My wife and I joined the Park Slope Food Co-op, the largest food co-op in the nation, about a year ago. Recently I came across an interesting graphic in their July 3rd newsletter on the Organic Industry Structure, a complex web of corporate ownership of organics companies, many of which started as independent. I tracked the graphic back to its source with Dr. Phil Howard, Assistant Professor
Community, Agriculture, Recreation and Resource Studies (CARRS), at Michigan State University. At his site I found even more fascinating graphics that are worth sharing (with his permission) for those interested in organic food and corporate America.

First off, let me start with a digression into "why organic?" I was a latecomer to the organics movement because in the beginning many claims made about organics were dubious. But, as the industry developed and my knowledge of it grew, I began to realize the worth of organic food. My first decision to lean towards buying organic was with meat for one simple reason. Most non-organic meat producers at the time used massive amounts of antibiotics in animal feed, a gross misuse of antibiotics that has contributed to the rise of antibiotic resistant bacteria, a serious health hazard. Organic meat USUALLY is raised without antibiotics, and by now some non-organic meats are raised without antibiotics, so really you have to look to see if your meat is specifically labeled "raised without antibiotics" to be sure. But we found organic meat more reliably raised without antibiotics and actually to be of much higher quality than the average store bought meat. The only kind of meat that is generally of better quality is kosher meat, which is of high quality, but I checked, and antibiotic use is not specifically forbidden in kosher meat.

From organic meat we noticed organic produce is often higher quality than non-organic. Or, more to the point, non-organic produce in NYC is generally horrible, while organic produce varies from horrible to great.

But the truth is there are other environmental and health benefits to organics. Not ALL such benefits claimed by the organics industry are real, but many are. The Union of Concerned Scientists recently printed an article on this that I refer readers to for details. Here I quote only the intro paragraphs, but the article goes into some detail:

Amid recent food safety scares and a growing interest in healthy living, increasing numbers of consumers are opting for organic foods. While there is no doubt that organic produce is better for the environment because it is grown without synthetic fertilizers and pesticides (which can deplete the soil and pollute both our air and water), the science has not been clear on whether organic foods are more nutritious than their conventional counterparts—until now.

This spring, The Organic Center (a nonprofit that promotes organic farming) released the most comprehensive comparison to date of the nutritional quality of organic and conventionally grown produce. The authors reviewed the findings of nearly 100 published studies on this topic and carefully matched 236 pairs of measurements for 11 specific nutrients in both organic and conventional fruits and vegetables. The organic produce was nutritionally superior in 61 percent of the cases.

You can learn more about the benefits and basics of organics elsewhere on the Union of Concerned Scientists website.