Why Organic?

[chickened]

I agree with what you say except the last part about Michele Obama. Believing in some thing that someone is doing that effects me personally is not her call. I'll give you an example why that doesn't work. If I tell you to give me your wallet and you say no , I say why not, you say because it is mine, I say but I believe it should be mine, is that right? because I believe it is right? for me? If the first lady wants to go save some whales or something I really don't care what she does but when it personally effects me then a red flag goes up.
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I prefer to eat organic, but do sometimes eat non organic food. But if all food was labeled, and I KNEW which foods contained more GMO's.., I would make better(or different) choices. For example, choose food with the least GMOs or give them all up entirely. Keeping ingredients and their sources is keeping a lot of the American public ignorant. If the general public (face it there are a lot of very ignorant people) really knew how much crap is in there food, would they really buy or would they make different choices?

Yes, sometimes people die of salmonella in raw milk. How many people die of illnesses related to ingested GMOs? We don't know that. We need to eat what our bodies recognize as food at the molecular level not necessarily what looks the prettiest.

Historically, First Ladies often take a political stand on a subject they feel strongly about. I find nothing distasteful about Michelle Obama fighting for something she believes in.

 

[chickened]

I have never been to Chicago so I would not know if it was a fair comparison I could only speculate but I do know what me eyes see here.
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I have seen the same scinerio in some of the neighbor hoods in Chicago.
6 blocks from our Obama's home.
These people are 100% subsidized since the day they were born.
They never ate organic food in their life......Lame comparison.......

 

[Wifezilla]

As for the subject of whether or not people are willing to pay extra for organic, sustainable crops, pastured meat, etc...

The "beyond organic" farm near me using Joel Salatin's growing methods incorporating pastured pork and grass fed beef as well as chickens in mobile tractors has sold out of their CSAs for 2011. They sold out sometime in JANUARY! Last year we printed flyers for them. This year they had a waiting list and sold out so fast they didn't even need to print any. One of their CSA volunteers told me the waiting list got even longer too.

In Denver, the Urban Homestead market is always packed. Their prices are a little higher than factory food, but not much. They are cheaper than Whole Paycheck....uhhh...I mean Whole Foods. I have bought pumpkins, artisan cheeses, grass fed beef and some gluten-free cookies there when I visit a friend in Denver. She has a milk share and picks up her raw milk there. Mmmmmmmmm....raw milk

So YES, there IS demand. Some people are even willing to pay a premium to know where their food comes from. Whether or not an individual farmer wants to cater to that demographic is up to them. That demographic has grown over the last 10 years. Convincing the public that those people are stupid, foolish, ignorant, etc... isn't going to make them go away. Since the growth in that market is not showing any signs of stopping, is ignoring them a good business plan?

 

[5chicks4us]

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Well, almost all soy is genetically modified and therefore not organic so if your chicken feed says soy and it's not organic feed then it is almost certainly genetically modified. The other heavy hitters are corn, sugar beets (which is a majority of what is labeled "sugar" on the ingredient lists in the US) and the rapeseed (aka canola oil). So if you're looking to avoid GMOs and heavily chemical coated foods, you would want to avoid those ingredients the most.

 

[seedcorn]

#1) Agree that food should be able to be labeled non-GMO if it is. & promote it that way if you wish. Didn't know there was a law against that, how does organic get away by doing this if there is a law against it? But I also think that you shouldn't be able to promote anti-GMO with no scientific evidence from a reputed source and not some organic promoter.
#2) We the consumers do control what we buy, but not the costs.
#3) I do understand there are farm markets doing well. I also know that there are some that can't generate enough income to support a family.
#4) In Indiana, human waste is not allowed on row crops. My question is what would you do with the human waste? My next question is which is safer to place it 6" under soil where microbes will digest it into nutrients or placing it into pits (septics) under ground nearer our water table?
#5) Some very interesting reasons why some prefer organic. Interesting that some can't promote their beliefs without feeling the need to critize Ag. I've been to over 30 years of Ag meetings and never once have I heard an anti-organic conversation--maybe I'm deaf. Now vegans trying to outlaw ag, that I've heard opinions on--not on their life style but what laws they are trying to get passed.

When you buy Mexican produce, slave labor ag products, you are buying products that are fed human wastes.

 

[schellie69]

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Well, almost all soy is genetically modified and therefore not organic so if your chicken feed says soy and it's not organic feed then it is almost certainly genetically modified. The other heavy hitters are corn, sugar beets (which is a majority of what is labeled "sugar" on the ingredient lists in the US) and the rapeseed (aka canola oil). So if you're looking to avoid GMOs and heavily chemical coated foods, you would want to avoid those ingredients the most.

Thank you and here I am buying canola oil because it is supposed to be better for you

I sometimes feel that no matter what I buy some how its not good for me. Organic around here is just way to high, I want to find someone who sells raw milk and grass fed beef but so far no luck. I guess I will just keep looking.

 

[DenverBird]

So on the original question, "Why Organic?"

As an environmental and water resources scientist I've worked on hazardous waste assessment and cleanup projects since the early 1990s. A few years ago I worked on a project investigating the poultry industry in northern Arkansas and their pollution of the Illinois River Basin in Oklahoma. I can't remember exactly what was on the full analytical lists but we were looking at a pretty big suite of parameters and among them was a set of the standard heavy metals with Strontium and a few others added to the list. I asked "why on earth are we analyzing for Strontium?" The lab manager told me how the big poultry producers supplement the broiler feed with Strontium because this metal mimics Calcium (its right below Ca on the periodic table) and is taken up in the CXs' bones. When they raise the CXs the Strontium helps them build strong enough bones over their 7-week lifetime to minimize the number of birds that went lame.

I also learned a bit from the scientists doing the field work on the project who were sampling around the chicken houses and going on the farms and fields where the waste was spread. It was all pretty disgusting. The lab manager is one of those guys that always had his headset on listening to Rush Limbaugh. He said he'd never eat "conventional" chicken again after working on that project.

Even though I still eat a fair bit of conventional food I make an effort to get less processed food all the time and get organic food when I can.

I used to scoff at organic purists and will quickly point out that a lot of folks are using whacky science, or none at all, as basis to eat organic, buy bottled water, avoid vaccines and other things that appear in vogue these days. A lot of stuff out there is uninformed alarmist hype and makes me roll my eyes.

But the more I learn about factory farming, where our "conventionally produced" food comes from, and who actually writes our nation's food safety laws, the less I trust our food supply.

-DB

 

[AquaEyes]

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[AquaEyes]

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#4) This is just a thought, but I wonder if human waste could be used to fertilize non-food crops, like tree-farms, biomass production, or even algae for biodiesel.

 

[BlackBart]

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#4) This is just a thought, but I wonder if human waste could be used to fertilize non-food crops, like tree-farms, biomass production, or even algae for biodiesel.

They dump Bio-Soil (sewage sludge) where you least expect it. Just Google it. It is being used more than you realize.

We are starting a battle here, to stop it being used for hay field fertilizer. Of course it is attractive because of the cash back incentives. They know better than to try to use it on human food crops.

Sewage sludge is full of all sorts of nasty stuff that cannot be filtered out, from pharmaceuticals to phthalates (PVC) to Alkyl-phenols (household cleaners) etc..