8 Things Everyone Gets Wrong About 'Scary' Chemicals
4. Organic Food Is Pesticide-free
The term ‘organic farming’ was coined by Lord Northbourne (aka Walter James) in his book published in 1940, Look to the Land. He invented the term as a reference to the idea of a farm acting as one large organism. The word organic has no direct link with the chemistry term ‘organic’, which means molecules made up of mainly carbon atoms.
Having said that, there is a bit of a sideways connection. Food production was a huge worry at the turn of the nineteenth century, and the largest problem was fertiliser. Plants need nitrogen to grow. Keep growing crops over and over in the same soil and before long the crop will fail as nitrogen is depleted. It can be replaced, of course, with generous applications of animal waste. The problem was getting hold of enough of it. If only there was a way to achieve the same result without the back ends of millions of cows (or even bats)…
Chemistry to the rescue! After a lot of painstaking research and development, the first ammonia manufacturing plant was opened in 1913. Fertilisers such as ammonium nitrate can be made from ammonia, and they’re often called ‘inorganic fertilisers’ because they don’t come from living things and they’re not carbon-based.
‘Organic’ farming eschews these types of fertilisers, in favour of those that come from animal sources. Organic farming, you see, is mostly s**t.
Perhaps in more ways than one. Originally, ‘organic’ meant produced naturally, and without the use of inorganic fertilisers. But over time it changed subtly, and now most people seem to associate it more with pesticides.
Two problems there. Firstly, there are literally loads of naturally-occurring pesticides. Caffeine, to pick a big one. One famous paper estimated that 99.99% of our daily pesticide intake was actually from natural sources, and that “the comparative hazards of synthetic pesticide residues are insignificant.”
And secondly, there are lots of organic-approved pesticides.
Just let that one sink in for a moment: yes, there are many organic-approved pesticides. And some of them are really quite unpleasant. Copper sulfate, for example, is used as a fungicide in grape production. Then there are borax, elemental sulfur and calcium polysulfides, all of which are known to cause problems for humans who are exposed to them. Arguably, most non-organic pesticides in use today are actually far safer.
Why are you paying three times as much for organic grapes, again?