Organic farming runs its own risks
Jason O’Bryan’s column reinforces several common
misconceptions about organic food (“UCLA should get smart, go
organic,” May 16).
In his column, O’Bryan claims that “paying farmers a
higher wage to go through their field and hand-weed as opposed to
spraying herbicides is not out of line.” Unfortunately, that
is not the case.
Organic farmers can still use pesticides and chemicals. They are
just supposed to use “naturally occurring” chemicals.
Does it really matter whether a poison is natural or
artificial?
Poison is poison. Some plants produce natural pesticides which
may be at higher levels in the absence of added pesticides.
Also, some researchers argue that because organic farmers use
less effective fungicides, fungal poisons such as mycotoxins and
aflatoxins can be more prevalent in organic foods.
Organic foods are not more expensive because farmers have to go
weed their crops by hand. They are more expensive because they are
horribly inefficient and have about 20 to 50 percent lower yields
than normally grown crops, wrote Dick Taverne, the chairman of
Sense About Science, in the Guardian. I am not completely familiar
with the UC Sustainable Foods campaign, but how can we sustain 7
billion people by producing up to 50 percent less food?
The American Cancer Society, the National Cancer Institute of
Canada and other experts have all agreed that the trace amounts of
synthetic pesticides in normal produce are harmless.
No evidence has shown any harmful effects from normally grown
produce. The man O’Bryan cites his evidence from, Dr. Joseph
Mercola, advises people to eat more saturated fats and fewer
grains, doesn’t believe in the flu shot, and supports many
other pseudoscientific treatments that can be dangerous if used as
a replacement for traditional medicine.
The bottom line is that organic food has no proven benefits.
On the other hand, eating healthy food, whether organic or
traditionally grown, does have proven benefits.
Stephen Campbell Second-year, business
economics