Saturday, October 5, 2013

WHAT'S NATURAL, WHAT'S ORGANIC,--REALLY?

Let's Be Honest About Organic Food!

 
 
As a society, we tend to delude ourselves.  A century or two ago, and for ages before that, no one raised questions about food being either "natural" or "organic."  To conceive such distinctions would have been preposterous--non sensible!
 

Manure Was Natural Fertilizer

 
 
Not only did quantities of animal manure--especially in cities--need to  be disposed of, but it was only natural to manure fields to enhance soil productivity.
 
 

Chemical Fertilizers Were and Are Unnatural!

 

 

Our modern, scientific, and industrial age gradually lost a sense for what--for millennia--was the natural way of farming and introduced "new and improved" methods to fertilize using chemicals--that just happened to also make money for investors in the chemical industry.  It took a long time, but farmers were eventually wooed away from what had been natural and converted to the new unnatural fertilizers.
 
Somewhat the same thing happened with controlling pests.  Over millennia, farmers learned how to control pests, for various crops, at various seasons, and in various climes.
 
But the chemical industry knew better!  It devised many "one type destroys all" pesticides and again wooed farmers away from century-old ways of controlling pests, to the new killing, no matter what else gets killed, too!
 

Going Back to the Natural

 
 
An irony of our age is that the new "organic"--seemingly aberrant--way of cultivating is actually the old,  natural way!  But now in the marketplace, what is called "natural" is not sufficiently natural to be certified as "organic"!
 
What's a poor shopper to think?  She may even pay more for certified "organic." 
 
In other words, the new "organic" may cost more because it is cultivated in the age old, natural way, but so-called "natural" produce containing chemical pesticides and raised with chemical fertilizers, may cost less!
 

Buyer Beware! 

 
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