Link Banana

Abigail Haddad is an excellent contrarian:

Organic food has garnered an extraordinary amount of attention from the media and, along with “local” food, is a darling of foodies and environmentalists, who talk up its civic virtues and benefits to the environment. There’s just one problem with this: agriculture has moved away from small-scale, local, and organic farming because these types of farms are land- and labor-intensive and don’t do a very good job of feeding lots of people. In addition, they are not definitively better for the environment, and their growth would lead to higher food prices than most Americans are willing to pay.

Some more practical points:

If you drive to your local farmers’ market to buy a few items from a farmer who has driven a truck several hours to be there, the number of food miles is relatively small; but compared to conventional agricultural products, the efficiency of each food mile is much lower.

If you drink organic milk, you may picture happy cows wandering in fields full of grass; but in fact, as Michael Poll[a]n discussed in his 2001 New York Times article “Behind the Organic-Industrial Complex,” it’s more likely your organic milk came from cows that spend their days in lots, eating grain and attached to milking machines—just like conventional cows.

Perhaps this shouldn’t have surprised me, but it did. As Good Magazine makes clear, all of my favorite “small” food brands are owned by conglomerates. Some day I’ll really learn that lesson.

(via Boing Boing)

From TreeHugger:

The word is one of 19 words or phrases on Lake Superior State University’s annual List of Words Banished from the Queen’s English for Mis-Use, Over-Use and General Uselessness.

”[‘Organic’ is] overused and misused to describe not only food, but computer products or human behavior, and often used when describing something as ‘natural,’ says a quote on the university’s Web site (attributed to Crystal Giordano of Brooklyn, New York).

(via Slashfood)