You’ve probably seen news about the recent study in Britain that shows organic vegetables are not nutritionally superior to conventionally grown vegetables. OK, maybe. There are studies that show the opposite, too. But that isn’t usually the main reason people buy organics anyway.

People buy organics because they’re not contaminated with harmful chemicals.  People buy organics because they believe food should be produced in a humane and sustainable way, a way that is healthy both for the land and for any workers involved.

But Blake Hurst, a farmer writing in The American (the journal of the American Enterprise Institute), claims that organic farming really isn’t sustainable anyway, calling this the “Omnivore’s Delusion”.  For instance, he says that “Biotech crops actually cut the use of chemicals, and increase food safety,” and “Herbicides cut the need for tillage, which decreases soil erosion by millions of tons.”  Hurst also speaks out in favor of caging turkeys and pigs for their own protection.  And, he makes the argument that we simply can’t feed the increasing population of the world without using modern conventional farming methods.

At the same time, he admits that  “corn farmers salivate at the thought of one more biotech breakthrough, use vast amounts of energy to increase production, and raise large quantities of an indistinguishable commodity to sell to huge corporations that turn that corn into thousands of industrial products.”  Using vast amounts of energy is a huge problem in an oil-dependent world that is beginning to run out of oil.  That isn’t sustainable.

This isn’t the first time I’ve heard these arguments.  I’m curious as to what organic farmers think about it. Is there any truth to what Hurst says? Do organic farmers have different solutions to, say, the problem of sows rolling over and crushing their piglets to death?

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