The Organic Game

I think I'll skip the pleasantries for this post, and cut to the chase. The word 'organic' has become a powerful tool for asserting that the oh-so-special person who possesses 'organic' possess the true and real as opposed to the false and disingenuous 'fake.'

Who is appropriating the terminology?

I mean, seriously, why do the scientists get stuck with all the crappy terms? What, so the 'inorganic' scientists are out there to kill the natural, harmonious mother earth? The same could be said for the word 'atheist.' Great, lovely, thanks for putting us on one side of YOUR DAMN BINARY. Why is the term 'atheist' even be in use? Because the theists are constructing the debate and the terms used therein. There should be no need to identify oneself as atheist. After all, as Sam Harris points out, ' "atheism" is a term that should not even exist. No one ever needs to identify himself as a "non-astrologer" or a "non-alchemist.'

In the case of organic farming, the same terminology game is astir, and employing 'organic' has already skewed our impression of the debate. It does this in two principle ways. Firstly, the explicit and implicit assumption is that anything natural is better than something artificial. Secondly, there is this idea that food not grown through organic farming is 'inorganic.'

In regards to the second assumption, this idea is rubbish. We are all organic. You are an organic human. I am organic. Fruit that is not grown through organic farming is just as organic as fruit that is. Saying something is 'organic' is deliberately misleading in so far as it implies that the rest of food is inorganic and constructed artificially in some dank, dark place where apples don't grow on trees but in test tubes (even if this proposition were true, it overlooks the fact that there is no difference at the molecular level of these foods. There would be no difference in the content of what you would be consuming, even if it was truly inorganic, which it isn't.)

Now, of course, their use of 'organic' refers to the absence of inorganic pesticides, fertilizers and so on when farming, and I do endorse organic farming's concern for soil conservation. But my initial point is that when we throw the word 'organic' around this is not the idea being presented at all. Referring to yourself as an organic farmer subtly makes it appear as if your farming is genuine and natural, pitted against that fake food inorganic farmers make. Moreover, this terminology game is playing off the second, and by now virtually ingrained assumption, that natural is better.

What is important about these types of terms, and the connotations implicit within them, is that they create a false sense of neutrality, a neutrality that is actually not present at all.

As a result of such clever word plays, organic food has become a huge industry with commensurately little evidence to justify the some 19 or 20 billion dollars (a sum rapidly growing) it rakes in by catering to the North American and European market. I have no doubt the intentions were good, and like I said, I do respect the small business and small farm mentality of organic farming, but it has little to do with the 'organic' part of it. No-till has done more for soil conversation than 'organic' farming.

However, I decided to get out of my academic journals and see what the public impression of organic farming was on the web, and I found one study on wikipedia claiming that organic farming has done more than no-till for soil preservation and is, for that reason, the best solution. I clicked on the reference and was linked to a agriculture online magazine that was not even third-party reviewed! This is not solid research, and it is important to bring it up because it reflects the way this argument for organic farming is being carried out.

Organic farming has been given prominence when it never had the data to be so respected in the first place, and it achieved this prominence by playing on implicit biases and assumptions. As a result, what people do not realise is that organic farming 1) harms the environment 2) hurts third world farmers and 3) is actually in the pocket of multinational corporations.

Before getting into the facts, let's take a look at some choice rhetoric. Below is an exact reproduction of a little blurb on the box of an 'organic' sandwich I picked up the other day:

Why go organic? We make all our sandwiches ourselves, in our kitchens , every day, using the best organic ingredients that we can find from our certified suppliers. No nasty additives or preservatives are put into the food that we make for you. Organic farming applies the highest standards of animal welfare--no artificial growth promoters are allowed and routine use of antibodies is prohibited. Organic chickens & eggs are always free range. The use of artificial chemical fertilizers and pesticides is severely restricted and in the organic world we say NO to GM foods. Is organic food better for you? Studies have shown that organic food contains more Vitamin C, calcium, magnesium and iron and organic milk is super rich in Omega 3 so it's bound to be better for you!

They make all their sandwiches all by themselves in their kitchen. How nice! That makes me want to buy it. Notice the assumption that natural is better when they write 'NASTY ADDITIVES AND PRESERVATIVES. ' Are they saying that all preservatives and additives are nasty by virtue of what they are, or are they implying that only some are? I tend to think the former, but, once again, very vague and confusing phrases are floating around.

