Organic panic

Published 11 December 2008

The organic lobby has hampered any chance of a sensible debate over food production. That's why Zoe Williams is staging a boycott

Organic panic

Right. I am never going to buy an organic vegetable again. I say that partly because the organic "movement" is never more huffy, more swelled with orthodoxy, more self-important than it is at Christmas; and partly because, taking into account the dried and tinned organic goods I have in the house, I will have hopefully rid myself of this fad in perpetuity by the end of the month, and be able to start the new year with a meaningful resolution - no more simply-the-best, no more preciousness, no more all-natural anything. I am a sturdy, adult woman who likes Wotsits. I am not the Princess and the sodding Pea. It will take more than a pesticide to do me damage.

I interviewed Keith Abel, the more voluble half of the organic delivery giant Abel & Cole, not so long ago, and we were talking, as sane people must, about whether or not you could really taste the difference. Go on . . . a blind test. Your Soil Association carrot against this aubergine I injected with antibiotics and grew under a sunlamp. He replied: "Can you tell the difference between a person who's high on drugs and a person who isn't? Well, mostly you can and maybe you can't, but I'd rather they weren't." It was very convincing at the time, and remains a droll and apropos remark, but actually, I do not agree. I don't care if people are on drugs. Probably half the people I know have been or are on Prozac, or ibuprofen, or a nebuliser. I am up to the eyeballs right now on Lemsip Max. And frankly, that's the kind of drug we're talking about, if we're in the business of likening a pesticide to a human agent. These vegetables are not on soil-cocaine; they're not on farmer-crack. Pesticides are subtle pharmaceutical corrections to the problems thrown up by mass production. Bring them on! I am not against ingenuity, any more than I am against mass production; if humans are to be mass-produced, as we have been, then we need to find a way of feeding ourselves.

I am a sturdy, adult woman who likes Wotsits. It will take more than a pesticide to do me damage

There are some things I do agree with: I am against cruelty to animals, and agree that if meat has to be expensive to ensure its humane treatment in life, then so be it. I agree that we should eat with the seasons; at no time in history, least of all now, has it been a pleasing or defensible use of energy to grow asparagus in midwinter, when there are plenty of onions. I agree that supermarkets shouldn't be able to set all the terms. I agree that there are specialist products - I'm thinking of artisan cheeses - that are too delicate in their constitutions to withstand the rufty-tufty world of giant agribusiness. But I do not understand how these aims came to be hijacked and appropriated by the organic lobby, so that now, they are entirely the property of that voice, whose other claims are often just daft. Considerations of animal welfare have become indivisible from the "organic" stamp (nonsensically - I do not think being a happy pig, and having been treated with antibiotics, are necessarily mutually exclusive).

We're told that non-organic vegetables take in fewer nutrients from the soil, which has been leached of virtue by the chemical onslaught, so deliver fewer nutrients to our bodies. And that's why they don't taste as good. Well, first, they usually do taste as good. Second, the salient difference lies in whether you're eating a carrot or a cream bun. The nutritional difference between one carrot and another is niggardly compared to the fundamentals of balanced eating.

Most of all, I object to the tenet of organic living that says children are particularly vulnerable to pesticides, that attributes "modern" allergies to the use of chemicals in food (well, they must have come from somewhere!), that considers infants to be chambers of purity, liable to be corrupted by any taint of bog-standard fruit and veg. I don't like the hocus-pocus of it. I hate what it says about the state of child-rearing: that we are so susceptible to superstition in our desperation to ringfence the state of immaturity to keep it separate from the rest of society (even if one possibly could, to what purpose?). And I can't stand the elitism of it. The organic credo - small, local producers, no chemicals, farmers' markets, blah - is not a solution for the eating habits of the whole country. Even if we all went vegan tomorrow, we're still years off that level of self-sufficiency. Workable solutions for tasty, low-carbon-footprint food production that everybody can enjoy will by necessity involve some pesticides, some food miles, some agri-giants, some local producers, some artisanal foods, and some courgettes that are maybe a little larger than they used to be in the old days.

This quest for purity is just another way of opting out of a national solution - it's the food answer to private hospitals and schools, a triple whammy: Bupa, Eton and Abel & Cole. It's just one more example of the middle classes looking at a complicated structure, a mixture of the brilliant, the imperfect and the awful, and thinking: wow, that looks like a mess; can't I just buy my way out?

I'm buying my way back in. It's the right thing to do, and also the cheapest. How often does that happen?

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11 comments from readers

SharonEJackson
11 December 2008 at 19:39

You are throwing out the baby with the bathwater. Just because some organic producers have "attitude" does not mean that the overall message is wrong. Of course it is stupid to feed young children or anybody pesticide laced anything-at-all. We would all prefer organic if we could afford it. I am able to because I do not have a family of 6 to feed. So I do understand the economic imperative.

