I remember when this news first came out, and I heard a lot of folks scoff "Ha, see, I knew organic was always a scam", but I think that position misunderstands some very important details about this story.
Randy Constant wasn't selling organic produce, or really much of anything that you think of buying "organic" at the grocery store. Because, for the most part, there tend to be a lot of visual differences between organic and conventional: conventional apples, for example, tend to be huge and spotless, while organic are almost always smaller and less "pristine". Similarly, stuff like organic, grass-fed milk tastes much different than conventional milk.
I've always been of the opinion that, as a consumer choice, organic makes sense for certain types of products where you eat the skin and all, e.g. apples, vegetables, etc.
In this case, though, Mr. Constant was selling "organic" grain primarily as livestock feed. The idea that you can really tell, or there is any difference at all, in the meat of livestock fed organic vs. conventional is extremely far fetched. Sure, there way be some tiny difference, but it's not like conventional methods include spraying with heavy metals. Most of the pesticides, etc. sprayed on conventional crops certainly don't show up in the meat of animals that eat these crops.
So this whole episode did expose the scam of organic livestock feed, but I don't think it's fair to stretch that to organic products generally.
I'm probably one of these people, so I feel the need proffer a defense.
It isn't that I think organic produce is a scam. But from what I understand about the verification systems in place it is easy to get away with labeling non-organic products as organic. And since organic products sell at a price premium, everyone has a financial incentive to be in on it. Everyone just passes the buck upstream.
I'm certainly not going to pay a price premium for something that isn't easy to validate. Now, if the organic green peppers look better than the non-organic ones, I might buy them instead, but in this instance, I'm paying for tangibly better produce, not a fancy sticker.
It doesn't help that I grew up in soy bean country right around the time when everyone was going organic, so I've seen first-hand the disdain that land owners had for organic buyers. The article is really spot on in this respect.
Organic certification is shockingly rigorous. So I’m sure it’s true that if you falsify documents or paper chains, or suborn an inspector, you can probably get away with some fraud.
But I think it’s a misunderstanding to think that farmers have an easy path to unverifiable fraud. Those inspectors want to see your books, along with your entire operation. It’s rough to get certified.
Hopefully this kind of story encourages more people to actively shun certified organic products. I do because I think certification is a piece of paper that doesn't mean much about food quality and I resent the pressures it's creating on small, responsible farmers.
Stores tend to frown upon taking bites of produce. But it's not a bad approach to take a nibble of things like herbs.
With enough practice and maybe some reading, you can learn to evaluate a fruit or vegetable pretty well by touch, sight, and smell.
Ripeness is the biggest thing I look at. Generally the more ripe the fruit or veg, the softer, and more fragrant, and deeper the color it will be. So I try to buy firm, light, less smelly produce, but eat it when it is just begun to soften and give off an aroma.
I also look for bruises, cuts, blemishes, or other signs of damage during shipping.
For things like melons, I recommend reading up on how to evaluate them. Watermelons and musk melons in particular have a staggering flavor difference that can see, felt, and smelled, but they don't follow the same "rules" as other produce.
While I understand that organic farming with reasonable yields requires care and expertise, at face value this just looked like amateur hour to establishment farmers--at least initially. I'm not endorsing this view, but I grew up in farm country and heard it a lot. The thinking is something like what follows.
Pesticides, herbicides, and fertilizers massively increased yield, so eschewing these modern innovations due to some woo to get trash yields and inferior products (e.g., smaller, with more signs of insect predation) just seems like lunacy.
Keep in mind, people who have made a living judiciously spraying their crops with these chemicals for many years aren't likely to think they've been poisoning themselves or the population for a lot of reasons, so they won't buy into the central premise of organic farming. So it's like insisting on doing all of your programming on a PD-11/20 just because it's pure. When customers start insisting on the right to buy inferior products at inflated prices, it's all the more batty.
I don't live there anymore and the friends I had back then all sold their farms to large farming conglomerates (another trend).
I would guess that their views have moderated a bit, but probably more because organic can be good for business and it doesn't seem to be going away so there's less risk that capital expenditures and up-skilling to do organic farming is going to be wasted.
To illustrate, when I was a kid I would "bean-walk," which is walking through soybean fields and cutting down weeds with a hook like tool manually. It was cheaper to pay local kids arcade money than spray, so that's what they did. In general farmers don't like spraying their crop with chemical--it's expensive.
Farmers are pretty pragmatic people, but they have to plan ahead and deal with weather, etc. If organic pays enough of a premium to handle reduced yield and perhaps an increased risk premium for risk (e.g., higher insect levels due to a wet spring that organic methods don't fix) they'll do it.
