• Question: With the recent health hazards should organic food be the way forward?

    Asked by Vinay7M to David, Eva, Kate, Nicholas, Rachel on 16 Nov 2015.
    • Photo: Rachel McMullan

      Rachel McMullan answered on 16 Nov 2015:

      I don’t think it’s as simple as it seems! Yes pesticides are not great for the environment so organic is more environmentally friendly. Also pesticides are chemicals so some of the older ones weren’t very good for people.
      But I’ve also met scientists who argue that organic isn’t because you can wash pesticides off fruit and veg easily whereas you can’t get rid of the small bugs that burrow into organic fruit. Some of these bugs could make you sick too.
      Also it’s worth thinking about the fact that we need to grow enough food to feed everyone so, while pesticides might not be that good for people or the environment, they might be important to make sure that everyone has enough food.

    • Photo: Nicholas Pearce

      Nicholas Pearce answered on 16 Nov 2015:

      Hey,

      I don’t think organic food has much advantage over non-organic in the long term. It costs more to make and there are more people on Earth that need feeding, so we need to find cheaper ways to make food.
      I think we might see a lot more vertical farming in the future instead:
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vertical_farming

    • Photo: David Nunan

      David Nunan answered on 16 Nov 2015:

      Hey,

      The recent health hazards from food that I picked up were the one’s about red or processed meat and cancer. Unfortunately organic beef and sausages probably won’t be any better in terms of cancer risk.
      In fact, when you look at the scientific evidence there is very little to suggest that organic food is better for our health, although the long-term effects of being exposed to lots of pesticides have yet to be properly investigated by scientists.

      And as the Rachel and Nicholas have pointed out, growing organic food is more expensive than non-organic food and difficult to produce enough food for everyone. Also how we currently grow food is mainly in soil. I think we will start to run out of useful land and will need to think of other ways to grow food – like growing it in water instead: http://www.powerhousehydroponics.com/4-soilless-growing-methods/

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