Likening the move to healthier, more organic, locally grown, pesticide and hormone free foods to privatization of hospitals and schools is simply illogical and as rabidly ignorant as the people you profess to despise.

Fundamentalist anythings are nauseating. Fundamentalist organic food people are as irritating as the fundamentalist "bring on the pesticides, baby, just make it cheap" people. Of whom you are the president, it appears.

I am only sorry you get paid to write where decent, well meaning people might accidentally read it.

In the mean time, Zoe, you go right ahead. Fill your boots. You just enjoy that Genetically Engineered Kraft Dinner with Melamine laced instant mashed and snow-peas from China.

Newstatesman readers from all over the world will probably send you get well cards eventually.

explodingbadger
12 December 2008 at 00:42

I can not understand this attitude at all. I find organic vegetables very delicious. I don't always buy organic but I do when I can. It does look like it IS more nutritious

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/86972.php

I think the only people who do hate organic food are the huge corporations who sell millions of pounds of fertilizers and pesticides which go from the crops straight into the environment.

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=fertilizer-runoff-overwh...

I admit in England we have a huge problem with social inequality and something needs to be done to raise the income of the poorest people so they can more easily access quality education and afford quality food.

fleetlucy
12 December 2008 at 09:13

I think the main question this article raises is can

journalists still encourage intelligent debate?

1st paragraph - sensationalism.

2nd paragraph - 'Pesticides are subtle

pharmaceutical corrections to the problems thrown up

by mass production. Bring them on!'. 40 have been

banned in the past 10 years.

3rd paragraph - raises some interesting issues but

does not address the challenges of the food chain this

article appears to support, in relation to these issues.

4th paragraph - emotive, lacks any intelligent grasp of

nutritional science.

5th paragraph - purely emotive and subjective, says a

lot about the mind of the reader, very little about

organic farming.

6th paragraph - creates a caricature that undermines

intelligent reflection.

What a shame, it would be nice to think I could pick up

a copy of the New Statesman and read articles that

don't follow the same worn out tread of

sensationalization, juxtapostions, subjectivity and

misinformation. We need a media source in the UK

that gives consistent, in-depth, intelligent debate,

minus personal projections.

TheOtherMan
12 December 2008 at 13:41

Good article. And I'm convinced that yes, it is a fact that organic vegetables carry more nutrition. However, that isn't the point. You can only process so much of the good stuff - if, say, 2 carrots and one organic carrot are equivalent, and either portion carries all the goodness you can take for the day, then any more than that will simply be excreted.

As the article points out, then, the point is what you're eating - a carrot - not whether it's organic or not, unless you're on a very - and I mean very - tightly calorie controlled diet. Frankly the only people who are likely to work out the exact energy output from different types of food and make sure they're maximising energy in against their weight are professional athletes looking for the extra .1% to beat a rival. For the rest of us we don't or can't carry out such detailed portion control and thus the extra nutrition value carried by organic foods is entirely incidental.

We've fetishised food to the point where people think that it contributes in a large way to your life expectancy which, so long as you get some kind of balanced diet, simply isn't true.

Carl Jones
13 December 2008 at 12:35

More examples of NWO propaganda. There is NO scientific evidence to supports claims that organic foods tast better and are more nutritious than none organic foods.

The entire organic construct is a scam. Chemicals are used, they may come form a reduced list, but the reality is, there are only two sources of organic food, the ones you grow at home and foods that grow in the wild.

Over the next few years, we will see enormous pressure on global food supplies. Costs are going to rise alarmingly and this will crush the organic movement.

BTW, we the public aren`t stupid. I shop at Sainsburys and we know how they shift their organic stock...they remove all the alternative choices from the shelves.....this is how organic sales are proped up. it stinks and I and my wife refuse to buy organic products.

gnuneo
14 December 2008 at 01:08

what is being ignored here are the consequences of non-organic agriculture. Whether it tastes better (i've had organic that's tasted better, and i've had organic that's tasted worse), whether or not it is more nutritious (and here i have to say there seems quite secure evidence that a product grown in a somewhat artificial environment, with often poisonous chemicals around and in it as fertilisers and pesticides, is less nutritious than one grown in an organic, balanced environment.), are, to some degree, irrelevant.

it is the very real *material* damage that artificial fertilisers and pesticides are doing not only to the crop-land itself, but the entire ecosystem in which we live - the land becomes polluted, the streams and rivers fouled, groundwater contaminated, eventually even the seas and oceans themselves poisoned. This is partly why our bees are getting worryingly near extinction, why so many butterflies ARE now extinct, why the Natural World is in decline across our entire biosphere. And yes, it seems somewhat likely that chemicals that have entered our food change are at least *partly* responsible for the increases in susceptibility to certain environmental chemicals in the last couple of decades, ie the growth in allergies.

whether or not organic food is more beneficial to *us*, it is indisputable that it is beneficial to our *environment* - and that, thankfully despite the insane attempts of the High-Modernists and Global Agri-Business, is still where our survival comes from, and is based upon. That organic carrot may not taste much better to you - but it will increase the chances of your Grandchildren actually having crop-lands upon which to grow carrots in *their* time.

