is govt subsidized which actually brings the price of boughten feed to less than cost) which is not in a cows normal diet. This irregularity has bread a new strain of ecoli that is allmost bullet proof. Studies have fount that ufbyou feed a cow grass for one day the amount of ecoli in a cows stomach is reduced by 80%.

Since the cows are housed in small pens all of the excrent has to be trucked away, and feed has to be brought to them which all add extra carbon to the chemical side of things.

2. Some people that replied worried about how to feed All the hungry of the world. What those people don't understand is that the western world provides most of the food for the world. If some time was spent making farming more efficent in poverty stricken countries farming every where could be done more sustainable every where with even more food for consumers at a smaller cost to he earth.

Also I'd algea for food production was embraced by America we. Oils easily feed all the hungry people in America ( sry thatbis kind of a weak argument but I'm on an I touch and don't feel like looking upnsources but check it out algea IMO be tv fuel and a major food source for the future).

the usual never-ending stories..thank goodness we have reason and choice to guide us through all of this constantly appearing swamp area..
Wait! I see dry land over there Chris ?

wait, really? cancer rates have been FALLING for 50 years?? okay i'm sorry, i won't swallow that.

You don't know or

"It's difficult to get a man to understand something if his salary depends upon his not understanding it."
By Upton Sinclair

In response to your post:
http://current.com/items/91183668_organic-foods-sorry-really-its-the-only-way-to...

Stupidity at it's finest, i'll take my carrots au natural with no pestisides MONSANTO and DOW can kiss my healthy a..

I have an idea, how about the people who prefer organic foods continue to buy them and those who don't see the benefit buy the non organic? I really don't see the problem here unless and until the advocates of one method demands some govt. intervention to prevent the other method. if there is a vast improvement in the health of the organic eaters and they all start living to be 120 years old, healthy and active without cancers or any other diseases, then that method will prevail. If however they die at the national average and are subject to the same medical and physical challenges as the general population I think it will continue to be a niche market.

Try selling this idea that organic farming is bad for the environment to my wife who is deathly allergic to the pesticides and fertilizers that farmers use and you will see this argument means nothing. Ask anyone who has Multiple Chemical Sensitivity and they will tell you the same thing that the foods you are promoting are killing them.

I am not for the hype of organic in the least but this article seems like pure bullshit without any additional backing of sources or where else I could check out these studies for myself.

Opposing view on a site run by the American Enterprise Institute which is a Conservative think tank also paid to put out reports regarding tobacco and global warming. Same old BS PR. How much was he paid to put this out? Shameful how people who claim to be "conservatives" are anything but. Any farmer who now defends industrial agriculture after seeing what it is doing to the Earth is led by nothing but their wallets.

Yeah this article is a fail.

i worked an organic farm for years and sure it's more work. i supplied the veggys for 200 people at a commune with little help, that included 1/2 acre of back breaking potatoes. i didn't work with the cows or corn, that took a lot of people. i used the french intensive system of companion planting on long wide mounds. this system is self fertilizing and for pests, i bought lady bugs and policed the crops for japanese beetles. the soil was rich and alive. cats you gotta have em for gofers and a dog too if you have deer.

Here's a better opposing view on this subject from a guy who's actually a family farmer himself.
http://www.american.com/archive/2009/july/the-omnivore2019s-delusion-against-the...

I don't entirely disagree with the points being made, but I should note that the "Kelly" cartoons are satire.

This is corporate spin, the people responding to this post are citing organic spin. Original poster is open to ideas from both sides of the debate while it seems like most of the repliers are simply blindly accepting "organic=good, chemicals=bad" without of course taking into account that organic farming also = chemicals on your food, just different ones.

This actually is a major concern in the agricultural and food industries. There is a lot of conflicting research out there as far as organic vs conventional and there seems to be a lot of people blindly following either side of the debate without actually looking into all the different aspects of farming and food supply. Organic farming does produce a LOT less food for the energy it consumes compared to conventional farming, want some numbers to back that up? Just look at the price tags on the items.

Considering we're not able to produce enough food to feed the planet currently would we really be better off by switching completely to organic farming when the population (and therefor food demand) continues to sky-rocket???

As far as the whole chemicals argument goes... Both conventional and organic farming requires the use of pesticides and other chemicals to produce any food that is harvestable. The purpose of pesticides are to KILL A LIVING ORGANISM. Both conventional and organic farming puts compounds that KILL LIVING ORGANISMS onto the food you eat. Organic farming traditionally requires more frequent and heavier dosing of the crops with "killjuice" but is often times written off because its natural (just like hydrogen sulfide!).

Unfortunately the sad state remains: more testing is needed and neither side has the answer currently.

I plant a garden of some kind every year. I like the way it makes me feel. It has yet to kill me or make me sick.

