"Organic" Versus "Conventional" : Do You Know the Difference?

It’s no secret. These days organic food is très chic. It seems that every corner of the cosmopolitan world has its own Whole Foods, not to mention the myriad of smaller, specialty grocery stores offering locally grown and/or organic choices. Even in rural areas the “whole foods revolution” can be felt as farm co-ops and “natural” grocers begin to crop (pun intended) up. A steadily increasing stock of organic and local products are now being made available even at larger, traditional grocery stores such as Shoprite and Stop & Shop, to name a few. Hell, there are fully functioning holistic farms being cultivated on Brooklyn rooftops! A tree may have been the first thing to grow, but it’s certainly not the last.

The stats support this trend, showing that "sales of organic food and beverages increased from $1 billion in 1990 to $26.7 billion in 2010" (Davidson et. al). In fact, "during the 1990s the U.S. organic food industry grew at a fast pace of over 20 percent annually" (Valenzuela). Overall U.S.D.A. certified organic food has continued to grow in popularity and sales since the 1980's right up to our present day (Valenzuela). Chalk it up to trendiness or a better-educated public, or whatever you'd like, but the fact is that organic food is our future, while "conventional farming" is steadily becoming a thing of the past. But with this rise in popularity, how much do we actually know about organic food?




If we take a closer look, we find that what we now refer to as “organic farming” actually comes from our past. Organic farming is based on original agricultural methods, used before corporate agendas, before synthetic pesticides, before you bought groceries at the local A&P:

"Early organic production techniques were actually built upon production practices that were originally used by subsistence farmers throughout the world before the discovery of synthetic fertilizers and pesticides. These early farmers, over millennia, developed farming systems that worked closely with nature, resulting in a finely tuned system that periodically "regenerated" itself from an ecological standpoint, and thus ensured that the land would remain healthy and productive indefinitely" (Valenzuela).

In other words, organic farming was how civilization began farming and what cultivated the diets of human beings for thousands of years. “Conventional farming”on the other hand, which is simply the present day term used to describe an unnatural method of farming, often done on large-scale, corporate farms with the aid (or detriment) of synthetic pesticides, was instituted relatively recently; think post WWII (Davidson et. al). Don’t let the name fool you, “conventional" farming is not conventional.

So while it may also be the latest trend, organic is actually the original, simpler method of crop production. Unfortunately, political agendas and profit-driven super powers have tried their very best to complicate this simplicity and keep the public in the dark about the health of their planet and themselves. And up until very recently they have succeeded. A testament to their success is the simple fact that most people don’t even know what organic means. Do you?

The truth is I didn’t, even though I regularly ate foods labeled "organic". Nor did my friends, my family, or even several of the grocery store employees that I asked. When presented with the question, most people answered that organic meant "without the use of pesticides", which was more or less equivalent to my own understanding. But as I have recently learned, this is both true and not true. To understand why, one needs to know what pesticides are.

In layman’s terms, pesticides are chemicals, often mixed together, that prevent disease and crop infestations on farms. Technically, pesticides can be used on organic produce. However, most synthetic pesticides cannot. Synthetic pesticides (used in conventional farming) are lethal combinations of chemicals created in a lab to kill whatever “pest” is currently a nuisance.  Naturally occurring pesticides are chemicals that already occur in nature and can be employed on organic farms. Such pesticides help to maintain a balanced, nutrient rich soil that keeps pest populations in check (not wiping them out completely as synthetics aim to do)(Valenzuela). Unlike synthetic, naturally occurring pesticides can help to ensure bountiful, organic crops, while also maintaining the wellbeing of surrounding wildlife.

Pesticides in fruits and vegetables, Available online at http://www.ewg.org/foodnews. (Table by PreMediaGlobal. © 2013 Cengage Learning.) 

So next time someone says to me that pesticides are “okay” because they are “made up of chemicals just like all food is made up of chemicals” (seriously I have heard this argument before) I am going to scream, and then calmly explain that there is a huge difference between synthetic pesticides and those that occur naturally in our foods and soil. Would you want to eat rat poison? (because that's made of chemicals too!) Now I could continue on discussing pesticides and why they’re bad, important, etc., but I'll get to the point...

The following is the current definition of U.S.D.A organic food, taken from The Gale Encyclopedia of Diets, a peer reviewed scholarly source. It reads:

“In the United States, organic is a term used for food produced without using most conventional pesticides, fertilizers made with synthetic ingredients or sewage sludge, bioengineering, or ionizing radiation. Organic animal products come from animals that have been fed 100% organic feed and raised without the use of growth hormones or antibiotics in an environment where they may or may not have access to the outdoors” (Davidson et. al).

