[CalRobert]

Plastic is used intensively to make the food too. This is a sea of plastic in Spain used for growing. https://vertical-farming.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/alme...

Plastic stops weeds, stops birds, is the skin of greenhouses - every step of growing seems to involve another damn square kilometer of plastic. A lot of it just degrades in to microplastics in the soil, too.

(My wife and I did a market-garden type smallholding for a while and it's damn near impossible to get away from plastic)

[legitster]

One of the ironies is that organic agriculture has increased plastics use dramatically in farming.

https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2019/06/07/729783773/or...

[lotsofpulp]

As far as I can tell, organic is mostly a mechanism to price discriminate produce and animal products. If you label one organic, then some people will be willing to pay more for it.

[legitster]

That might be more true of other certifications like Fair Trade.

Whether you agree with the mission of organic agriculture or not, getting certified for it does come with a lot of expensive extra rules.

[lotsofpulp]

I don’t know about other countries, but considering the US cannot even be bothered to continuously perform surprise inspections of the quality of medicines or medicinal manufacturing facilities, or vitamins, I have zero faith in any of those labels, especially from places where the US has no jurisdiction and hence no possibility of consequences.

For all I know, the nicer looking produce gets slapped with an organic label and the less nice doesn’t, creating a visual illusion at the store. This is all ignoring the fact that there is no conclusive proof of “organic” being nutritionally superior.

People like the story of being “in the know” or “beating the system”, hence the utility of these labels. Another one I like is “A2 milk”.