What is Organic Food and what good is it?

What is organic food?

The concept of organic food is simple: If it's produced without the aid of chemical pesticides and is processed only with natural additives, it's organic food. What's far more challenging is trying to determine whether a head of lettuce or loaf of bread at your local supermarket actually meets these requirements.

As of October 2002, shopping for organics became much easier. The U.S. Department of Agriculture finally put in place a national system for labeling organic food. Although states can continue to maintain their own certification programs -- for a long time California's program was the de facto standard for organic farmers -- their requirements cannot be less strict than the national guidelines.

Under the 2002 standards, produce and other foods that consist of at least 95 percent organic ingredients can carry the USDA's organic seal, while foods that are at least 70 percent organic can bear the phrase "Made With Organic Ingredients." Animal products certified as organic must come from livestock that has had access to the outdoors, has not been treated with hormones or antibiotics and has been reared on organic feed.

These standards are much stricter than those the USDA initially proposed, which would have permitted the use of genetically modified foods and sewage-based fertilizers. Angry letters from the public -- 275,000 of them -- sent the USDA back to the drafting board.

Even with these labeling rules in place consumers should be prepared for some confusion when shopping for organic foods. For one thing, organic products are not uniformly labeled because many farmers using organic methods do not pursue certification at all. And, as some small organic farmers point out, the standards do not differentiate between foods produced by small-scale, eco-friendly farms and those produced by huge factory-style farms -- which take a heavy toll on the environment whether they use organic methods or not.

Why organic?

There are numerous problems associated with traditional chemically-dependent, land-intensive agriculture:

• Topsoil erosion. One-third of our nation's topsoil has eroded due to modern industrialized farming practices. Not only does each lost inch cause a 6% drop in farm yields, but it also leads to increased flood exposure as a result of siltation.
  
  
• Toxic runoff. Pesticide-heavy runoff from farmland into rivers, lakes, and streams takes a toll on wildlife. Riparian habitats within watersheds are destroyed by chemical contamination. Additionally, the conversion of wild habitat to agricultural land significantly reduces fish and wildlife populations through erosion and sedimentation, the effects of pesticides, removal of riparian plants, and the diversion of water.
  
  
• Decreased biodiversity. With its emphasis on yield, uniformity, market acceptability and pest resistance, present-day agricultural norm sacrifices variety of species. Before the advent of modern industrialized agriculture, farmers produced roughly 80,000 species of plants; today farmers rely on about 150. The increasing reliance on a small number of crop species means declining nutritional variety for consumers as well as increased strain on overburdened farmland.
  
  
• Health risks. Heavy reliance on pesticides by conventional farmers is suspected of leading to increased rates of cancer and reproductive problems in humans. More than 80% of the most commonly-used pesticides today have been classified by National Academy of Sciences researchers as potentially carcinogenic -- and are routinely found in mothers' milk.