So for those of you who were unsure of what the word "organic" actually meant, you now have an official definition. And while this definition is probably enough to convince most people of the need for organic food (who really wants to be eating sewage sludge?), it hardly scratches the surface of what organic really means. To understand the true meaning of organic, let us look at the meaning of what it is not, conventional farming.

Despite its recent popularity, most food available today is not organic: "Organic foods comprise less than 2% of total food sales in the world" (Davidson et. al). This means that most food is produced through the use of conventional farming. Conventional farming is not only potentially harmful to the humans who consume its food products, it’s crippling the soil that we depend on for fertility and future crops, stifling the surrounding ecosystems, and damaging various other aspects of our environmental community. In opposition to this, organic processes serve to precipitate and preserve the health of our planet; the Gale Encyclopedia states:

"the process of growing organic food helps to conserve soil health and water resources, a benefit to the ecological health of our world and its inhabitants. With healthy soil, the surrounding ecosystems are healthier, including birds, animals, and other living organisms. Organic foods helps to reduce agriculture's impact on the environment when farming practices are done in the true sense of organic, sustaining agricultural methods" (Davidson et. al).

One may question why organic processes aid in this conservation. Part of the answer is that the chemicals used to kill pests in conventional farming are not used in organic practices. These chemicals are unnatural and lethal to the environment in which they're placed. A pesticide that decimates a population of crickets will also wreak havoc on the living nutrients in the soil. These nutrients are essential for healthy food (after all, the foods grow directly from the soil) and many species of animals depend on such nutrients for their own survival. Additionally, the lethal chemicals serve to poison the soil, effectively contaminating anything it comes into contact with, including our air and water supply, insects & organisms, the animals that feed off these insects/organisms, and lastly, our precious food.

Environmental Art by Shelly Leitheiser

Organic processes, by contrast, aim for healthy soil that is cultivated within a balanced environment, without the use of harmful chemicals. This balance, ideally, serves as a natural defense against any one pest invasion: "Organic farmers consider the soil to be a living entity that needs to be cared for and nurtured. Furthermore, they claim, many of the ailments that today's farmers encounter in the field, in terms of nutritional problems or pest damage on their crops, is nothing but a symptom of an unhealthy soil" (Valenzuela).

To expand on this, one reason that the "corporatized" world has encountered such pest problems versus the pre-corporatized world, is that large, corporate farms often fail to achieve balance; the production of one single crop on an unnaturally large scale means that it will attract an equivalently unnaturally large population of pests that feed on that crop. Pests have traditionally been kept in check through nature and her ability to produce a variety of crops and pests in one farm. However, when only one crop is being cultivated on a massive scale, all natural defenses are removed, leaving that crop open to decimation from pests unopposed by nature's checks and balances.

What does this mean? In my opinion it means that corporate farming is unnatural and downright deadly-to everything and everyone. But it also means that smaller, local farms may provide an attractive alternative, even if they're not, dare I say it, organic. I have already discussed some of the pros of organics, but what of the cons? I'll reward you for reading this far by saving the later part of this discussion for my follow-up post where I will delve into the dark side of organic food, the certification process and other alternatives to eating "conventional". And it just so happens that one of these alternatives, farm shares, is the focus of a post written by my first "guest blogger".

My brother Justin has composed a charmingly amusing review of farm shares based on his own (surprisingly interesting) experience this past summer. The review covers the pros and cons of joining a farm share plus must-know info for anyone looking to up their game when it comes to produce shopping, not to mention an intimate look into the exciting life of a New York City computer programmer! That last part was a joke, but seriously read it, it's only a third of the length of this post, so no excuses. You can expect to see it posted early next week.

As always, thanks for reading! I hope this discussion has been fruitful enough to nourish your appetite for knowledge and inspire you to take back your food! Keep an eye out for my "Food Facts" list, and more interesting info, coming soon in the SEE tab located at the top of this page.

Happy & healthy eating!

I hope that's organic!

Sources

Davidson, Helen M., A. William Atkins, and Megan Poeter. "Organic Food." The Gale Encyclopedia   of Diets: A Guide to Health and Nutrition. Ed. Kristin Key. 2nd ed. Vol. 2. Detroit: Gale, 2013. 875-880. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 13 Jan. 2016.

Valenzuela, Hector. "Organic Food." Encyclopedia of Food and Culture. Ed. Solomon H. Katz. Vol. 3. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 2003. 21-24. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 6 Jan. 2016.