What does the word “organic” mean? That probably depends on who you are and what you want out of your food. For Makenna Goodman, organic should be a wholistic term that refers not just to a lack of pesticides, hormones, and antibiotics, but also to a humane treatment of the animals we eat and the soil that nourishes us. In her essay, she points out one of the dirty little secrets of the organic label — often times it’s just a label, and doesn’t necessarily reflect all the conditions surrounding food production.
But, as often happens when one among the ranks dissents, an attack is quickly issued. And, as happens all too often, the counter-attack misses the point of the argument. Farmers, or CE-Yos (as he brands himself), like Gary Hirshberg aren’t getting it.
Makenna Goodman isn’t calling for people to quit purchasing organic. She’s a farmer herself. What she is saying is that people need to show some initiative, discernment, and intelligence before blindly accepting the organic label. At the end of the day, it’s just a label, a marketing ploy to sell you something at a certain price.
What counter-critics like Hirshberg should address is the utter un-affordability of organic food. Let’s be realistic. A family with three or more members on a limited budget cannot afford to feed itself solely on organic food or food purchased from the local farmer’s market.
I would love to do that, but I can’t. Instead, I have to make intelligent choices about my organic and conventional purchases. Potatoes, celery, strawberries — these are among the items that I will only buy organic. If a chicken is hormone and anti-biotic free, but was raised conventionally? Well, a $5 or $6 chicken is a hell of a lot cheaper than the $13–$15 dollars you will pay for organic. And that organic label still doesn’t mean that the animal was treated any more humanely than it was on the Tyson farm.
If organic, as Hirshberg asserts, is truly healthier (and I don’t doubt that), then isn’t this a healthcare issue? And can we not see that this issue reflects the larger dilemma in America, where you get the healthcare that you can afford, not that you deserve?
If the organic movement is to have any impact beyond catering to the elite, it’s going to have to do two things: address the prohibitive costs of organic food and take seriously the legitimate critiques of farmers like Makenna Goodman.
May 15, 2009 at 12:57 pm
[...] “The Meaning of Organic” [...]
May 17, 2009 at 5:42 pm
To me, there is quite a bit of merit in the term organic, but it’s sort of like sustainable – everyone has their own working definition of it. The USDA’s formal definition of ‘organic’ back in the early part of this decade formalized in law what Oregon Tilth and other groups had been doing for a long time – certifying better treatment of land.
Goodman’s article seems to focus on meat, dairy, and eggs, and I will not contest her assertion that the term organic is largely meaningless for these products. But certainly for vegetables and fruit, the term means a great deal – it means healthier insect populations, healthier soils and mychorrizae, healthier streams and fish, and often the difference between a slowly degrading ecosystem and one which is a least able to maintain some biotic integrity, even if it not quite the one pre-agriculture.
In addition, to me at least, it is an acknowledgement of humans’ role in the ecosystem, and our responsibility for its stewardship.
It’s not perfect – there are the issues of humane treatment of animals and farm workers, the unsustainable (there’s that word) pumping of aquifers, the connectivity of habitat on a farm, the use of petrochemicals in growing food- but it is not intended to be a metric for these things.
I think a lot of people (myself included) expect a panacea for the ills of the modern world, and we have to realize that there isn’t one. But there are a thousand small cures. Labeling food as organic is just one, and an early one at that. It allows consumers to make informed choices about where their food dollars go.