Organic Farming
The current movement towards organic farming isn't just about eating healthier, although this is part of it. It is good for you to eat organic crops, as everyone knows, and the absence of pesticides or unnatural fertilizers can't hurt either. But when people buy foods grown by organic farming methods, they are less buying food than buying an idea, and an image of purity.
They like to think that they are buying in to a bygone time, while simultaneously indulging in a Utopian future. You see, the images associated with organic farming are quite complex. On the one hand, they incorporate this ideal of the family farmer, who has worked the land for generations on generations. On the other hand, there is the idea of working for the future, and starting a new way of life that will preserve the earth and help to undo some of the damage that we have all done. Both of these ideas of organic farming, however, are somewhat distant from the actual reality of the thing.
Organic farming is big business now
First of all, organic food is great and all, but unless you specifically know that it comes from a small, local organic farm, it probably doesn't. Organic farming is big business now. Do you think that a nationwide chain like Whole Foods stocks itself from ma and pa and their tractor, living in the middle of Missouri? If you do, then you'd better think again. There is so much money to be made with organic farming, that the big food product bullies have taken it over, the same as they did with the rest of farming almost a century ago. You can buy food grown with organic farming locally, but you have to go to your local organic food store to do it, and check out the labels. Usually some foods will advertise this fact, and these are the foods that you want.
The idea of rebuilding the future is also kind of off the mark. Although organic farming is somewhat better for the environment because it does not put the same toxic pesticides and fertilizers into the soil, this advantage doesn't address the real problem. Commercial agricultural techniques, whether organic farming or conventional farming, wreak havoc on both the topsoil and the ecosystem through their huge fields growing just one strain of one kind of plant. It is this, and not the pesticides and fertilizers, that does the most rotten stuff to the environment.
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