what does organic mean?

posted april 29, 2010



i’ve never seen a practical explanation of the term organic,
which explains why i hear a lot of misunderstanding about it.
i haven’t watched any of the documentaries or read any of the books about the food industry,
and i’m sure a lot of non organic people haven’t either.
but it doesn’t take much logical sense to figure it out.
a lot of people that are turned off by organic, i was for a while as well, and i didn’t even know what it was about.
the price markup is the first turn off,
and misuse of the word in marketing can take away some of the credibility.
but now that i understand the significance, it raises a lot of consciousness about eating, and other aspects of modern life.

summary
i'm into things being natural, as in how they occurred in nature,
or before industrialization and commercialization.

to me organic means food was produced without:
unnatural pesticides,
antibiotics,
added growth hormones,
chemical fertilizers,
hydroponics,
artificial lighting,
genetically modified organisms (gmo),
irradiation,

and with
natural sunlight,
farming methods that don’t ruin the land and water,
so that you can keep farming, (duh?) like rotating crops,
which people figured out in prehistoric times.

all those unnatural things added have negative affects on the food, our bodies, and the earth. 

price markup
the utilization of these harsh methods, along with government subsidies encouraging them, allowed for producing large amount of shit quality food at a lower price. this resulted in a culture of waste and over consumption, putting higher demands on farmers.
these methods also have long term side affects, which make it hard for food to grow the natural way.
if land wasn’t ruined you wouldn’t need fertilizers. if animals were raised naturally, they’d be healthy, not get sick, get strange futuristic flus, bacterias, and other diseases, and not need extra antibiotics, or to be irradiated. it’s a vicious cycle.
the extra price or organic is a result of the problems created by non organic methods,
and the extra effort now needed to counter them.
if non organic methods are eventually phased out, food production can go back to being natural, not having a price markup, and government could subsidize organic farming tom maintain long term food production.

further explanation
the term "organic" was created as a reaction to these unnatural, industrialized methods of growing and producing food.

up to a certain point in history, everything would probably be considered organic,
but there was no need to invent a separate word for it.
it was just the normal, natural process, for thousands of years.

with industrialization, and scientific advance, we started having the processes listed above.
i mean come on,
destroying land so we can’t eat again?
plants growing indoor without soil?
what is life without the sun?
radioactive cleaning?
changing DNA?
chemicals that make things grow?
starts to sound like mutagen from the teenage mutant ninja turtles.

these things destroy the integrity of naturally occurring things.
who knows what other strange processes are utilized out there,
turning things like corn into sugar after breaking it down a number of times.

why take all the excess effort to produce things that aren’t as good?
it’s only logical that things that came from nature, are better for people, and the planet.
our bodies and planet aren’t made to handle things that have taken a lot of science to create.

this industrialization became the norm.

with the term organic, came “conventional.”
to me this is backwards. the word “conventional” usually means the simple traditional method,
which would be the pre-industrialized method.

the “organic” label should really be “conventional,” or even “natural,”
and what’s now labeled “conventional,” should be labeled something like, “scientifically treated.”

this is only the tip of the iceberg.
USDA certified organic may not be perfect, but it’s a step in the right direction, towards preindustrialized and natural.
3rd party certification also helps keep regulations on food producing methods.
every time you buy something, you’re voting on it,
and hopefully more people are voting for what i would just consider logical sense.