Carl Jones
14 December 2008 at 08:55

gnuneo, I agree with your environment argument. But the economic construct does not rank food quality that high. Fast food, tv dinners and eating out...its all about price. You will notice the trend amongst TV chefs who now use cheats.

Only a small percentage buy organic on princiole and others do it because the likes of Sainsburys remove choices from the shelves. It will take another year for the economy to bottom out and 5-10 years until we see a significant recovery. In my opinion, this is best case senario, most organic producers won`t survive, unless they move some of their production to none organic.

We recently had a huge spike in the price of oil. This cost has yet to pass through the food chain. There has been no global warming for 10 years and the last year saw temperatures fall, wiping out the last 100 years of global warming, if this trend continues, food production will fall. Global grain stocks are at a 50-70 year low, depending on who`s numbers you trust. If we had a couple of serious volcanic erruptions over the next few years, then temperatures could fall by several degrees and food production will plummet.

I think Zoe is lost in her own microsystem and quite a few others are queuing at the door. No worries, planned population reduction coming soon....and I wonder, how much C02 will that release?

explodingbadger
16 December 2008 at 11:52

Carl do I have this right ?

The NWO (new world order?) EXISTS and not only that it is responsible for organic farming ?

AND there is no man made global warming ?

How about Santa ?

gnuneo
16 December 2008 at 20:54

eb: it would not surprise me to find the 'organic' foodstuffs in supermarkets may not come up to the highest possible regulatory standards, and that the supermarkets are using the label to justify even more price-gouging. Possibly. I don't know, i just don't trust them, especially the behemoths like Tescos & Sainsburys.

without a shadow of a doubt the supermarkets are integral parts of the NWO, they are umbilically tied to agribusiness, and are entirely caught up with the notion of reducing wages for the many to increase profits for the few.

but i certainly don't regard organic itself as having anything to do with the NWO, rather the opposite.

as for AGW - its surely a scientific basis that an effect has repercussions - and pumping billions upon billions of tons of chemicals into our environment cannot fail to have an effect. It has occurred to me however, that the constant focussing upon AGW has managed to divert attention from pollution and the other essential environmental concerns, such as deforestation, soil erosion, and the poisoning of our land, sea and air. So perhaps its both?

santa exists however, but has now moved into manufacturing and retail, and instead of just magicking the items, now employs many people and elves to create them, and gets parents to buy them (often offering free credit!) in order to pump the economy. He is regarded as being essential for the global economy - how on Earth can you say he doesn't exist?!?

[damn anarchist troublemakers! :P ]

Carl Jones
17 December 2008 at 00:22

explodingbadger, some people get involved in x cause, they form a power base, as soon as they become visable, the SIS will become interested. depending on potential, they will infiltrate, assist, fund and direct these groups to their own ends. "Plane Stupid" was allowd to stop Ryanair services?? Why didn`t they do LHR?

Of course humans have an effect, we simply don`t know how much, but I would say solar, geothermal and earth axis/orbit change are more important. Deforestation is likely more important as far as CO2 levels are concerned.

Did you know that santa has just moved into finance? The BoE has extended an unlimited line of credit.LOL

frances pologiorgi
18 December 2008 at 10:03

There's a lot of ignorance about organic versus non-organic, especially among "townies" who may have very little idea of the amount and frequency of pesticide use. I live in Greece and cultivate my own olives for oil, using no pesticides,as do many Greeks. Commercial producers however spray many times per year because they cannot afford the possibility of losing part of the crop. Do not imagine that there is any control on the quantity and frequence of spraying. When you buy a pesticide , many of the packages feature a skull and crossbones warning of the toxicity of the product. Maybe you imagine that the farmer is careful in his use of these poisins because he cares for the health of himself and his family- well, I can tell you that he uses cheap immigrant labour to apply the products and often cultivates fruit and veg. for his own consumption separately.

Of course Greek farmers are not the only ones to put profit before health, this is just my own experience. Partly to blame of course are the supermarkets which by demanding a "flawless",uniform,over-sized product control the way farmers are forced to produce our food

Frances Pologiorgi