Comments happygreengirl has made

Right On, In Fact

I wrote about this very article on my own blog two weeks ago. Tom did, in fact, hit the nail on the head.

The Economist article is very dramatically condemning without much depth of thought given to it's claims - he must not have chatted with their Green.view editor first, and they do have one. The author offers no solution other than the implicit (trust me, read it, you'll see) suggestion that organic farming and farmer's markets should be abandoned, as THEY are actually the cause of global warming, hunger, poverty... Watch out, tree huggers, you're digging your own graves! It's absurd enough to make me question "did Monsanto pay this guy off or something?" and I'm not even the conspiracy theory type.

I was appalled by the author's inability to see the most common denominator in choosing organic - that we're tired of pumping trash into our systems. It certainly is about time we take responsibility for what we put into our bodies, and into those of the loved ones around us. The 'Market'--and here i don't mean the grocer--doesn't care, so we have to.

As for the land use and depletion of nutrients/usability, I am left wondering about the mass scales at which the United States produces so much food, enough to have massive surpluses that grocery stores throw away every single day, every hour, yet somehow can't get into the hands of the poor in Appalachia. Somehow, even with farm subsidies for these mass farmers, we are still left at the mercy of food banks and soup kitchens run by our very-obviously-NOT-governmental churches and community groups.

With all of our mass production, our surplus of produce and grain, our nation's poor still can't afford fresh veggies, period, even conventional veggies. So to suggest that we shouldn't farm organic because we need MORE food, that more being only for the hungry, is absurd. I'm so glad, too, that we're planting more rain forest in the US, since we mass produce all of our food. These are, after all, the direct correlations the Economist article suggests will come of mass conventional food production: food for the hungry and more rain forest. Here here, Tom.

Finally, in response to farmerjon's spin on Tom's article, I point to this quote from the Economist Article ("Good Food", 12/07/06): "People who want to make the world a better place cannot do so by shifting their shopping habits: transforming the planet requires duller disciplines, like politics."

If this statement is true, then we would keep sitting and waiting. We should, based on this sentiment, just go back to buying veggies with DDT and lotions with propylbarabens, drinking corn syrupy juice, eating antibiotic and hormone-laden meats... we've come a long way in the last 10 years, and it certainly isn't thanks to the "dull... politics" coming about on their own. Movements start somewhere, and if this one happens to be in the grocery store, then so be it.

In the end, the article can be debunked with one simple idea: that change does not happen cleanly, 100%, easy over night. If that were the case, I'd go straight to the ballot box and skip buying organic because if enough people agreed, then we'd have true organic, support for local farmers and no carbon emissions overnight. I recently had an argument with a friend about hybrid, hydrogen and electric cars. We shouldn't necessarily support hybrids, he said, because they're not as good as pure electric cars, or hydrogen powered vehicles. I argue that until electric comes (again, to stay this time), or until we can make hydrogen available enough nation wide, a hybrid vehicle is the next best thing. We can at least reduce if we can't yet eliminate. Better to begin somewhere. Better to vote AND shop with an educated and conscientious knowledge, than to wait for others to act for us, especially when those in power don't always act in step with my ballot. On Why The Economist's recent assault on "ethical food" missed the mark posted 2 years, 10 months ago 16 Responses