"The idea that you can really tell, or there is any difference at all, in the meat of livestock fed organic vs. conventional is extremely far fetched."
If they tested the feed of course they would know the difference because the non-organic feed would be contaminated with pesticides/herbicides. And organic livestock is fed organic feed because of course the contaminants are reflected in the meat. This is easily verified as basic fact, though actually testing the feed or the meat is an expensive process hence the whole honor system.
This doesn't make organic a scam. Exactly the same reason you might not want an apple sprayed with a pesticide applies to eat a burger from a cow that was fed feed sprayed with the same. In many ways moreso given that these things are concentrated as you go up the food chain.
Conventional red meat can have 20X the amount of glyphosate than your apple can.
This was a failure of the certification and monitoring system. Often by design.
I don't buy organic. Too niche of a section and the risk profile seems low enough that it doesn't seem worth the attention to me. But I'm not threatened by it, as many seemingly are, and get why some people are focused on that. Years back I did subscribe to a CSA that followed organic principles not because of the organic element, but because their land use was sustainable and quite beautiful (most farms are dire factories, in essence, whereas this place was an eclectic wonderland).
Are they the same as glysophate or whatever because they're both chemical-sounding? Not necessarily. However, there's certainly enough uncertainty that you can't blanket state that organic pesticides are wholesome substances like "Vinegar. Sticky traps. Soaps. Diatomaceous earth. Targeted bacteria", and non-organic pesticides aren't in the same "league" entirely.
>Organic herbicides and pesticides are chosen specifically such that they don't contaminate the product (and thus products of the product). Nowhere in my comment did I claim otherwise.
Contaminate with what? Organic herbicides and pesticides contain the same constituent chemicals as their conventional counterparts. They have to, otherwise they wouldn't work. The organic variety contain more ballast, however, which requires additional application to meet the efficiency of the conventional variety.
If you want to give some specific example, go ahead, but as is the statement is nonsensical.
You can kill insects and pests with a neurochemical. Or you can put sharp rocks (diatomaceous earth) and traps to do the same, albeit with more labor and less efficacy. Are you sincerely arguing that these must be the same? That an organic burger has rat traps in it?
This same insincere argument appears in every discussion about organic practices. A sort of hand wavy "it's all the same". No, it isn't all the same. Farming has been pushed to the level of extraordinary efficiency -- as mentioned, conventional farms are basically gross factories, having nothing to do with "nature" -- and to do this the practice is massive applications of pretty nasty chemicals. Not many organic farms operate in such a manner.
>You can kill insects and pests with a neurochemical. Or you can put sharp rocks (diatomaceous earth) and traps to do the same, albeit with more labor and less efficacy. Are you sincerely arguing that these must be the same? That an organic burger has rat traps in it?
What on Earth are you talking about?
>having nothing to do with "nature"
What does this mean? What, specifically, is the difference between conventional agriculture and organic with respect to your appeal to "nature"?
While your replies seem to be made in bad faith, you claimed that organic pesticides/herbicides have the "same constituent chemicals". Which I guess if we're obtuse, sure -- everything is made of stardust (H2O, CH4, C10H15N...all look same) -- but otherwise it's just nonsense.
This is absolutely false. And such an assertion, while dismissing my comments by saying everything is made of stardust, is indeed a reply in bad faith.
> In a landmark ruling in August last year, Monsanto was found liable for causing a school groundskeeper’s cancer through exposure to Roundup, the company’s leading pesticide. Earlier this month, in a later case, Monsanto was ordered to pay more than $2bn to a couple that got cancer after using its weedkiller. Roundup, a glyphosate-based, organophosphate weedkiller, is one of, if not the most widely-used pesticides in the world. A formal review of glyphosate by the EPA and the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR) released this month found some statistically significant links to certain cancers, such as non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.
Organic foods, especially ones that have a USDA stamp other rigorous approvals, are upheld to much higher sanitary, chemical-cleanliness, and soil-care standards than conventional crops. The thing about organic pesticides is a red herring. Fresh organic foods raised in good soil are unarguably way better for you than the alternative. There's not even a comparison.
>Organic foods, especially ones that have a USDA stamp other rigorous approvals, are upheld to much higher sanitary
USDA non-organic food is less sanitary than the organic variety?
>chemical-cleanliness
What does this mean? If you put something on food, it's going to get in your body. Whether you apply an organic product to crops or its conventional analog, it'll end up in your body. The chemicals are "clean" insofar they're present at quantities approved for human consumption.
>Fresh organic foods raised in good soil are unarguably way better for you than the alternative. There's not even a comparison.
