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Organics are good…. aren’t they?

by mike

Truck Exhaust

I heard the most interesting argument on the radio today and wanted to pass it on.

We all are in love with Organics, at least most of us are. Count me as one of them. Not only are organics something I would prefer to put in my body they just taste better.Organic Farm

The question is whether Organics are good for the environment. Of course they don’t have pesticides or other nasty sprays that go on the vegetables and into the ground. But that is not the issue.

The issue is that because organics have gotten so popular they are now being shipped across the country, via big exhaust spewing trucks, from where they are grown to where they are sold. The impact means that there are alot of fossil fuels being thrown into the atmosphere to get those tasty organic melons from Arizona to your local market. Think about that.

organic tomatosShipped in organics may be more harmful to our environment than buying local, regardless of whether it is organic or not. Or simply put, you might be supporting sustainable growth to a greater extent if you just pick up some local Colorado grown items no matter what.

Of course the best case scenario is both locally grown and organic. So ask where items come from, learn about how things arrive. If it is important to you keep in mind that there are many, many, many impacts to our world that happen in every choice we make.

It was a surprising idea to me and something I had not yet thought of. So we need more organic farms spread across the country supporting local communities and neighborhoods. Sounds good to me.
I googled and found an article from Scientific Blogging if you want to learn more.

6 comments

1 mike { 08.22.07 at 1:46 pm }

A question about where the best Farmer’s Markets are is on the forum to continue from this post.

2 Chris { 08.22.07 at 6:44 pm }

Mike-

There was a really good point/counterpoint article on this subject in the Sunday Denver Post a couple of weeks ago. You might want to see if you can find it in their archives.

Chris

3 Chris { 08.22.07 at 6:54 pm }

Heres the “dont buy organic” one
http://www.denverpost.com/search/ci_6474474

4 matt { 09.06.07 at 4:58 pm }

While I strongly agree with eating locally grown food, I think it’s a hard argument to make of telling people to eat non-organic food, as that means they will be ingesting all sorts of chemicals which is a HUGE deal in my opinion. My hope is that by preferring organics, that will create incentives for more local farms to offer organic food.

5 mike { 09.07.07 at 9:33 am }

Thanks for the comments Matt. I don’t think the point is to encourage folks to eat non organic, at least not my point.

The thought is to promote local organic purchasing, and perhaps folks asking where produce is coming from and choosing to buy from local farmers will promote stores to stock their markets with these.

6 kc { 02.02.08 at 5:32 am }

I can’t think of many terrains that can grow all vegetables etc., especially all year round- so your argument doesn’t really hold for that reason. Conventionally grown (which is what they call fertilized and pesticide sprayed vegetables) has to be shipped into most regions, as well. And- fertilizers are very bad for the environment. In places like Florida that use them for golf courses -they have frequent bad red tides because of all the fertilizers that run off into the gulf.
Not to mention GM crops pollute any surrounding non GM crops with seed:
http://www.organicconsumers.org/ge/gedrift011006.cfm

BTW- fertilizer in conventional crops is made with gas:
http://www.noble.org/Ag/Soils/NitrogenPrices/Index.htm

So- as the world is waking up to these type of problems, we will find they will make new types of crop fertilizers.
But not yet.

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