by Ryan Robert Hallett

Created on: August 16, 2009

The term organic, when used to describe food products, simply means natural. It means no synthetic fertilizers or pesticides, hormones, or other such drastic manipulations of nature, and basically represents how humans have produced food for almost all of the score or more thousands of years since we discovered agriculture.

Non-organic farming, the method of farming used in most of the industrialized world today, is also known as conventional farming, and includes the use of many "inventions" that have arisen since the advent of chemistry, microbiology, and genetics. Chemical pesticides, fertilizers, hormones, and more recently, genetically engineered organisms have been added to our tool kits, or in this case, barns and fields, in order to increase yields, thereby increasing profits and, hypothetically at least, feeding more people.

While the increased yields are certainly a bonus, there has been much debate of late over the nutrient levels of non-organic food and the short and long-term impact of our use of synthetics on our health, as well as on the environment. It has been argued that organic food is more nutritious and tastes better, and that even at so-called "safe" levels, the pesticide residues on and in fruit and vegetables accumulate in our bodies and over time, contribute to illness. By the same token, it is argued that pesticide-laden food fed to live-stock accumulates in the animals' systems, along with whatever pharmaceuticals they've been given, making conventional meat also a danger to our health. The fertilizers used in post-industrial farming are believed to leach into soil and water, upsetting ecosystems and contaminating the water supply.

There are countless organizations established throughout the world to certify that products labeled "organic" adhere to the standards and practices of organic farming, with varying levels of restriction. For example, in order for a packaged food to be labeled as organic, it may only need to contain a certain percentage of organic ingredients, making it potentially contaminated by substances the organic shopper is trying to avoid. The die-hard shopper should check labels to ensure they are getting what they want, and those with a little more patience might further investigate the standards of the various certification agencies.

While there is a lot of logic and a fair bit of evidence in support of some, if not most of the claims for organic farming, one should take it all with a grain of salt. While we are living today with more and more mysterious illnesses, some of which may very well turn out to be as a result of what we put into our mouths, in most of the world life expectancies continue to climb, indicating that while it's likely time we gave a pause for thought, there's no need to panic. There's a movement underway and in the meantime, we're still here and in decent health relative to our ancestors a few hundred years ago.

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