So easy and obvious that you failed to provide a source.
> Conventional red meat can have 20X the amount of glyphosate than your apple can.
Is there a reason for that?
It seems plausible to me that glyphosate would not survive being cooked and, therefore, a food that is often eaten raw would have different requirements for different types of food.
The increased allowable amount is also not indicative that there is actually more in it. It may simply be reflective of an decreased bioavailablity of the substance when delivered via meat, for whatever reason.
Organic does not taste or look different. If the produce looks shabbier it’s because they were less selective about throwing pieces into lower grades or it has been on the shelf longer. If milk tastes different its the “grass fed” part not the organic part.
People have magical thoughts about what organic does. Roundup and synthetic fertilizer do not affect flavor.
> Roundup and synthetic fertilizer do not affect flavor
I'm not arguing they do. But I've seen conventionally grown apples that were nearly the size of my head, and I've never seen organic produce that comes anywhere close.
Granted, that just means it would be difficult to pass off organic as conventional, while the reverse you could just pick conventional earlier, but I think arguing "organic does not look different" is asking me to disbelieve my eyes every time I go to the grocery store.
It's not about picking earlier, an apple is either ripe or not.
Some producers get rid of much of the fruit early in the season which results in fewer, larger apples. Organic producers could do this just as well, but generally don't.
If you compare two apples of the same type, I completely agree.
I think a lot of times with "organic" produce, the taste improvements come from something else - typically using different, heritage varieties that were bred for flavour, rather than looking good on the shelf.
this is patently false. the easiest and most obvious case is eggs.
try it yourself. buy a dozen of the cheapest factory farm eggs you can find and a dozen of organic cage-free eggs. crack them open and look. they barely look like the same thing. factory farm eggs look pale and sickly - organic looks rich and nutritious.
The color of the yolks depend on eating a small number of things. Essentially if chickens eat yellow or orange pigmented things, the yolks of their eggs are darker. "organic" has nothing to do with it, feed choice does, and things to supplement egg color are often fed to chickens to make their eggs have darker yolks to make people think exactly this.
Synthetic fertilizer absolutely affects flavor. Especially for root vegetable and aromatic plants which rely on healthy root microbiomes for nutrient absorption without synthetic fertilizer.
This is like with handicraft vs. mass produced items.
It's trivial to make worse handicraft than mass produce, but handicraft makers realize that if they charge N times more they've got to add at least some value. They also focus in areas where it's possible to add value (no handicraft Android phones or Lego bricks).
So when you actually buy some handicraft item/organic food, it is usually different/better quality, not because this is inherent property of the production process, but because the price has to be justified.
I thought the whole point of organic was to reduce the environmental and health impacts of artificial pesticides and fertilizers (plus more humane conditions for livestock), not making food taste better.
>reduce the environmental and health impacts of artificial pesticides and fertilizers
that seems like using a blunt instrument to address two orthogonal issues, in a roundabout way.
1. if it's actually about the environmental/health impacts, why shouldn't artificial pesticides/fertilizers be allowed on a per-chemical basis if the evidence supports its safety?
2. is there any requirement that organic farming have less environmental impact on net compared to conventional farming? You might win in terms of run-off artificial pesticides and fertilizers, but then lose out overall because of lower yields.
>(plus more humane conditions for livestock),
is humane treatment part of organic certification?
Anecdote, but a friend of mine is an avocado farmer in Carpinteria, CA. Around 15 years ago he went through the process of converting his orchards to certified organic. He said it's 99% paperwork and nothing really changed on the farming side. Swap out one chemical for another that skirts the rules and technically organic. I don't know if this is how it is in the rest of the farming world, but wouldn't surprise me.
Nope that's wrong about the livestock feed. Beef bioaccumulates pesticides in fatty tissue just like anything else. You can't test every steak (yet), but that doesn't mean organic is a scam-- just means it's scammable.
It'd all feel much different if we had more data to empower consumers. Imagine e.g. a meat thermometer that gave ppb/ppt of 100+ pesticide residues.. suddenly you find one kind/cut of meat has orders of magnitude more pesticide than another.. "oh weird I never felt good after eating that brand of meat, maybe I'll pay an extra $2 a pound next time".
> Imagine e.g. a meat thermometer that gave ppb/ppt of 100+ pesticide residues
You don't even need a consumer widget to do that. We have organic certification programs that conduct inspections/audits. Why can't we have a "low pesticide"/"pesticide free" program that does guarantees low pesticide residues?
> Similarly, stuff like organic, grass-fed milk tastes much different than conventional milk.
