by Timou

Created on: July 02, 2009

The promised benefits of organically grown food are plenty. Clean, pesticide-free, and chemical-free produce promise to deliver better health for those who consume it. One is supposed to lead a much healthier life after switching to a diet of organically grown food. However, for all the hype surrounding organic food and how it holds the key to slowing the spread of cancer and improving health, scientific tests have repeatedly failed to yield substantive results showing that organic food is nutritionally superior to normal produce.

In fact, if you ask me, organic food is an expression of man's selfishness and exemplifies how easily the rich can forget the concerns and needs of the poor. In a time when millions are starving around the world, and when thousands of children die each day due to hunger and malnutrition, the world desperately needs a supply of cheap and safe food, a supply that is within monetary reach of the thousands hungry and destitute.

By promoting the illusory benefits of organic foods, a niche market with artificially raised prices has been created. Furthermore, the cultivation of organic crops places a high demand on the farmer and the land. Firstly, large tracts of land are needed to grow food crops organically, when this land could well be used to grow food crops in more abundant amount. Secondly, organic farming requires a high start-up capital, and needs an equally high amount of maintenance and upkeep. This most certainly leaves organic farming out as an option for nearly every farmer and agricultural worker in the world. Organic farming remains very much the domain of wealthy farmers.

The question that puzzles me is how badly the world has gotten its priorities. Why is there an increasing demand for organic food when there is no concrete proof to support its purported benefits? Believers claim that the benefits of organic food can only be seen in the long-term, but as John Maynard Keynes so aptly put it, in the long run, we are all dead.

How can growing tracts of precious agricultural land be dedicated to organic farming, when already we are facing an acute shortage of food especially in sub-Saharan Africa, where innocent lives are lost daily due to starvation. All at the same time when richer nations are fulfilling their whims by demanding ever more organically grown food.

I fail to see the justice and the logic in the current state of agricultural arrangements. Organic food is frivolous, and siphon precious resources that could be better used in addressing the most pressing humanitarian problems facing the world.

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