Pushback to NYT column 'The Organic Fable'

Roger Ebert tweeted about Jennifer Browdy de Hernandez, writing a piece in Common Dreams entitled 'We eat by the grace of nature, not by the grace of Monsanto,' a response to New York Times Columnist Roger Cohen's diatribe, The Organic Fable, which he based on a new Standford University study trashing organic food for not being more nutritious than 'conventional' equivalents.

Cohen does grant that “organic farming is probably better for the environment because less soil, flora and fauna are contaminated by chemicals…. So this is food that is better ecologically even if it is not better nutritionally.”

     But he goes on to smear the organic movement as an elitist, pseudoscientific indulgence shot through with hype.

     “To feed a planet of 9 billion people,” he says, “we are going to need high yields not low yields; we are going to need genetically modified crops; we are going to need pesticides and fertilizers and other elements of the industrialized food processes that have led mankind to be better fed and live longer than at any time in history.

     “I’d rather be against nature and have more people better fed. I’d rather be serious about the world’s needs. And I trust the monitoring agencies that ensure pesticides are used at safe levels — a trust the Stanford study found to be justified.”

     Cohen ends by calling the organic movement “a fable of the pampered parts of the planet — romantic and comforting.”

     But the truth is that his own, science-driven Industrial Agriculture mythology is far more delusional.

     Let me count the ways that his take on the organic foods movement is off the mark:

     Organic food may not be more “nutritious,” but it is healthier because it is not saturated with pesticides, herbicides, fungicides and preservatives, not to mention antibiotics, growth hormones and who knows what other chemicals.

There are obvious “health advantages” in this, since we know—though Cohen doesn’t mention—that synthetic chemicals and poor health, from asthma to cancer, go hand in hand.

     Organic food is only elitist if it comes from Whole Foods—the one source Cohen mentions. I grow organic vegetables in my backyard, and they save me money every summer. We don’t need the corporatization of organic foods, we need local cooperatives (like the CSAs in my region) to provide affordable organic produce that doesn’t require expensive and wasteful transport thousands of miles from field to table.

     About feeding 9 billion people: first of all, we should be working hard to curb population growth, for all kinds of good reasons. We know we’ve gone beyond the carrying capacity of our planet, and we shouldn’t be deluding ourselves that we can techno-fix our way out of the problem. Industrial agriculture is a big part of the problem. It will never be part of the solution.