That's because the cow is eating grass, not because it's "organic"
> organic makes sense for certain types of products where you eat the skin and all, e.g. apples, vegetables, etc.
I feel like that would be true if there was any legal definition of organic that meant "pesticide-free", which there isn't. Organic farms use ancient pesticide technology, which isn't that good and requires MORE pesticides to be used.
You can’t tell the difference between conventional and organic grain fed beef, but you can tell the difference between grass finished and grain finished beef. And there has been some fraud in this area too, usually in restaurant settings where the chef’s skill can make up the difference. Bel Campo Meats comes to mind, they were accused by former workers of lying about what meat went into their product; grass fed vs. grain fed.
> Similarly, stuff like organic, grass-fed milk tastes much different than conventional milk.
Nope.
Or rather, milk tastes different for plenty of reasons, and you can buy non-organic milk that tastes similar to organic. And I can absolutely guarantee that you can buy organic milk that tastes no different from the mass produced cheap non-organic milk.
(I've spent a lot of time testing/tasting different milk products).
If you expect there to be no difference in the meat of livestock that has been fed organic, why would you expect any differences regarding human consumption?
I'm not an expert, but I know some poisons accumulate in the body fat. If you believe in the harmfulness of PUFAs, they too become part of the body and are similarly damaging.
He had lobbied for years for this very law, and was devastated to see exceptions for chemicals that, in his words, “are so destructive to the environment they shouldn’t even be allowed in conventional agriculture,
let alone organic.” (Allowing those 142 chemicals, by the way, is just one of sixty-three issues to which farmers like John so ardently object.) As he saw it, the certification he’d dedicated much of his life to building was now so lax that it was effectively meaningless.
It took almost a year to come to grips with, but after twenty years of being certified organic by the state, the Gorzynski family decided to give up the term rather than participate in a certification they could no longer stand by.
Try them out if you're in Union Square in NYC! (Saturdays only, through Christmas)
----
edit: Try out Russet apple varieties, e.g. Golden Russet. They are not sold in stores, presumably because of the way they look.
I've been eating them from the markets in SF and NY for a few years without knowing the name.
As a mnemonic think "Russet" == rough or rusty, but it tastes good. They are very sweet and tart depending on the season, but really the density / crispness / freshness is what stands out.
All things being equal, unknown produce that looks ugly is more likely to taste good. Because produce that both looks ugly and tastes bad will naturally disappear from the market. Produce that looks good and tastes bad can persist for many years (e.g. the monoculture of red delicious apples in the USA a few decades ago).
There are many things which count as organic qualified treatments which are defensibly “not particularly synthetic” but are still concerning from an environmental and human health angle.
Just because something is close to nature doesn’t mean it’s better or healthier.
>There are many things which count as organic qualified treatments which are defensibly “not particularly synthetic” but are still concerning from an environmental and human health angle.
I agree. The deliberate weakening of the "organic" label in the US has been more damaging to its value than the occasional fraud.
More broadly, the more I learn about the practices and laws governing the US food system, the more I'm willing to spend on local food grown by people I trust.
It's certainly not perfect and I'd rather have trustworthy enforcement or certifications, but it's better than nothing.
At least in the US there are ~75 USDA accredited certifying agents [1] and my understanding is that some of them are perceived as being more stringent about cracking down on fraud. For example, I've got friends who will only pay extra for organic if it's explicitly Oregon Tilth because they no longer trust a generic USDA Organic label.
I'm also curious if label fraud is any more common with organic certification compared to other food labels.
For example I recall articles about a study that found 20% of fish was deliberately mislabeled: "Cheaper, less desirable fish were often sold in the name of more popular fish. Particularly concerning was the report's finding that some substitutes were fish that contain higher mercury levels or come from less sustainable fisheries."[2]
More generically, "economically motivated adulteration" is estimated[3] to impact 1% of the global food industry with examples given such as sweeteners, oils, seafood, juice, and spices.
When I was a graduate student, a paper that I read while randomly reading stuff in the library really changed how I looked at things in this area - I found a copy here [1] and the DOI [2]. The author is Bruce Ames, creator of the "Ames Test" for carcinogenicity [3]
The core arguments in the paper are that plants don't exist to serve as food for us, they exist to reproduce. Plants grown in a stressful environment spend significant metabolic energy in generating chemical defenses against predators e.g., molds. Some of those chemical defenses are carcinogenic. Plants grown in less stressful (pesticide-controlled) environments generate less of those chemical defenses.
So, roughly synthetic == bad, natural == good.
Yes, this is a 1990 paper and perhaps it is no longer true and I'm certainly no expert in this area (I'm sad to see that a paper that influenced me so much at the time lacks significant citations).
