Originally published at: Organic food myths busted: Why you might be wasting money on "healthier" options - Boing Boing
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Original blog post from 2011. Not an expert, but here is a reply (also from back in 2011): In defense of organic | Grist
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Yep.
News from 13 years ago… Surely some things about organic food have changed since then. 
Oh wait, as a bb post from just a year ago says,
There are many other reasons to buy organic, but not ingesting pesticides is pretty top of the list.
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This. Every damn time there’s one of these attempted organic takedowns it’s the same old bullshit. It’s about not eating poison, folks! And sure, pesticides, fungicides and insecticides are used, but they are usually things like copper octanoate, kaolin clay and the like. The reasons they are occasionally used in higher quantities is because they are non-systemic (ie. Inside the flesh of the plant like glyphostaes) and wash away with rain, requiring reapplication. Articles like this are just more confirmation bias for people who already think organic is bs. Spare me.
ETA: Also, organic farming practices go far beyond mere inputs. Disease resistant varietals, appropriate plantings for the climate and terrain, land stewardship practices and integrated agriculture using livestock and companion plantings are all highly favored. Monocropping is 100% a profit- driven solution and leads to all manner of crop failure, widespread blights and destructive stewardship practices (not that organic agriculture isn’t profit-driven, but it’s not 100% of the primary calculus). Monocropping is bad, folks.
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Wow. There’s so much nonsense in this, but this caught my eye:
I mean, that tells me that some people can tell organic and conventional food apart by taste, i.e., there is a noticeable difference in taste. Which is pretty interesting.
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Years ago I saw some kind of news report on Big Ag, and on industrial-scale tomato production in particular. The farmer being interviewed was quite candid. He absolutely agreed that the tomatoes that he was growing weren’t as flavorful as other varieties, or as good as tomatoes grown with other farming techniques. But he explained that the customer (probably a big grocery chain or distributor) had explicit criteria for the product and flavor wasn’t one of them. The way he put it was “I don’t get paid one dime for how they taste.”
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I regret that I have but one like to give.
Also we should point out that the big organic insecticide is BT, not nearly as toxic to us higher life forms from my reading (not an expert tbc)
And the carrots from our CSA box are clearly more tasty than any store bought I’ve ever tasted. They practice regenerative farming and care about the land, their workers and the future we all hope to build together.
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I can understand that people don’t know much about organic farming, even in 2024, but I’d expect that before linking a click-bait “myth busting” article from 2011 - that was 13 years ago - one might spend a minute or two to research if that article drew some valid criticism at the time, and what the current state of affairs might be.
People outside the US might even check if the issues presented are local, or global. Regulation about what is organic differ vastly, and those in the US are not the most environment- or consumer-friendly.
Not really. On the top of the page it says clearly:
This article was published in Scientific American’s former blog network and reflects the views of the author, not necessarily those of Scientific American
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Right? That’s exactly what long ago piqued my interest in organics-- the especially tasty carrots! Nice also to eat apples with rich, subtle flavors. So what if there’s a blemish or worm sometimes, I can work around that. 
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Read a book back in the 80’s for a college biology course, one of the key points was that the goal of plant agricultural genetic research at the time was not nutrition or taste, but the number of units of it that an area of farmland could bring to market, and the physical attractiveness, measured solely by how likely a consumer was likely to purchase it. No interest in the life of the produce once it left the store. It explained for me the half misnomer of an apple “Red Delicious”.
ETA: This book, Altered Harvest, by Jack Doyle, name just came to me. Altered Harvest by Jack Doyle
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Here is some info about GMO seeds and food by Farm Aid. Mega corps wants to consolidate and own plant biodiversity and that can’t happen with organics from my understanding.
Check out Farm Aid’s article on why GMOs are not good for family farmers to use.
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So: Why was this even (re)posted, here and now??
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Can confirm. Having been a CSA member for many years, I can say that once you’ve tasted organic locally-grown produce you realize how much taste and density just isn’t there in most conventional store produce.
