While making my Waldorf salad the other day I noticed in reading that three of the four main ingredients regularly pop up on the ‘dirtiest vegetables’ list. I’m not just talking about farm soil and legged pests but the toxic chemicals used to inflate the harvest of many commercial crops. Not being an alarmist on this point, I have often said in the past that the ‘organic’ label is useless in many instances. That was frequently the case in the early days of organic labelling and can still be so with dodgy source countries but in more and more examples, the label is the only indication that your apples haven’t been doused in DDT and your strawberries weren’t grown in heap of rat poison.
The case against organic labelling isn’t so much a condemnation of the idea as it is an admission of ineffectual standards. You can get nearly as many toxic side effects if your pristine organically-grown veg is contaminated down stream in a dirty processing plant or transport truck. Where profit trumps safety, which includes first and third world countries alike, an organic label can mean little more than a pretty sticker with no real world consequences. In places where certification still has any shred of merit, the financial hurdles to jump in order to satisfy disconnected bureaucrats can often put farmers out of business.
Of course the corollary to that thought is perhaps those farmers should be put out of business if they’re relying on a chemical soup to maximize yields at the cost of quality or safety. The ever sneaky industrial complex has groomed farms to use these compounds for the sake of profits and efficiency with the health (and taste) implications often being swept under the barn in the hopes that no one will notice. Here’s where I think a decentralization of agriculture could help things along but you then have to ask at what cost? Can the global population afford a decrease in output of the hyper-efficient growing machine? Will people rampage when they can’t get fresh tomatoes in December? It’s not as easy a question as it seems at first glance.
I spend the extra on organics from places where I have at least some small faith in the certificates. Awareness has thankfully driven demand up and costs down for those farmers trying to make a living without pesticides. Some organic produce prices are even on par now with industrially farmed examples. Bananas, celery, and garlic I notice cost mere pennies more a pound nowadays for example. While local farms are no guarantee of good growing practices, being able to bend the farmer’s ear in person certainly has an effect. If nothing else as a conduit for good information exchange.
Since I can’t solve all the world’s problems today I have to simplify the question to my own little world. I’m infinitely glad to have my own apple trees. My tiny garden plot helps me remember what fresh and unadulterated produce is supposed to taste like. And the indoor hydroponic experiments where at least I’m in control of the whole process are progressing nicely giving me weekly salads. More on those efforts later.