I entirely believe this but would add a couple of cautions.
One is that it likely goes both directions: there are likely stressors increased by both conventional and organic production (presumably different ones) Plant health is tied pretty closely with local ecology health and there is a lot of symbiosis going on.
Second is that you are not a weed or an insect or a fungus. Some plant defenses are quite enjoyed by humans (lots of drugs, caffeine, capsaicin, the flavors of most herbs).
It is the kind of thing where you can’t make a blanket generalization. You need specifics and weighed risks. An interesting opening theory but definitely not enough to base life choices on.
Conventional produce tastes like shit after eating organic exclusively for over a decade.
I'm sure there's a lot of fraud and fuckery going on, but just going on the experience of consuming this stuff minimally prepared (rinsed/peeled) on a daily basis, conventional is disgusting. IMHO it's so bad it explains why many people hate fruits and veggies. It's flavorless and often has a chemical aftertaste.
This is in California which I've come to appreciate is a privileged place in the organic produce department, so YMMV.
Probably has nothing to do with organic and much to do with where your stuff comes from, time of harvest, care taken in transport, length of storage, etc. Since there's a strong correlation I guess it's good to buy organic.
The best stuff I eat comes from my garden but I'm not organic - I use Miracle Gro and toss conventionally grown scraps in my compost. I don't use pesticides so for the most part I think I'm doing the right thing.
IME the best tasting produce is local. Apples from your state/province will taste better than organic/non-organic ones that are still in cold storage for the better part of the year and gassed for longevity.
If you are genuinely concerned about the production quality of the food you eat, stick to local producers who are willing to have you at the farm. Many non-organic producers end up following many traditional "organic" practices but don't pursue the certifications that allow their food to be marketed as "organic."
Obviously, buying processed food[0] is a different story, and in many cases, the organic label is very much just that -- a label.
[0] Yes, yes, all food is processed at some level. I'm talking about a box of cereal, or a loaf of bread, or pasta, or, or, or...you get the idea.
Most green/eco labelling is more or less fraudulent. Not necessarily because the orgs themselves participate in fraud, but most of them simply don't have the capacity to actually ensure the alleged conditions are met by producers.
See also: FSC wood, a lot of which is illegally cut but still gets certified in the end. Same story for fish.
Does it have to scale? How much food do you need to eat?
100 years ago, 90% of people were spending 2500 hours a year in the actual fields that produced the food they ate. It hardly seems ridiculous that 90% of people could spend, say, 5 or 10 hours a year visiting farms they want to eat food from. That's probably less time than you spend putting gas in your car.
> It hardly seems ridiculous that 90% of people could spend, say, 5 or 10 hours a year visiting farms they want to eat food from.
1. you're assuming people are in a good position to judge the "production quality" of a food from a farm visit. suppose you're at an apple orchard and they sprayed [nasty pesticide] last week. how can you discern that from a visit?
2. if this gets popular, what's preventing bad actors from gaming this? ie. focus on making things look good, rather than actually increasing production quality
> That's probably less time than you spend putting gas in your car.
Using very conservative estimates of 5 minutes per fill-up, and a fill-up every week, we get just over 4 hours per year. That's still below your proposed "5 or 10 hours a year".
Yeah, you're probably right that it would take more time than putting gas in your car, unless you're a contractor or something, and I appreciate the correction. Still, it's much less than, say, buying food at supermarkets, or watching a movie a month, or reading a novel a month, and even 25 hours a year is than 1% of the time most people throughout history have spent on raising food, so I don't think it's an unreasonable amount of time getting to know farmers, if knowing farmers is something that's important to you.
To your other point, in general, yeah, it's true that people can get fooled. Farmers can lie. Sometimes you might be able to catch them; other times not. Probably you have more of a chance of figuring out who's honest if you know them than if you don't.
Agreed. One of the things we like about our town is the number of small-scale family farms. Most are happy to let regulars/CSA-shareholders walk around the fields on the weekends, with the caveat that if they catch you they may talk you into lending a hand pulling weeds or feeding the chickens ;)
About "organic" fraud, I remember seeing a brand of cosmetics saying that their products are organic because they used carbon-based chemicals. Technically true, that's the chemical definition, but they actually used the same stuff as anyone else, including parabens. I will not comment on the safety of parabens, but generally, that's the kind of stuff people who buy organic don't want to see.
Even worse, the French translation of their websites translated "organic" to "biologique", which is correct if you are using the "no synthetic chemicals" definition, but wrong if you are using the chemical definition (that would be "organique"). Turning an ambiguity into a flat out lie.