But the good news is that this nasty junk isn't in the food that they make FOR YOU! It gets better though. They say something that most of us should appreciate as a fair concern: Organic farming applies the highest standards of animal welfare. But what are the highest standards of animal welfare? Hmmm, that wasn't defined for me, but based on the sentence following the dash, the highest standard of animal welfare is the prohibition of artificial growth promoters and routine use of antibodies.

To clarify again, I abhor the industrial abuse of animals in mass farm corporations, but there is not a clear and established link between that issue (which is a legitimate concern) and the justification for organic farming's insistence that they do not use artificial growth promoters and antibodies on their animals. Yet, this assertion is not really related to animal cruelty, or arguably, maintaining the quality of the food produced from them, but to the hyped hysteria that you are eating a genetically altered chicken (i.e. chicken that was on steroids etc.).

Well, to be frank, insisting that synthetic drugs and the use of antibodies on animals cannot be beneficial ignores the most basic elements of chemical truth and overlooks the fact that many natural viruses are deadly, and meat infected with such natural viruses is far more of a concern that your consumption of trace chemicals, especially when there is no evidence that there is real danger from these trace amounts.¹ Of course, it is the 'routine' use of such antibodies they forbid, another hopelessly vague statement, reflecting an argument that is purely rhetorical in nature.²

At this point, there is the more important question of why organic farming is rather a bad thing and probably not the most efficient way of battling environmental issues and corporate control. Notice that the blurb I copied above said that organic food must be better for you because it contains more Vitamin C, Magnesium, Omega 3 and so on. This is because it is typically fresher produce, which is a result of management and size, not of system. In other words it has to do with a small farm versus a factory farm.³

Moreover, and this is the real problem, organic farming is grossly inefficient and requires at least twice the land, forcing many of those small farmers you believe you are helping by buying organic produce to burn forests for land, which does not help the environment, not to mention, the soil erosion and stripping that takes place through organic farming.⁴

We are not helping word poverty through organic farming, but making it worse by setting arbitrary and, ultimately, silly standards for these farmers. Why force them to grow organic? If you really wanted to help the small farmer, you would drop the organic game once and for all. Of course, this organic game is now in the interests of corporations who realise that whimsical, spoiled North Americans and Europeans are willing to pay substantially more for something that is organic. Keep the consumer happy is the motto in this situation.⁵

Also, rejecting GM crops is one of the cruelest things you can do to third world countries, and that will be the subject of its own blog at some point in time. For now, keep in mind that through GM crops, not only can we implement plans to solve world poverty effectively, but we can also modify these crops—like we did with Rice—to contain vitamin supplements that local populations are deficient in.⁶

I think it's time to say goodbye to the market for 'organic' food.

1www.foodstandards.gov.uk/science/sciencetopics/organicfood/

2For a thorough debunking of the argument about consumption of carcogenics and organic farming, see A.J. Trewavas, 'A Critical Assessment of Organic Farming-and-Food Assertions,' Crop Protection 23 (2001), pp. 757-81; E.J. Calabrese and L.A. Baldwin 'Hormesis: U-shaped Dose Responses and their centrality in Toxology,' Trends in Pharmacological Sciences, 22 (2002), pp. 285-91; 'Applications of Hormesis in Toxicology, Risk Assessment and Chemotherapeutics,' Trends in Pharmacological Sciences, 23 (2003), pp. 331-7; 'Toxicology Rethinks its Central Belief,' Nature, 421, (2003), pp. 691-2; J. Kaiser, 'Sipping from a Poisoned Chalice,' Science, 302, pp. 376-9.

3See S. Higginbotham, A.R. Leake, V.W.L. Jordan, and S.E. Ogilvy, Aspects of Applied Biology, 62 (2000), pp. 165-72; A.J. Trewavas, 'Urban Myths of Organic Farming,' Nature, 410 (2001), p. 409.

4Trewavas, 409.

5Ibid., 410.

6Nuffield Council on Bioethics, 'The use of genetically modified crops in developing countries,' January 2004.