sheebe Loc: Lake Isabella, CA

Yes, organic veggies, fruit and their other products are terrible. Fruit and veggies don't last long. My friend is a Organic person but she complains on the money she is wasting and she still buys organic meat but buys the normal veggies and fruit.

sippyjug104 Loc: Missouri

I'm still trying to figure out how to be "fat free". Regardless of what I eat the results are the same. 😄

Fredrick Loc: Former NYC, now San Francisco Bay Area

I sat next to a friend’s uncle at a wedding reception recently, who was a (very successful) avocado farmer in the Santa Barbara CA area. Being that I love eating avocados, I asked him if he grows organic or non-organic avocados?

He laughed at the question, and said “there’s no such thing, technically, as an organic avocado.” He said when he grows new avocado plants, he has to spray the underside leaves of an avocado plant, or it will be eaten by a certain insect (don’t recall the name). He has a machine that gently brushes back the leaves while it’s being sprayed. He said he only has to do it once in the avocado plants growth, and uses very little insecticide. He said that all avocado farmers do that, or they wouldn’t have a successful crop.
So, I no longer buy organic avocados.

DAN Phillips Loc: Graysville, GA

How do you know if it's truly organic?
Organic honey for instance.
Who controls where a bee flies?

jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

But are the seeds organic?

eucapsiolatina

Diamonds are made just from carbon atoms and you don't eat them.

Abo

I believe there are organic things that are lethal

jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

Sorry. I was referring to food.

Wuligal Loc: Slippery Rock, Pa.

My grand son-in-law sells his organic vegetables in bulk to local farm markets and he is inspected regularly. He can only use use certain fertilizers, no weed killers, no insecticides, etc. He has to charge three times as much for his leaf lettuce because of the production cost.

At exactly the same time he and his dad operate an 8,000 acre non organic corporate farm where they use Round Up by the tanker truck load and do only chemical planting (no plowing). The use of the chemicals is what keeps their crops affordable. They can produce 50 acres of soybeans in less time than it takes to produce half an acre of organic produce.

On the other hand, their homestead is surrounded by the farm fields. I am not saying there is a connection but to everyone's consternation the third person in their family was recently diagnosed with non-Hodgkins Lymphoma.

Reuss Griffiths Loc: Ravenna, Ohio

I used to work for a company that made pesticides. In order to determine proper application levels and effectiveness, we had to monitor the amount of pesticide that actually ended up on or in the fruit of the plants being sprayed. Because of the complexity of the analysis, we always needed control crops of the same veggie that had not been sprayed. Did this at 3 or 4 locations around the country. No matter where we got the control crops from, organic or not, they were never free from pecticides. And at the levels we checked at, parts per billion, we always found them. Organic vegetables all have traces of pesticides on them because of overspray, etc. The whole purpose of organic vegetable is to avoid these chemicals and it just not possible these days. As an aside, not only did we monitor where the actual pesticide ended up, we also followed the degradation products of the pesticide, some more toxic than the pesticide itself, not only on the fruit, but in and on the plant, in the roots, the soil and the water supply. Once checked for pesticide sprayed on apples in baby formula made from cow's milk. And yes there's a direct connection if you care to look

TonyP Loc: New Zealand

There is a cost in NZ process. Registration and on going annual testing of the of the land isnt cheap. Organic fertilizer etc is more expensive than the common chemical based ferts.
We considered going organic on a couple of paddocks when we had our small farm, just because we thought we could, but gave away the idea of getting fully certificated. Just wasn't worth it. We did ditch most chemical based sprays though and fertilized the stock paddocks only with 'rock dust'. Here's a pic of what it looks like from a drone shot https://photogenics.slickpic.com/albums/Our-Photos/photos/14450199/omanawa-road/?wallpaper

TonyP Loc: New Zealand

[quote=fourlocks]I won't say "organic" is entirely a scam, as Jaymott claims. Organic farmers don't purposely apply pesticides and petrochemical-based fertilizers to their crops. However, there are so many manmade chemicals inundating in our atmosphere, ground and surface waters, it's impossible to grow 100% chemical free "organic" crops.

I dont think it is actually. But it does take quite a few years 'cleaning' the land to achieve the result.

DebAnn Loc: Toronto

Good comments about the "gluten free". These manufacturers must think their shoppers are stupid. Then again, I suppose some of them might be!

bwana Loc: Bergen, Alberta, Canada

Unless your food is made of styrofoam it's organic! Organic is nice trick to up the price and make claims about how much better it is, it really isn't!

Fotoserj Loc: St calixte Qc Ca

Same for whipped butter, an insult to every dairy farm all over the planet