Low Impact

It’s the “green” thing to do - buy the organic alternative when doing your groceries. But organic products are invariably more expensive than their conventionally produced counterparts. Is buying organic food worth the cost?

First, a brief definition. Organic produce is food that has been produced without the use of artificial fertilisers, herbicides or pesticides. In fact, to be certified as “organic”, many certifiers require that no such artificial farming aids be used over the preceding few years to minimise any chemical residue.

Without chemical aids, a farmer may well get lower yields from the crops, along with higher losses due to pests. To compensate, they need to charge higher prices for their produce which explains why your organic tomatoes can cost twice as much as their conventional cousins.

So is it worth the cost? There are a few reasons why the answer might be yes.

The first candidate is the nutritional benefits. There are have been a bewildering away of conflicting studies over the past few years, some of which seem to claim that organic food is a virtual fountain of youth, while others claim there is no difference between organic and conventional produce. Its very hard to compare apples with apples here (even if one of those apples is organic!) - is the organic produce healthier because of how it was grown, or because it travelled less distance to your shelf?

Its a complex question and the jury is probably still out on some of the details. But the more recent studies seem to suggest that the vitamin content of organic food is pretty much on par with conventional food or perhaps slightly higher. However, organic food tends to have much higher levels of antioxidants - one hypothesis is that the plants produce antioxidants to help fend off the pests that they are exposed to in the absence of artificial pesticides. With antioxidants being linked to lower rates of cancer, this is one good reason to choose organic.

Another benefit to organic food comes directly from the way it is produced. With no pesticides or herbicides used in its production, you minimise the amount of chemical residue in your food. It should be noted that organic food may carry traces of chemical residue from pesticides that were used decades before. That said, there’s clearly going to be less artificial chemicals on organic produce than on conventional produce that is regularly sprayed as part of its production.

The final benefit worth considering is the environmental cost. A series of studies have shown that organic practises cause less impact on the environment per unit of yield than the comparative conventional farming methods. There are a number of reasons for this, including:

• the damage that the pesticides, herbicides and fertilisers cause to the soil structure

• the loss of biodiversity from those same chemical additives

• the packaging, handling and manufacturing associated with conventional farming - this includes the production of fertiliser from fossil fuels, as well as the packaging and transport of the various chemicals.

(Health and environment aside, if none of those reasons convince you, maybe taste will! A number of blind taste tests have found that people judge the organic variety to be tastier than conventional produce!)

So, if you can, there are a number of good reasons to choose organic produce over conventional. But as always, you need to use common sense. Marketers are tricky people - I’ve even seen bottled water advertised as organic! So check that your purchase has been certified organic by one of the certifying bodies such as the NASAA Organic Standard or Australian Certified Organic in Australia (there are similar certifying bodies in other countries). And don’t forget to keep an eye on where the produce came from - any environmental benefits your organic tomatoes might have can disappear quickly if those tomatoes have to be air-freighted in a greenhouse gas emitting aeroplane from the other side of the world!

Happy eating!

Categories: environment, green

Tags: farming, food, health, organic