We talk about organic agriculture all the time, and it is a buzzword that is thrown around in many contexts, but it doesn't always mean the same thing and certainly could be used to mislead people. What I am talking about is the difference between talking about organically certified products, organic certified agriculture, etc. versus talking about organic values and organic farming systems. I think a lot of people tend to think that a product which is labeled organic means its wholesome, healthy, good for the environment and in general the perfect product, but what they might not realize is that the label only really means that the product was grown in a certain way, without chemical fertilizers and pesticides, or that the ingredients in a product were produced in that way. People might equate organic with healthy, but nothing about the organic certification process guarantees that a product is healthy, only that it doesn't have pesticide residues. A recent article on The Elephant Journal, titled "An organic pop-tart is still a pop-tart" is exactly what I am talking about. In it Candice Garret says that just because an ingredient such as sugar is organic, it doesn't mean it has the same effect on you that non-organic sugar does. For anyone interested, the article can be found here.
The organic agriculture movement began in defiance to chemically-heavy industrial agriculture, to provide an alternative food for people worried about all kinds of negative effects on human health and the environment that conventional agriculture was becoming associated with. I don't know for sure, but my idea is that early proponents of organic agriculture envisioned farms that were organic being very different from conventional farms, being much more diverse, employing techniques such as crop rotation and animal/animal product integration to build fertility in their soils. Today, however there are many organically certified farms that are simply chemical-free versions of their conventional selves. Instead of being farms that are different on principle, they aren't all that different from conventional farms.
This brings into question what organic has meant, what is means now, and what it should mean in the future. It also brings into question values of the organic movement versus the values of the organic business sector. The organic movement was and is largely driven by consumer desire for a higher standard of food safety, the need for environmentally friendly farming, and by local food movements. When I think of the organic movement I think about farmers who grow on a smallish amount of land, on a sort of "human scale," sell to customers in the local economy through markets, CSAs, and marketing at locally owned groceries and co-ops rather than to large organic suppliers, supermarkets or simply into the organic trading market, and who educate the people of their communities about what they are doing and why people should care. In general, they are connected with the community that they are a part of. Perhaps more importantly I think of farmers who are in tune with the ecology of their farm, who deeply understand the complexities of the natural processes that take place while they grow and harvest their crops, and genuinely care about the present and long-term health and wellbeing of all aspects of the agroecosystems.
The farmers of the organic movement are very different from the farmers who grow organically because of the business side of things. Organic produce and products obviously have a premium price, as well as a potentially lower cost of production, and many large-scale farmers grow organically simply for the money. It is hard to have a large farm and still know it as intimately as the small grower does. This intimacy of knowledge is key in sustainable agriculture systems. So what it comes down to for me is that large-scale, money focused organic versions of conventional farms, while they do prevent the possibility of chemical contamination in our food and in the environment, they cannot be sustainable in the long run because impossible to understand the underlying systems so closely, and because they are not integrated with the local community.
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