The review rejected almost all of the existing studies of comparisons between organic and non-organic nutritional differences. This was because these studies did not meet particular criteria fixed by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine,” says Peter Melchett, Policy Director of the Soil Association.

So what exactly does this mean? Effectively, the report “defined out of consideration” all of the studies that indicated organic produce had higher nutritional value and then based its conclusions on the negative studies remaining. As a point of comparison, it would be like deciding not to count Roger Federer’s record setting 15 Grand Slam tennis titles when comparing him to other tennis players, and then declaring him not very good.

if you want to eat food sprayed with toxic poison go ahead, but please don't tell me it's better for the soli and the groundwater and the farmers who use the pesticide, and the animals who ingest the hormones, and the factories who create the poisons that pollute the rivers and lakes and the companies like monsanto who sponsor this kind of double speak state run terror campaigns which they label progress for mankind.

Mankind has become so disconected from nature that people actually believe this stuff.

Nature is always better than men in lab coats making things better

wake up my friend

You have been brainwashed

The study was deeply flawed

Read something about it here

http://www.jonbarron.org/blog/2009/08/study_says_organic_no_better.html

Reminds me of the "studys" that showed cloth diapers were worse for the environment than disposables. Turns out one study is sponsored by P&G - the makeers of disposable diapers. The authors of the other study had to retract after ridiculous and suspiscious methodology was uncovered. But the notion that disposable diapers are somehow benign gets headlines, and the retraction never gets printed.

Now we hear that local farmers who take care of their soil and livestock are actually worse for the environment than agro-corporations that poison the earth. Good grief. This is corporate spin disguised as a post.

100 years ago people would have laughed at this article as most people should today.
processed/corporate/chemical food will never be better in any way except price.

I have been involved in organic farming at some level
for the past 50 years. My grandfather all his life before that. Since there appears to be no one legal definition of organic it's the height of foolishness to bandy the point about. Perhaps it would serve the truth better if we simply rolled back the modern perverted standards to a time before artificial petrochemical fertilizers, herbicides, fungicides, pesticides and noone taking sides. Organic farming simply means maintaining a natural ecosystem.
Can't make it much more simple than that. The Dutch
outlawed all that poison in 1990 because it was getting into their ground water and making people sick. And also because it was damaging their crops, and weakening their people to eat those damaged crops. The Dutch reverted to organic farming and their people are naturaly healthy for it. So far I have not read anyone even acknowledging what an enzyme is much less its importance. Enzymes are proteinaceous substances responsible for accomplishing all the life processes. You have over 800 types of them in your body, and need to have counts of millions of them to be healthy. A human only has optimal health when a ratio of 48 enzymes
to 1 antibody exists. That only occurrs when people eat raw vegetables, fruits, grains that are naturaly grown. Artificial petrochemical fertilizers destroy the organic basis of the soils ecosystem which needs to have microbes, worms, insects that process it, aerate it, fertilize it naturaly with their waste. Organic farming involves crop rotation to plow under and fertilize the soil, and leaving fields fallow. Non organic farming is designed to manipulate the plants to produce bigger mass and numbers in their yields, but at the expense of the quality of the produce. Because it destroys their enzymes. The result is tomatoes that taste like wet cardboard. The enzymes ripen fruits & vegetables.
The same elements which make the organic food taste
so much better also make it naturaly healthy if you eat them raw & ripe.

Well, based on the fact that the author of the blog piece is a shill for biotech, it stands to reason he would try to discredit organic. The fact that organic (which also comprises biodynamics and sustainable agriculture) are proven to not only increase yield but to also sequester soil carbon where as GMO has not shown subtantial yield increases ( just ask the people of India) and contributes to climate change through major deforestation and biodiversity loss is I'm sure a great motivation for his reporting.

Nothing to see here then.

And sometimes it is simple common sense. The Dead Zone in the Gulf of Mexico didn't get bigger because of organic farming. It got that way from CAFOS and industrial agriculture. Sustainable farming only comprises 1% of farming in this country, and all we see are sick obese people who eat nothing but corn doused with pesticides. Not hard to figure out if that is healthy or not.

My Expert says this.

My Expert says that.

As if either experts don't have someone greasing their hands....to get what they want from them.

Yeah... ok... putting chemicals on food isn't harmful, sure.... how nature intended and designed growth must be wrong.... we now better than nature obviously...
Buying organic is about SUPPORTING framers who are trying to do the right thing and not harm people. I personally know a family of hard working farmers and they are not rich greedy people. I will continue to support the movement no matter what your science says.
Where and how you spend your $$$$ is how you show your support; for the small operations or for the corrupt corporations!
Are you sure you hate companies like monsanto?

this is all biased info from someones personal blog, no way to even tell if it's factual

There's a lame side to almost everything....but if it's worth the lame side to do it, then go on and do it.

Organic food is better for you because it has been proven to have more anti-oxidants.

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/86972.php

Nice post. Interesting and spurs thought.