Author: Noah Berman / Source: did you know?
When you imagine an organic farm, I’ll bet you think of rolling green hills, rich block soil that clods together when you dig your hands into it, rows and rows of bright veggies, maybe even a few cows in the background, munching the pastures.
That bucolic place probably does exist – but it’s also almost certainly not where the organic food you buy at the grocery store comes from.
It turns out that the meaning of the word “organic” is both pretty squishy and totally certain at the same time, at least in the food labelling sense (organic has other meanings as well). The confusion comes from an understandable source: when the public picks out an organic fruit or vegetable from the market, the majority of them are imagining that pastoral organic farm I described above – or at least that their organic food will be pesticide free (but we’ll get there).
Back when the organic movement first began as a backlash to the environmentally destructive agricultural practices that boomed post-WWII, there was an emphasis on soil and on the environment – on exactly that farm I described. That’s what we all think of when we hear “organic” because that was originally the idea behind the movement. But in 1990, Congress ordered the USDA to create an organic label, which would utilize a standard set of practices so that all consumers would know exactly what they were buying. And so, the National Organic Program (NOP) was born.
It sounds like a good idea, right? It’s much better for there to be a single set of standards, so no one can use labelling tomfoolery to put one over on their consumers.
Except…
Once the NOP got up and going, a few things happened. One, the emphasis on uniformity of standards meant that the sorts of practices that might work in Vermont all of a sudden had to also work in Texas – which, for obvious reasons, can be difficult. Two, in order to label their food organic, a farm has to make sure they are totally in compliance with all NOP standards, standards that include growing crops on land free of all prohibited pesticides. That means you can’t just stop using pesticides – sometimes it can take a matter of years to become fully certified, even if you are functionally compliant. And the whole time, you are losing money to other farms that are already certified – not to mention the amount of money the certification actually costs.
Farming does not have a lot of…
The post “Organic” – Not What You Think appeared first on FeedBox.