this post was submitted on 16 Jun 2024
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Organic food is devinetively not snake oil. As you mentioned,Nutrition wise its exactly the same. However, the Environmental Impact is completely different. Organic farming is much better in terms of biodiversity, soil health. Since organic farming doesn't include the use of pesticides it doesn't kills everything else that would live on a field. Also, Theres always parts of the pesticides that stay in the crops and that you eat. I don't know exactly how bad they are, but considering that(at least in Germany) Parkinson is an accepted work related illness for farmers its sure that they aren't entirely safe for humans. However, we should take into consideration, that farmers get exposed to much higher doses of pesticides. If someone has some articles regarding this topic feel free to share.
This is going to be different country to country, but organic farming can still use pesticides. I posted a link below as well, but organic farming is also not conclusively better for the environment. It has lower yields, and therefore requires more land. You have to balance the effects of converting more land into organic farmland versus the benefit of, for example, less fertilizer runoff.
At the end of the day, "organic" is a marketing term, not a statement of health or ecological benefit. Most complaints about conventional agriculture (and GMOs) are actually complaints about industrialized agriculture as a whole.
I wish there was a good, regulated term for food that was produced with the best known processes (and perhaps there is for specific foods), but "organic" is not it.
I personally think, that the loss in efficiency is worth it, if you don't have to use pesticides. This also becomes less relevant, when you take into consideration, that we have to move away from eating that much meat(which needs more land), so we have the land to compensate this loss in efficiency.