[conradk]

From the author's bio: "Since April of 2016 I work part time for the non-profit, CropLife Foundation communicating the benefits of crop protection agents"

To read it yourself, go to https://www.forbes.com/sites/stevensavage, then click on "Full bio"

[srehnborg]

Great find. No bias at all...

Plenty of articles say that organic is not worth it due to no nutritional value. That is not the reason I've ever heard anybody say they purchase organic fruits and veggies. It's the chemicals.

I don't want to eat food that has been sprayed with chemicals over and over again to kill the various predators to that plant. I also don't want those chemicals to be in the water supply or ground.

It's more than just nutrition.

[bunderbunder]

> I don't want to eat food that has been sprayed with chemicals over and over again to kill the various predators to that plant.

That would be a good reason to consider conventional. Both organic and conventional farms use pesticides. But, by restricting themselves to only pesticides that a program within the USDA's Agricultural Marketing Service has deemed are sufficiently "natural" (not safe, not effective, not environmentally friendly, just natural), they're often limited to using chemicals that are less specific, don't break down as well, or rinse off more easily than the best available options.

Less specific means they're more capable of harming you (and wildlife in general) instead of just the target species. Breaking down less well means they're more likely to remain in the food. And rinsing away more easily means that they're more likely to pollute the soil and groundwater, and also that they may need more frequent application.

The crux of the problem is, the basic idea behind organic standards tacitly bans engineering. And by banning engineering, you ban all engineering, including engineering things to be safer, cleaner, or more effective.

I don't want to get into whether our current standards governing the safety of agrichemicals are perfect or not. What I want to suggest is that the USDA Organic program doesn't effectively improve on that situation. Conventional and organic products both have to meet the same bottom line. By introducing an additional restriction that has nothing to do with safety, though, organic farming hasn't self-imposed a higher minimum standard. It's unnecessarily self-imposed a lower maximum standard.

[candiodari]

Does anybody really think the organic marketing makes sense in the first place ? I hope not, but I guess you're mostly right and people don't see this for some reason.

[Agustus]

Organic marketing is the result of our education system failing to properly educate our populace on chemistry and the marketing taking advantage of the failure. When you go to a conventional farm you can see the exact chemicals sprayed onto the crops in a precise manner, there are GPS programs to correctly allocate based on prior science efforts. Then someone noted that isolated chemicals were not natural and stated that natural was better for you; not questioning why spreading manure instead of the chemical necessary was better (which the manure now runs off and causes issues like when we did not have the agri stewardship we have today).

Organic marketing works because decision makers lack the critical thinking to question the efficacy difference. This being said, there is a difference in taste between and organic red delicious and conventionally grown red delicious.

[cortesoft]

But organic farms still spray 'chemicals' on their fruits and veggies, they just use 'natural' chemicals.

Whether a 'chemical' is harmful to humans or not has nothing to do with how it is manufactured, so there is no reason to believe a 'natural chemical' is safer than a synthetic one.

[byproxy]

As far as I understand, the synthetic pesticides may actually be safer since they're designed with human consumption in mind and are able to be synthesized in such a way to limit negative effects on the body. Also, they can be designed to eliminate pests that are harmful to crops while doing little damage to other fauna in a way that organic pesticides can't.

I don't have any sources to cite, just my memory from past reading. If I'm off-base, please let me know!

[berbec]

Very good point. As far as I know, Latrotoxin [1], is a fully organic product. It's also much more deadly that most "chemicals" you could name. Hell, Polonium is on the periodic table of elements.

The incredibly successful media campaign waged by the Organic industry should be held up as an example for the rest of the marketing industry. DeBeers should take notes.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latrotoxin

[candiodari]

Given that all "chemicals" used before, say, 50 years ago were natural, I would go further and say there is no shortage of utterly horrible ones.

[chillacy]

Nassim Taleb makes an interesting argument in Antifragile that the natural stuff is still better assuming it’s been in use longer, since new stuff could have disastrous effect we don’t know about yet, and won’t know about for 50+ years. In the same way that some option investments look safe until they blow up.

[fr0sty]

FWIW: "Organic" != "Pesticide Free". Rather it means that the compounds sprayed on the crops are "organic" in origin.

https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/science-sushi/httpblogs...

[jvican]

An interesting EU study about organic farming clarifies this further. I find this image to be a nice way to summarize the use of pesticides in organic farming. https://imgur.com/a/WjRHpk9

The EU article is called "Human health implications of organic food and organic agriculture", I recommend peeking it. http://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/STUD/2016/58192...

