Mini-Episode: After The Diet

Comments

Neil Roques | 2008-12-29 01:01:32 UTC

What’s the fascination with organic?

You’re ‘cooking with science’ and organic is basically ‘farming, without science’. What’s the upside?

Instead of cool pesticides which can’t hurt humans, but which kill fungi like mad, so you need hardly any, organic farming uses nicotine, arsenic and copper sulphate.

Is it just me or are some of those worse for me than Roundup? Which can be drunk neat, without causing any harm, because it kills entirely plants in exactly the scientifically precise way that arsenic doesn’t. In fact I have a suspicion arsenic might be bad for the environment in general.

(In fairness as far as I know despite these ludicrously dangerous substances no one has died from pesticides on organic food. This is because we’re really good at using pesticides, so that even when you use something as mental as arsenic it’s perfectly safe. Like the way petrol is explosive but a car driving along quietly by itself never spontaneously combusts.)

Disclaimer: I know practically nothing about the pros and cons of organic animal husbandry, only what a complete waste of time organic plants are. (Isn’t that a ridiculous sentence? As opposed to metallic plants? My only defence is that it’s not my stupid naming convention.)

Fhtagn | 2008-12-29 23:41:36 UTC

Well, if my farming relatives are to be believed (and I know of no reason not), the difference principally lies in how much you lie about the death rate of your animals and the degree to which you dose them. I’ve seen the mass beast’s grave hidden on an organic (As a chemist, that still offends me) farm whose wares have featured on the show and, frankly, think the animal welfare aspects are disgusting.

Small farms where the farmers have a vested interest in their own goods and their sale are great for food. Hydroponic food and cash-crops grown on innapropriate, leached ground are crap for food. The Organic/Not line is basicly meaningless in sensible terms. There just happens to be a small but significant overlap between folks who care and folks who realise that an organic label lets them slap a markup on things. That said, food grown with manure and compost does taste better than that grown using chemical fertilisers – they’re optimised for plant health, not trace elements and compounds which make us want to eat the sodding things.

Hugh | 2008-12-30 14:28:22 UTC

I’m very dubious about organic farming, but I’ve just not done enough research to know whether there’s actually anything in the claims. As a matter of course, I tend to trust the various regulatory bodies, and I rarely buy organic personally.

I think Fhtagn hits the nail on the head here – whilst “organic” is irrelevant, “small farm that cares about its produce” is very important. That’s why I got so irritated with the Fife Diet people not listing Muddy Boots – from all appearances, it’s a great farm, exactly the type of producer they should be supporting. To not support them because of the “organic” label is … irritating.

I wonder if any of the fertilizer companies are starting to optimise their products for taste as well as growth speed? Hmm – I sense an interview coming on.

BTW – Fhtagn, if you want to contact me privately (usual email address) about the farm you mentioned, we might well look into it for future postings and episodes. Frauds help no-one.

Neil – from conversations with a couple of organic farmers, I’d actually say that “organic” farming is “farming with science, but only the bits of science that we don’t think are Bad.” There’s some great science going into organic farming, looking at nitrogen fixing, crop rotation, alternative pesticides and so on – there’s just also a lot of anti-scientific rubbish mixed in.

I tend to think that they could do better by ditching the “organic” bit altogether and going for “sustainable, non-toxic, traceable and tasty”, but there you go.

And I agree. The term “organic” in this context is just moronic. I’ve seen a non-organic rose – it was in Prague, and made out of iron. Any other definition is stupid.

Mark Sutherland | 2008-12-30 16:16:44 UTC

What’s the chance of you guys maybe looking into this for an episode in season 1? Organic, GM and (dare I say it) Fair Trade all seem to be ways of up-branding food and I know there’s a lot of FUD spouted as to their relative merits. Granted, I’m not entirely sure how exciting it would turn out to be.

Hugh | 2008-12-30 17:35:46 UTC

Fairly high. We’re wanting to get out and talk to other people more, it’s of interest to a lot of people, and I know that this stuff irritates all of us to greater or lesser extents.

We’ll be making a post about future episodes soon – watch this space. Well, another one quite a lot like it.

Fhtagn | 2009-01-01 16:29:48 UTC

I’d rather not for a number of reasons, the first being that they’re not doing anything morally wrong other than perhaps actually taking slightly better care of their beasts than technically allowed by the “organic” label. They’re trying to work within the system as much as possible. The problems that arise are because the limitations on what medical care you can give your beasts run into conflict with the necessity to report the death rate of your beasts as within the accepted boundaries defined by “dosed to the gills on medicine and given loads of care” to keep farming. They’re not bad farmers; the regulations are flawed both from the organic and normal side of things.

Farming relatives, as I said. If there was any doubt amongst their community that they were mistreating beasts or producing shoddy goods, they’ve have been shopped already.

undeadbydawn | 2009-01-26 20:15:14 UTC

advert FAIL

got most of the way through this show [ignoring the annoying ad link at the bottom of the already small video screen] only for Hugh to be interrupted by a hugely invasive full screen video add, which force-linked to another bloody web site.

Not Cool, people. Whoever does yer ads needs their arse kicked.

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