Organic humbug

No, it's not a new foodstuff, but a description of many people's attitude to food, particularly here in Brighton - a city which has a sizeable Green Party presence, and in which it's difficult to walk into a shop and avoid 5 million bars of organic chocolate.

Put very simply, organic food needs more land than non-organic food (which was pioneered during the last century in order to maximise land use; very successfully, since the system managed adequately to feed an unprecedented rise in human population). We have limited land, and a growing population, yet the pro-organic lobby insist that organic farming is 'the future'; the very economics of it mean that poorer people will, in such a future, be less able to afford vegetables, but that doesn't discourage them. Far better to messianically promote a system that will ensure fewer and more expensive basic foodstuffs than to accept that there are many of us who are very happy to eat food treated with pesticide - as with drinking water, the key measurement is not whether, but how much, 'poison' is in what we eat/drink - and, more importantly, are keen that other people can afford it too.

Many people atavistically, almost automatically, accept that organic food is better for us and the environment. I used to too - I voted Green in the 1989 Euro elections. But the more I look at the issue, it becomes absolutely and utterly unarguable that, at the very best, organic food is a lifestyle choice for those who are financially secure and politically undemanding, and at the worst will result - if it isn't already in other parts of the world - in the deaths of many of the less well-off.

For some further reading, check out Dick Taverne's book 'The March of Unreason - Science, Democracy, and the New Fundamentalists'.

(Photo credit: 'Tiny Knitted Vegetables' by 'WordRidden' on Flickr)