[byproxy]

I wonder how the EU regulations for organic farming compare to the US regulations.

[aldoushuxley001]

Yes, it's mainly avoiding pesticide residue that's the health benefit for organic foods. That's why it helps to know which foods have the worst residue issues (e.g. the dirty dozen), buy organic for those ones while buying normal produce for foods that don't have bad residue issues.

I will say though that an underappreciated benefit of organic foods is their probiotic content. Organic fruits and vegetables contain many more species of bacteria than the those grown with pesticides. So Organic produce is actually a great underappreciated probiotic source, especially considering the diversity of probiotics is superior to any store-bought probiotic (provided you have a diet of diverse fruits and vegetables).

[1001101]

> That's why it helps to know which foods have the worst residue issues (e.g. the dirty dozen)

And know the ones with the least residue as well, the 'clean fifteen.' [1]

[1] https://www.foodsafetymagazine.com/news/2018-dirty-dozen-and...

[ilikehurdles]

Honestly, in a blind taste test for most fruits and veggies I generally prefer the flavor of the organic one, and that's enough for me. Maybe it's because of pesticides, maybe it's because of harvesting schedule, maybe it's because of other practices at the organic vs non-organic farm, but the fact is the organic fruits/veggies usually have a noticeably better flavor (not always, especially outside of the dirty dozen). This applies even more so to milk.

[bryanlarsen]

What annoys me is that organic is the "premium" selection for fruits & veggies at the grocery store.

If organic wasn't a thing, groceries would find a way to price discriminate, and the most likely way would be to sell tastier varietals raised with practices known to increase taste (like waiting till it's ripe before picking).

So deliberately tastier rather than accidentally tastier.

[0xEFF]

He addresses safety and chemicals at length in the article. Natural chemicals do not mean they’re non-toxic. Organic does not mean no pesticides.

[bryanlarsen]

"I also don't want those chemicals to be in the water supply or ground."

In my anecdotal experience, algae blooms downstream from organic manure fertilized farms are far worse than from conventionally fertilized farms.

[wheaties]

Organic crops use organic pesticides in the US. That is, the lobby of big agra has the regulatory framework for "organic" changes to suit their purpose. It's not what you think ir is.

[wnevets]

> That is not the reason I've ever heard anybody say they purchase organic fruits and veggies.

I've had more than one person tell me that organic foods taste better & they have higher nutritional value.

Related but talking to those people about the all natural label is just a lost cause.

[ggg9990]

Many times they do taste better. The spoilage rate is higher so only the healthiest foods survive, and also farmers who are expecting a higher price point recognize that they need to also taste good (I.e. there is a market for bad tasting $1/pound conventional vs good tasting $2/pound conventional, not so much of a market for bad tasting $4/pound organic vs $5/pound good tasting organic)

[aldoushuxley001]

A lot of organic foods are different strains than typically sold at grocery stores, and they do tend to taste better simply by virtue of being a strain likely chosen more for its taste than transportability.

Of course though it all depends on where you shop. If you're just comparing two identical apples organic vs non-organic, then you'd almost certainly not taste the difference.

[sf_rob]

One interesting point. When watching the Netflix series Chef's Table, one of the chefs worked closely with genetic engineers to make better tasting GMOs. The researcher interviewed said it was the first time in his long career that anyone had asked for him to improve flavor rather than yield or size (sometimes at the detriment of flavor).

While this doesn't pertain to organic food directly it does suggest that the industrial food system may be optimizing for different things than a consumer may want.

[crdoconnor]

That kind of mirrors Monsanto's insistence that GM foods without roundup are utterly 100% proven safe, neglecting to mention that the reason they're modified is so that they are more resistant to roundup.... which is not exactly proven safe.

[JeremyBanks]

Enjoy your environmentally-wasteful famine-enhancing feel-good food.

[Retric]

US has about 3x the farm land under cultivation vs what it actually needs. Ethanol production a perfect example of this.

[squirrelicus]

Don't worry. Global warming will open up incredible amounts of farmland in Canada and Russia. :)

[yeleti]

Interesting. CropLife Foundation is funded by the major companies that make pesticides. https://croplifefoundation.org/about/funders-corporate-suppo...

[severine]

Thanks. Just in case anyone still wants to read the article but couldn't: https://outline.com/gswB27

[dsfyu404ed]

Most of the authors for opinion pieces that get posted here have backgrounds that would imply they're less than impartial. Nobody ever checks when they agree though.