The French term is as bad as the English one -- "biologique" literally means "biological" and for example, biological weapons are "armes biologiques". But maybe the anthrax was made without pesticides? It's unfortunate that both languages decided to adopt scientific terms with defined meanings to mean "grown without the use of pesticides".
I've come to believe that the whole business of "organic certification" is built on a shaky foundation, and outright fraud is just one of the reasons why.
I once drove by a vineyard on a highly-trafficked highway in a very prominent wine-growing region and observed a sign that said something to the effect of "Organic vineyard. No dumping!"
At the time I thought to myself, "I wonder how many people who buy this winery's organic wine know that the grapes grow right next to such a highly-trafficked highway where they're constantly exposed to auto pollution?"
Ultimately, organic certification is a poor replacement for buying from local producers you know personally and can physically visit.
Take a look at honey. The labels are organic, natural, raw, unfiltered, pure, and such. Yet, we still get highly tainted, chemical laden yellow snot called "honey".
We would be way better off if we just sampled and tested products just before they hit the shelves.
The general public is desperate to trust something; anything. They will latch onto these meaningless words, thinking there is something behind the curtain. Alas, what is behind the curtain lacks any substance.
I can understand your apprehension, although my personal experience around the world still puts the USA in the top ranks for food safety (I have way to many cipro/keflex horror stories).
Why not consider a local producer? Somewhere where you can see the farm, see their production?
And, if you can, why not raise your own? Much of the rest of the world does this. Self grown and raised food.
I was slightly concerned about the meat itself such as accurate labeling (especially fish) and additives/hormones/antibiotics/plastics/metals. But my bigger concern was the negative externalities.
For example, the overuse of antibiotics contributing to antibiotic-resistant diseases. The greater environmental impact in terms of water/land/carbon. The manner in which animals are raised and slaughtered, especially in large-scale farms. The sustainability of fish stocks.
Several years back I started only eating meat from a couple local farms which addressed most of those concerns, but the cost meant that meat became more of a "special occasion" thing. I didn't go vegetarian (for example I tried the pork at our local farm's pig roast last month) but over the last few years it's just sort of happened that I eat meat less frequently, now a few times a year. So far I haven't particularly missed it from a taste or health standpoint.
This article refers to Organic in the US. Is unfortunate it gets so much visibility. Riverford organics farms in the Uk is a good example of what can actually mean. I am happy to eat food withouth pestucides
I recall when this idea of "organic" started (at least for me / in my life) seeing my chemistry teachers at high-school go crazy about how organic means 'that it's made out of carbon'.
Of course, turns out organic means it comes from the farming techniques they use. And of course, it's mostly a marketing strategy.
One of the most promising advances in genetic engineering is Gene Drive, a way to quickly spread a gene throughout an entire population. With mosquitoes, there is a gene that prevents the newly hatched females from flying and they subsequently die off.
Might the same technique be used for known agricultural pests? Why spray a cornfield with pesticides when we can naturalize the population of the Corn Borer Moth? Target the species that are specialized towards consuming the crops we produce. Just imagine how much pesticide won't need to be sprayed because the main pests no longer exist in the area?
That really works for species that you can afford to kill off wholesale. AFAIK that's the case for mosquitoes (at least for the species that bites humans), but I'm not sure about other pests (eg. bugs/birds).
Having grown up with a garden, I just don't see how industrial scale "organic" anything is even possible. _All sorts_ of bugs will simply devour your produce and fruit and nothing will be left to sell if you don't use pesticides. And this will happen _every year_ like clockwork, often several times a year, with different bugs. And soil will turn to shit within a few years if you don't use fertilizers (manure at a minimum, which, by the way, is high in nitrates, same as "inorganic" fertilizer), even though you rotate crops. So yeah, I do think it's a scam for city people who have no idea how farming works.
At least in EU and its member states, there is a lot of research and testing of actual foods ongoing. So no matter what the farmers say, the actual testing of the foodstuff is an independent method of verification.
I failed to find simple numbers quickly though, but for example for my country, it seems domestic is clean, EU produce okayish and non-EU food suspect.
The word organic has some limited legitimacy as description for farming methods.
The word I find most troubling is 'natural', often used in the same marketing.
All agricultural produce is the product of domestication of a wild plant or animal by humans. There's nothing natural about a crop or animal subject to human breeding for millenia. Domestication produces crops and animals totally different to natural selection.
There's this implicit assumption 'natural' things are better than man-made things. In the context of agriculture, it's a false dichotomy.
