Subject: Re: Organic Food
From: [email-masked] (Stefan Alexei Lasiewski)
Date: 18 May 1994 21:56:50 GMT
Newsgroups: alt.sustainable.agriculture

In article <[email-masked]>,
Lowell Zelinski <[email-masked]> wrote:
>In article <[email-masked]>, [email-masked]
>(Larry London) wrote:
>> I've been eating organic produce for years. There's simply no comparing
>> the taste, look and overall quality of organic verses commercial.
>> You've never tasted strawberries or tomatoes unless they're out of a
>> local organic garden.

I too am from Santa Cruz, and agree with Larry here. There is no beating
the taste of organic. I disagree with the 'look' statement above because
to the average consumer, most of the organic produce doesn't 'look' as if
it's actually as healthy as the conventional commercial produce
because of the way the media and culture have it drilled into our heads
that healthy produce must be free from defects and dirt. We must bathe our
tomatoes and strawberrys in a toxic Methyl Bromide bio-cide to rinse them
of the microscopic bug parts that could never harm our body...or else we
might get GERMS...EWW!!! Nevermind the toxins...

Another benefit of the more organic produce is the fact that it _is_
healthier and more nutritious than most conventional produce. Comercial
growers must sacrifice quality for quanity to keep up with the market's
demands for a cheaper, better good...

>> In Santa Cruz Country we are fortunate to have numerous organic farms
>> and orchards and the community has strongly embraced the quality of
>> these products over Safeway's wares.
>
>Aren't we being a little pretentious here.  I'm sure most of the people in
>Rwanda and Somilia eat "organic" food and don't care about that fact at
>all.

You're point?

Unfortunately, because a great deal of the land in E. Africa which was once
fertile is no longer producing the amount of food it needs to.
Petro-chemicals and other conventional fertilizers and pesticides only
increase the problem by destroying the fertility of the organic matter in
the soil, causing mroe erosion, more desert, less production, and more
starving people. Because of this, Rwanda and Somilia are forced to rely on
the North's charity grains to survive. This food is not organic, and is not
as healthy and nutritious as the food the indiginous peoples once grew and
ate on their own.

>"Organic" food (what kind of food isn't organic?) is a luxury for the well
>off people of Europe and America.  Most of the world has to eat organic
>food with all the attendant risks of spoilage and contamination by
>"organic" microorganisms.  

Well, first off...I think you're using the wrong definition of 'organic'.
Origionally, not so long ago before the scientific paradigm came along and
redifined words that didn't need redefining...organic meant something more
like 'kindly produced by and the earth goddess'...many of todays social
movements (especially by the people in European and American nations and
influenced nations) are aiming to return to such a paradigm...

Second off...food still spoils even when it isn't grown more organically,
and food still get's contaminated by worse shit when it's used on crops and
people eat it, or when is washed off the crops, down the stram (along with
the ORGANIC topsoil, and the ORGANIC beneficial organisms...into drinking
water of the people downstream, or into the fish that the people eat, or
damaging the fish's reproductive system, negatively affecting the fish
population and the economy on which it depends... 

Third...organic food is also a luxury to those who work on the field
There is nil risk of contamination by the petro-chemicals,
meaning lowered rate of breast cancer, testicular cancer, birth defects,
memory loss, etc.

And thanks to the current scientific-capitalistic paradigm, most of the
world grown in non American and European nations enters the chain of
production and eventually ends up as a product on out plates (Beef,
Bananna's...etc.)

>I assume (though maybe incorrectly) that you wash your food - or cook prior
>to consumption.  Why do you do this?  It wouldn't be for the pesticidial
>effects of these processes would it?

Well yeah...and your point?

I wash to get the chemicals off. I don't always wash my organic goods tho,
no reason to. Except for the big bug parts...icky...but the normal things
on a plant wouldn't do the harm that the harsh petro-chemicals are.

>Those who preach "organic" food production are uniformed and misguided, and
>as I've said before, if they are so found of 18th century science why not
>spend time trying to convert lead into gold. It would be much more
>profitable.

Who said we were so fond of 18th century science...it's this 
scientific-capitalistic paradigm that's responsable for the mess we're in
today anyways...

>-- 
>Lowell
>
>What a long strange trip its been

And it's going to get more and more strange in a very short while...
--Stefan

(With no known relation to Larry London)
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