Organic Foods: Not Necessary?

Interesting post on Hit & Run that debunks many of the claims touted by the organic food movement, which is getting increasingly popular in the United States and Europe. This popularity is mostly due to the movement’s alarmist rhetoric, including unsubstantiated attacks on genetically modified crops, without which we could not feed much of the world.

Personally, I never bought into the whole organic food culture. I find it to be a fetish, of sorts—a trendy thing to do. I was raised on mass-produced fruits and vegetables, and I continue to consume them to this day without the ill effects the organic food movement cites.

As the post attests: organic food farming is not only inefficient, but ineffective, detrimental to the environment, expensive, and no healthier or nutritious than crops grown through modern methods.

It’s interesting to note how Thomas Malthus would view organic food farming given the current size of the world’s population (and getting ever larger). Malthus was a product of the 18th century and viewed the world through its prism, especially agriculture, which was not only laborious but very inefficient. He was right to think, then, that there was no way to sustain a growing population utilizing such methods. I think he would think the same of the organic food movement.