The term “organic” with reference to foods, has become a
victim of its own success - at one time it was a meaningful description
of how a food or food component was grown, but it is now
merely marketing puffery due to redefinition and allowance
of levels of contamination that render it meaningless.
Yes, local producers at farmer’s markets still offer
foods produced without pesticides, herbicides, and
chemical fertilizers.
Yes, farmers of any size or scale
can rationally balance the market prices of organic products
against the expenses of pesticides, herbicides, and
chemical fertilizers, the costs of application, and the potentially lower crop yields from doing without them.
But if there is no testing of products, no certification
of crops versus farmland, no auditable paper trail from
soil to seed to plant to crop to mill, the “organic” has
as much meaning as “improved” or “healthy” in the marketplace, and is wide-open to the type of fraud
described in this article.
Yesterday I heard a story of the opposite: An organic grower was not able to sell all of their produce as organic, so was told to pack it boxes labeled as being conventionally grown so it could still get sold at market, although at a lower price.
Not sure about vegetables and fruits but in Netherlands, you can feel the difference in quality between organic meat and non-organic. Better taste, better texture a more beautiful color.
How do i know that? I used to grow at my grandparents in eastern europe where all food was organic. We were to poor to afford any chemicals :)
So the organic label has the only legitimacy left to charge more for the same item?? My wife insists we buy organic and we do pay the extra tax for it but for a while I've had my doubts.
IMHO Organic food is a fraud by definition. You are still expected to use pesticides, but only the "natural" ones, which are less effective, so you end up applying more poison to a crop than non-organic farmer.
Oh, and farmers are expected to use homeopathy and other quackery on sick animals, at least in the EU.
Another one of those articles that's too long for its own good.
Thought at the title: Fraud, organic food, yes. This must be interesting.
Reading through the start: Okay, here's the life story of someone who's going to do something halfway through this article. Let me check how long this article is.
Jeez. It's gonna be a long read and I still don't get what it's about. I'll pass.
Thought I'd mention this as it's become a common thing in media lately.
I hear you, but this kind of thing falls under this umbrella:
"Please don't complain about website formatting, back-button breakage, and similar annoyances. They're too common to be interesting. Exception: when the author is present. Then friendly feedback might be helpful."
The problem is not so much with such comments in their own right but the fact that they quickly inflate into the kudzuey sort of discussion that chokes out more interesting things.
The New Yorker magazine has been around for almost 100 years and has been famous for the length of its articles almost as long. Tina Brown, the editor in the 1990s famously made the articles shorter than they had been, and it hasn’t crept back up since she left.
All this to say, sure, the article is long. But the New Yorker always has done it this way and this is not anything about the media lately. If anything, long articles are a holdover from a long previous time.
Also, all media styles and don’t have to appeal to everyone. The magazine has its audience and you may not be a part of it. Neither aspect is a bad thing.
Well this is a New Yorker piece and not a newspaper. Though I agree that there are an abundance of overstoried posts that bury the lede under a bunch of considerably less interesting context.
This is how The New Yorker as done this since forever. If you don't enjoy the 'journey' of their writing at least as much as the 'destination', then they are not the publications for you.
Although I agree that the style is being copied by more and more people and outlets, many which don't have the skill to pull it off.
I've read many a book (recently, "The Unbanking of America," which was recommended by another commenter on HN, or "Veils of Distortion") where the author did not have nearly enough material for a book, but perhaps had enough material for a New Yorker article. So think of the New Yorker as saving the world from material that would have been even longer if it were in a book.
I have no qualms with reading a long, well written piece but I don’t understand how leading with a 4 paragraph life summary is supposed to hook the reader. Especially when the title is so brash?
I think it's a relic of old-school journalistic writing. People today just do not have the attention span or desire to read a meandering backstory. The author started writing for the New Yorker in 1992, so it seems reasonable that he is more old-fashioned in his composition.
Perhaps someone here knows about this better. I would love to learn more. Another problem is that we certify international crops from India and China where the soil/water itself has been at times so polluted, that no matter what one does, there are consequences of eating that food. Perhaps there is a way to put random testing from consumers (or restaurants) in place to fix this issue? (So a consumer can send items/produce to a location for testing)
Organic certification does not have much to do the quality of the food produced in the first place. It is only a qualification of the means by which it is produced, what kinds of fertilizers and pesticides are used, etc. There is a sort of implicit assumption that more natural-ish means of productions are somehow better than others but it's not really something you can test from the product itself.
During my time in high end restaurants we came across a lot of small-scale vegetable farmers that used zero chemicals of any sort and grew objectively amazing, delicious and natural produce, but couldn't afford to pay the government to inspect and certify.
