Among many reasons to eat organic (and local, known/trusted source if you can) is the use of glyphosate as a desiccant in wheat harvesting. You see, for storage and to make flour, wheat needs to have a precise percentage of moisture. Glyphosate defoliates the plant and allows the wheat to dry quickly and uniformly. So nearly all wheat that isn’t organic has been sprayed with glyphosate at harvest, as it’s much more efficient than waiting around for the wheat to dry in the field.
This is actually a massive challenge for me as a distiller. Fruits in the US with the exception of wine grapes and certain stone fruits, have not reached tree-ripeness (and never will in ethylene) and are lacking significant phenolic character. It’s the main reason that US cider is just not very good for the most part. A few producers go out of their way to use properly ripened fruit, but it’s extremely rare. It’s considered imperative to wine making so much so that there’s a term for that ripening and phenolic development period; veraison.
As @catsidhe mentions, it is a certification that a particular process was followed. It was actually developed to protect small, organic farmers back in the day.
I haven’t had the chance to read this, but the first thing that comes to mind is correlation =/= causation. Organic is more expensive than conventional, so the study — especially longitudinal — may be proving wealthier people with greater access to nutritious, minimally processed foods have better outcomes than lower income people lacking this access.
Yeah, industrial husbandry uses too many antibiotics. Actually, the whole system is insane. My org is trying to change that, little by little.
I hate the jargon in my industry. But yes, what we find is that organic fertilizers and pesticides have a lower impact on the environment. Partially because organic inputs have lower concentrations of the “bad chemicals” than conventionally manufactured inputs, partly because they are more expensive, so farmers are less likely to carpet bomb their fields with more inputs than needed, partly because organic farmers tend to practice good land management which means the soil is more productive and they need fewer inputs, and not least because organic producers often are conscientious and care about the quality and impact of the food they produce.
Absolutely! We promote this, we want this, this is good. Healthy soil produces more food. Period. Good land management keeps the soil health. As @cannibalpeas mentioned above, monoculture has been a bane on the planet for far too long!
We promote this as well. IPM is great! Basically, it is letting nature do her thing. Crop rotation, intercropping with crops that repel pests, introducing/letting bugs eat other bugs, sacrificial non-cash crops. All this is good, and can be rolled out on an industrial scale. The big ag companies resist this because it would require expensive “innovating” which means line-go-up slower.
It depends. We’re having great success with it in Senegal, Ghana, Kenya, Colombia… in the countries in which we work. Basically the cost savings from not buying and applying pesticides makes up for the Los crop losses from pests. It would probably work in the US and Europe as well, but it would require significant changes in practices and across the agriculture value chain. Unfortunately farming has razor thin margins, so farmers are reluctant to, literally, bet the farm on practices “unproven” to them.
There is nothing wrong with organic. In fact, all things being equal, it is preferable to conventional agriculture, if only for the source of raw materials for fertilizers and pesticides (derived from other organic sources, as opposed to mined from the earth or manufacturers from petrochemicals). In fact, my organization promotes and trains farmer in developing countries to grow crops organically, primarily because it is less expensive for them to produce and they can access higher value markets. In the development context, nutrition is usually a factor of variety of food sources and utilization (often cooking technique).
My biggest issue is in the assumption and promotion of the argument that organic is nutritiously better than conventional. It isn’t. Nutrition has to do more with harvesting and handling (timing and ripening in storage as opposed to in the ground).
If you want organic and can access it and afford it, that’s fantastic. But if not, conventionally grown is just as good. Locally grown is preferable to “imported,” fresh is preferable to highly processed. Ironically, because of the way they are harvested and prepared, canned and frozen veggies are more nutritious than most “fresh” veggies.
But we don’t want to discourage lower income families or people living in food deserts from eating fresh foods because they think if they aren’t organic, they aren’t as good or nutritious. Unfortunately that is how a lot of the discussion about organic goes, and it can be harmful.
I’ve always liked — preferred — fruits and veggies, but didn’t realize how delicious they could be until I lived in developing countries, where foods are highly seasonal and what you buy in the market was literally picked that week, often that day.
If I could, I would love to plant and manage a mini orchard like @docosc. I sympathize with your frustration in finding quality ingredients for your distillery. Our work is primarily in high value crops such as coffee, cocoa, and spices, and we get the same complaint, both from the mega corporations with more money than god and the boutique buyers who behave ethically.
For those who have never had homegrown tomatoes, let me just say that tomatoes should never crunch! Nothing like them fresh off the vine, where shipping characteristics are absolutely not an issue.
ETA: You mentioned IIPM. Saw a great tip a while back, to put bird feeders to attract birds to the orchard, where they will pick off at least a goodly number of the caterpillars and other pests from the trees to feed their young. Definitely decreases pest pressure, and costs nothing but some seed. And the poo is great fertilizer, as well!
I heartily agree. I really should post in the gardening thread; I grow tomatoes in my garden at home, and rarely do I have anything left. The kids go right out and graze them off the vine. I don’t have to encourage them, they sneak out to do it. Same with the cukes and peppers.
There is nothing like having your kid ask if they can have a snack, then hearing the deck door open as the go down to grab something out of the garden.
The idea that you should eat organic food for your own health is an american idea. You eat organic food because you want to make less of an impact on the eco system.
I hate to be “that guy,” but if you have a garden, oats are really easy to grow, and readily processed with easily adapted common tools. I got 8# out of a 100 sq ft plot, which will make most of my personal needs for the year. The only specialized tool needed was a FlickFlock oat roller. Can’t get more organic than that!
Of course chemical grown foods are nutritious as organic, but they also have those chemicals still on them or in them in some amount. Also the farming practices are quite different with organic. Monocropping is a huge problem, for example.
And some crops are worse than others; I avoid non-organic apples because of the diviot around the stem that allowes the water/chemicals to sit and soak into the apple. No thanks.
Well the fortunate aspect of that frustration is the opportunity it creates. My career began in agriculture (which is a big reason that articles like this get me all crabby) and I came about distilling as a value-add agricultural preservation process. Having demanding needs means that I can coordinate with farmers to bring them higher-quality products (over 250 heirloom cider varietals planted in one orchard that went on to establish their own cider brand from the trees; close to 400 in another orchard and entire fields changed over to heirloom varietal corn at three local farms). Because these crops are usually more disease susceptible and often require infrastructural investment (grain cleaners, dryers, gravity bins, etc) and I would otherwise pay market rate, I can pay them the market rate instead of their usual wholesale rate which translates into underwriting those infrastructure costs. They then become significantly more valuable in the local craft market. I can’t even buy those apples I grafted 15 years ago, now!
ETA: Oh, and we totally changed New York state beer in the process! Because of my history of advocacy and direct farmer coordination, I kind of became a public advocate of New York Distillery agricultural via Cornell Cooperative Extension and NOVO Foundation. A group of use were selected to form an industry advisory committee and were tasked with returning barley growing to the region that, at one time, was the US premier barley growing and malting region, but was non-existent as of ca. 2010. A few local farms agreed to pilot a series of malt varietals that would conform to brewer’s and distillers needs (and to a lesser degree bakers). By the time we had those varietals selected and seed grain available there were something like 12 new maltsters (those who convert barley into brewer’s malt) and dozens of farms turning land over to barley production. Now NY state is awash in locally-grown malt and there is a license class with special privileges specifically for brewers that use it.
