This is part two of a 10-part series on how changing ones eating habits may be the most accessible and impactful way to improve the world.

Let’s begin by taking some mystery out of history:  The original “organic food” paradigm consisted of ecologically-conscious farms that thrived on the rotation of various plant and animal species.  These farms possessed deep respect for the land, water, and air, provided humane treatment to their animals, fair wages and a safe environment to their workers, and distributed their produce only to mouths within the local vicinity.  These practices facilitated soil enrichment and natural forms of disease and pest control, prevented contamination of local and distant ecosystems, and reduced packaging and pollution by rejecting long-distance travel.

However, with demand for organic food growing like miles on a trucker’s odometer, much of the United States’ 20 billion dollar industry has been purchased by corporations like Coca-Cola, General Mills, Heinz, and M&M-Mars.  With loyalties to royalties rather than to our environment or farm-workers, this transition has created a full circle in the realm of organic foods. Now, an increasingly large fraction of organically labeled food has emerged from the same destructive system it sought to evade – one with tendencies to destroy lands, livelihoods, citizen health and the environment.

Many of these corporate-run organic farms/production facilities have betrayed the trust of organic consumers with the help of the USDA that has made it continually easier to obtain an organic label and incorporate practices that go against the (organic) grain.  They source ingredients from non-local farms consisting of monoculture crops grown via the same practices that devastate our soils and use gargantuan amounts of fossil fuel in their production and distribution.  Perhaps the only differences they exhibit from their conventional counterparts are: the absence of pesticides, synthetic fertilizers, and genetically modified organisms.

For more information, please visit www.organicconsumers.org

Note: there are still many ways available for supporting truly organic farms – the topic covered in an upcoming edition of “Cultivating Thoughts on Food.”

See also: Cultivating Thoughts on Food: Part One