There's a local hydroponic place near me with a similar issue. Their lettuce is amazing but officially won't be classified as organic despite not using pesticides/herbicides at all, and likely very limited fertilizer if any.
He was farming using traditional and non-intensive techniques, but too small/exotic of an operation for the certification to be worth it in his opinion. Anything he would've sprayed, his family would've breathed since they lived right next to the field and it wasn't very big.
Please don't rush from a provocation in an article to complain about it in the threads here. It produces reliably uninteresting discussion.
Here's what to do instead: leave the provocations where you encounter them, and look for something interesting to discuss—that is, something which activates your curiosity, rather than indignation.
Long form journalism has been a buzzy format in the last years and has gotten a bad rap, for good reason.
The New Yorker has been doing this since before it had that name. They're as good as they've always been. What they do used to be called "literary journalism" and the name says it all. It's not that it's long. It's that it's more akin to reading a nonfiction book, with all the pleasure AND utility that that can provide.
The problem with this type of journalism isn't just the length. When you make informing facts a literary adventure, you inevitable inject a bunch of personal bias (NewYorker has a huge liberal bias) and motifs that have a tone of a particular axe to grind.
It is a chore to read these. I am not a fan.
To their credit, it is well written in terms of creativity.
> And what we now call "bias" used to be called "perspective".
More like what we used to get was perspective instead now we get bias. Perspective provides a wholistic view, not a myopic, dogmatic slant that skews facts to fit their perspective.
Journalism has gotten much... much worse over the years. You can read 1960's NewYorker and find a stark difference in their ability to put away political bias and provide a deep comprehensive review of the topic.
I agree with you. But I did not think that this applied to the New Yorker. Thanks for this comment, you got me curious. I'll take a look at the New Yorker of the past, maybe reevaluate.
I think people on this forum think that anything that's not liberal is trumpism + unsubstantiated anti-science BS. That's not what I am referring to and going against the slightest here would get you downvotes.
People who prefer to read more in detail rather than just reading a cursory examination of the topic? This article has roughly 10,000 words. According to https://numberofwords.com/faq/how-long-read-10000-words/ it should take about and hour to an hour and a half to read the whole thing. Is that unreasonable? I don't know, but I do know that I've spent longer than that reading about how a programmer fixed a bug, so I guess it's down to interest.
Have you even tried reading something from The New Yorker, The Atlantic, etc.? While their articles are usually huge, they usually provide insightful content. Try it.
I disagree. Spending a paragraph to tell me he was the sort of man who would ask another man "Do you need anything? Are you good?" or that he "acted like a deacon, heck maybe he was who knows" is not insightful.
Obviously, this author isn't really your jam. That's perfectly fine. But how do you expect to understand the nuances of a complex issue if you don't invest time? Not every author is going to cater to your tastes, but seekers of knowledge don't expect that. What you have learned is what writing style to anticipate from this author when you read their work again in the future. That's important: perhaps you can skim parts of this author if you don't fancy well-rounded characters in the narrative. But I urge you: don't give up because of one writer's verbosity.
I get you. It’s written in that modern creative writing style that suppresses information density in favour of human interest.
Usually what you do is read the blurb and see if you’re up for the adventure. Often I am not.
I agree with you that the lack of information density makes it painful to read if the topic doesn’t interest you. If you subscribe, I recommend minmaxing: read the one that you really like for the information (which is a lot, though not dense) and then read the fiction section for nice writing.
Often, when you make a remark like yours you’ll get a bunch of responses from people acting superior about “long form” stuff. Fairly predictable. Ignore them. They’re just offended because of the style of your remark so their responses will be defensive.
Randy Constant wasn't selling organic produce, or really much of anything that you think of buying "organic" at the grocery store. Because, for the most part, there tend to be a lot of visual differences between organic and conventional: conventional apples, for example, tend to be huge and spotless, while organic are almost always smaller and less "pristine". Similarly, stuff like organic, grass-fed milk tastes much different than conventional milk.
I've always been of the opinion that, as a consumer choice, organic makes sense for certain types of products where you eat the skin and all, e.g. apples, vegetables, etc.
In this case, though, Mr. Constant was selling "organic" grain primarily as livestock feed. The idea that you can really tell, or there is any difference at all, in the meat of livestock fed organic vs. conventional is extremely far fetched. Sure, there way be some tiny difference, but it's not like conventional methods include spraying with heavy metals. Most of the pesticides, etc. sprayed on conventional crops certainly don't show up in the meat of animals that eat these crops.
So this whole episode did expose the scam of organic livestock feed, but I don't think it's fair to stretch that to organic products generally.