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"
To read it yourself, go to https://www.forbes.com/sites/stevensavage, then click on "Full bio"
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.
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.
I don't have any sources to cite, just my memory from past reading. If I'm off-base, please let me know!
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.
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/science-sushi/httpblogs...
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...
In my anecdotal experience, algae blooms downstream from organic manure fertilized farms are far worse than from conventionally fertilized farms.
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).
And know the ones with the least residue as well, the 'clean fifteen.' [1]
[1] https://www.foodsafetymagazine.com/news/2018-dirty-dozen-and...
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.