ETA: Take one and pass it down, folks!
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Yep. I responded to that post:
I will say, I think it is important to roll this info out every couple of years, since the myth that organic means more nutritious persists, and of course, young adults may not have learned this info from their parents.
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I believe another great contributor to the better taste/flavor of many of these veggies is that they are “heritage” crops (i.e., what our great-grandparents ate before the explosion of industrial farming and all the breeding for looks over flavor).
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Pretty much correct. Most fruits and veggies are grown not for flavor, but for the ability to be picked, transported, and stored for a long time. It’s why we have the Cavendish banana (thick skin and bland AF) and tomatoes as hard as softballs. Also, most fruits and veggies you get from grocery store chains are picked while still green and ripened in a pre-cooling facility by pumping ethylene into the storage area. Plants naturally produced ethylene as part of the ripening process.
Yes, it is. It is a remnant of early to mid 20th century beliefs about how to make industrial agriculture most efficient. The sooner we can rid ourselves of this, the better.
Support your local CSA, especially if it is a co-op. All CSA’s are of course different, but the main things affecting taste are: variety (the carrots they provide you are probably not the same as your local grocer’s), “ripeness” (they were probably picked closer to actual ripeness rather than picked too early and ripened in pre-cooling), age (especially with root and bulb crops, which are often stored for 3 - 9 months before sold), and finally growing technique (much like grass fed beef tastes better than corn feed fed beef, your CSA is more likely to practice good agriculture practices such as crop rotation, intercropping, land resting, and use compost that changed composition regularly).
But that doesn’t mean organic in general is more nutritious or safer than conventionally grown. Nutrition comes mostly from when the veggie is harvested (which is why canned tomatoes are more nutritious than the “fresh” tomatoes at the supermarket), not how it is grown. Local, whether conventional or organic, will always be more nutritious than food grown and shipped from far away.
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So, if there’s no difference in pesticide use (other than the pesticides themselves being organic, with any potential resulting differences in doseage, etc.), it’s not healthier, and it’s not better for the environment, then what exactly gives people the right to call it “organic”?
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The sign-off from a quite expensive certification process, usually.
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It does appear to be healthier:
Significant positive outcomes were seen in longitudinal studies where increased organic intake was associated with reduced incidence of infertility, birth defects, allergic sensitisation, otitis media, pre-eclampsia, metabolic syndrome, high BMI, and non-Hodgkin lymphoma.
and:
a growing number of important findings are being reported from observational research linking demonstrable health benefits with organic food consumption.
see:
It is also of note that the use of antibiotics in organic farming is substantially lower, which os obviously a good thing for both animals and the people who consume their eggs, milk or flesh.
There also appear to be numerous benefits for the environment, this literature review about the role or organic farming in the fight against climate change lists more sources
Organic farming is influential practice to minimize the environmental and ecological impact of sustainable development. Usage of more organic matters in agricultural practices can reduce the adverse effects on the environment by keep saving its natural cycles on recovery process and organic farming
see:
That being said, at least over here many producers of organic food adhere to stricter standards than the EU imposes on organic food, which also have additional benefits - mostly for the environment.
As for the pesticides, it might also be not as clear cut as you make it:
a comprehensive study in Europe found that areas with intensive organic farming had 40% less nitrate in groundwater compared to conventional farming regions
and another benefit:
Land management with organic manure can increase soil organic matter Agriculture is a major contributor to climate change, emitting around 22% of global anthropogenic greenhouse gas (GHG). Organic management has shown reductions in total GHG emissions per unit area
see this article, which breaks down organic methods for fertilization and pest control:
also relevant:
There’s also the emerging idea of pesticide-free farming, which builds on practices from organic farming, including crop-rotation and, to an extent, also biological control. It is currently not commercially viable - while organic farming is - but it might be a way forward here for those farmers who don’t seek organic certification.
Does that help?
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