March 12, 2008...4:19 pm
is organic a religion?
Environmental News Network’s post — Greed in the Name of Green — is tongue-in-cheek, but there are some on the outside looking in (non-believers) who will see something between the lines that goes beyond environmental/health concern in its perception of organic. Call it “holistic world view”, or Gaia, or tree-hugging, but for some, organic is much more than chemical-free…
Congregation of the Church of the Holy Organic, let us buy.
Let us buy Anna Sova Luxury Organics Turkish towels, 900 grams per square meter, $58 apiece. Let us buy the eco-friendly 600-thread-count bed sheets, milled in Switzerland with U.S. cotton, $570 for queen-size.
Read the whole thing. It’s not long, but the message is pretty clear — the fantastic growth in organic is somehow sullied by companies who have jumped on the bandwagon and started making money from it. And all these “rich” folks buying these expensive organic products aren’t really doing so out of pure motives. They’re doing it because, for the moment, it’s “cool.” For the True Believer, it’s not enough that a more environmentally friendly farm system is being accepted and adopted on more acres across the nation. It’s not enough that people are ignoring the “experts” and waking up to the potential harm farm chemicals pose to our health and that of our environment. These purists are, for some reason, disgusted by commerce and consumers. Commerce has ruined organic, somehow stolen its soul.
Back in the 1990s when I was working closely with farmer organizations in Illinois promoting sustainable agriculture to other farmers, we used lament the slow progress we were making. Why weren’t farmers catching on? Why wouldn’t they all want to be more sustainable, deal with fewer chemicals, protect their soils, etc??? Then we started realizing that one way to shift the behavior of farmers would be for consumers to start demanding products produced in more sustainable ways. We reasoned that if the Almighty American Consumer stood up and said, “no more chemicals in our food!” and started buying only food produced in environmentally friendly ways, why, farmers would respond to the market, change their ways to fill the demand, and in the process, change the world. If only.
Unfortunately, people (even farmers) don’t readily change unless they are, (1) forced to do so by some crisis, or (2) they have a strong financial incentive. Well, thank goodness we now have a strong financial incentive through organic. People want it. They want more and more of it every year. They want it so bad they are willing to pay a premium for it. And farmers are switching to meet that demand. And all those acres are acres NOT receiving chemical pesticides and fertilizer. Isn’t that a good thing?
OK, so mass consumerism and materialism are bad. I agree, but I never thought organic was supposed to solve that problem. Now we see that consumerism and materialism is the engine driving organic’s success in the marketplace and on the farm. And I doubt it’s going away. To live is to consume. And we are materialistic creatures. That seems to be in our nature. We are seeing it in developing countries as well. The more people get, the more they want. Seems to be how we are wired. Thankfully, we are figuring out ways to feed these bottomless pits of need and greed with less impact on the earth. And this is true not just for food, but for so many of our consumables, including energy. We should be celebrating.
Not the true believers. Not the self-righteous zealots of deep ecology. Because it’s not just about changing our behavior. It’s about much more. Much, much more. It’s almost like…a religion.
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