Organic labeling in terms of dairy and egg products really means nothing, the animals are still treated terribly. And whats the point of eating organic produce if it had to travel 2000 miles to get to your grocery store? Doesn’t that kind of negate any benefit of it being grown organically?

If it is not grown in my backyard, or with in 100 miles of me, I don’t eat it. I will say that sometimes i miss bananas and the more exotic fruits, but it is a sacrifice that i make to live a green lifestyle.

We do all know that to a plant there is no difference between organic nutrients and “inorganic” (chemical) nutrients, right?

the fundamental problem is that chemical agriculture allows grows to slack on the other facets of good horticulture because so much can be made up (for a while) with chemical nutrients. That, particularly soil culture, needs to be addressed before worrying about being organic. It should also be noted that over-application of organic nutrients causes the same problem set as over-application of chemical nutrients (run-off, etc.) With good soil culture very little of either set is needed, and it probably doesn’t matter which type of nutrient a grower uses.

Pesticides are a somewhat different matter, but here too, organic pesticides (beyond soaps) can be over applied and are indiscriminate. And so i might ask the organic proponents whether Bt should be considered “organic” as it is, after all, a naturally occurring life form. If it is, can Bt corn then be considered organic too?

Sustainability should be the watch word, not organic. Furthermore, organic should be considered a result to be achieved rather than a means.

I answer gardening questions all day long, so i’ve heard most of them. I grow almost completely organic and buy my produce through an un-certified friend’s organic CSA (meat and eggs too). But i’m just about completely fed up with the “organic” as a political ideology/borderline cultish religion. Every day people make a big deal out of whether the bagged manure we sell is “organic”. Yeah…how many organic cows are there in the US and organic grazers leave the manure on the field rather than bag it up to sell. But hey, it says “organic” on the bag so it must be a short cut to a clear conscience, right?

I am to the point of answering that everything is organic because people don’t want real answers anyhow. And if i’m questioned i’ll just point out that there’s carbon in it so it’s organic…as nobody bothered to include in their question that they define “organic” ideologically.

His point that organic food is the wrong target is one I agree with. I don’t think, however, that you (Makenna Goodman) were all that negative toward it, and you give an interesting perspective. You raise good points about the food movement and I think that the conversation is worthwhile (plus you’re having the conversation with or without my blessing :). But valuable or not, I would like to see the manner in which the debate is framed changed to not one of organic food “robbing” someone, but rather, that you don’t have to necessarily spend the big bucks to get almost organic, perhaps largely sustainably-farmed products. The two of you have perspectives that are different, but you both seem to be on the fair, clean, healthy, whole food side of the argument.

I think that the debate has been approached much more wisely by Michael Pollan, who I heard say just what you quoted him on this past Monday at the Harold Washington Library in Chicago. It’s a choice between whole foods and edible food-like substances, was another point he raised.

The value I see in this debate flies out the window when whole food and organic farming skeptics, like global warming skeptics, see a headline as a reason to continue eating/living unhealthy, on the whole unsustainable lifestyles. It gives people something to point to, an excuse, if you will, to continue bad practices. I hope that as a writer being featured on popular forums, such as Chelsea Green and The Huffington Post, that you will see that the framing, the headline you choose, can have a big impact and can hide what is otherwise a valuable argument behind skeptics who won’t read the finer points but rather say, “ya see?” when they see your headline and move on.

I agree and commend you, Makenna, for bringing up the point that a sticker, a label, an organic category doesn’t necessarily mean that something is sustainable, that it is better for you, or that the animal led a good life. The story of food is more complicated than one classification or label. Use your forums wisely and let’s not make this a fight of organic versus conventional but one of defining healthy, safe, clean, sustainable foods and food manufacture, in the many forms it takes on, as better than the vast majority of our conventional foods.

If we want that whole phrase to have meaning, then we have to care about the “-culture” portion alongside our care for the “agri-” portion. That’s were you start getting into the conundrums of local conventional vs. distant organic, or small-scale conventional vs. large-scale organic, and so on. Maybe the biology of farms is protected and sustainable in a world of organic-only production, but if the social aspects of agriculture, the culture, aren’t also sustainable, where does that get us? Failing farms, highly processed and unhealthy certified 100% organic crud, and so on. There’s no simple step from where we are to some utopia of sustainability. There’s no question we’ll have to wander around a bit in the process as we discover that one focus (say, organic) has meant we’ve failed to pay sufficient attention to something else that’s also important (say, economic viability for small, diverse farms, which are important for sustaining decent rural communities–which, in turn, are important for sustaining decent urban communities). Lots of people will specialize, like how Hirshberg is a specialist on promoting technical organics. I’d say “more power to him” since I want him to succeed in convincing all the dairy farmers of the world to follow organic practices, but I can’t. What I really want for him is “equal power to him” — and to all the farmers who have to make it work on the ground, and to all the people who have to struggle to find food that’s good for them and their world, and who have to struggle to even have the ability to have any freakin’ idea of what’s actually good and what’s mere marketing sham.