Is conventionally grown food better than organic food? why? whats the disadvantage of organic food?

Question

Please help me out here, to much different info on intornet. i need ur guys help. thanks alot!

Answer 1

Organic food is free from additives, so people say it is better. Additives may include preservatives and other chemicals and hormones that can apparently be the cause of ADD etc.

Organic food can sometimes have disease or extra bacteria because of lack of preservatives to keep it germ-free

Answer 2

Organic food is grown without using pesticides or growth-speeding chemicals in the soil.

Therefore, you are less likely to have the side effects of the chemicals you might ingest; mostly because there are no chemicals.  But with no pesticides its more likely to have insects get in the organic food once in a while.  Bugs aren't bad for you; in fact they are very healthy for you.  But there is the psychological problem of eating a bug.  The food also costs more because the plants have to be better taken care of without those protecting chemicals; they also take longer to grow without those growth-inducing chemicals.

Other kinds of grown food grow faster, so there is more of it.  That lowers price and provides for less hunger among people, since it costs less and there is more available.  But with it come the side effects of chemicals used in the growing of the plants.  And some of them can get pretty bad.  It is believed the rising rate of ADD, ADHD, birth defects, mental retardation, heart disease, and cancer all can be attributed, at least in part, to the use of chemicals in our food.

Answer 3

It is much deeper a subject than the simple better or not, and as you have seen there is a HUGE amount of information on the subject. A couple of things to keep in mind are that, yes there are specific guidelines/ regulations in many countries that define what organic is and what it is not. For all that, each individual that cares about it, cares for their own specific reasons and places those reasons in an order of importance to them. Also keep in mind that organic agriculture may not be sustainable agriculture in that the food grown may be, by regulation, "organically grown", but still harmful to the environment. When you specify "better" I have to assume you question not only the quality of the food you consume, but also the impact to the environment.

Conventional agriculture puts a huge amount of food on the tables of humanity at a price that is as reasonable as it can be. That said, the consumer risks exposure in some small way to toxins that frequently, over time, will cause health issues of a sort. They may or may not be noticed depending on the individual, but they frequently are noticed in that a hundred little and different issues will eventually accumulate to one larger one. For those whose choices are made more from issues involved with environment than health, they consider those more important, or of equal importance to health related issues. It is these events that has been noticed, it is the reason that regulations arise in the industry, the reason that people/ families choose organic or conventional products, and it fuels a huge ongoing amount of research, speculation, and regulation. Both organic and conventional agriculture are constantly changing.

With all that said, conventional agriculture as I mentioned, puts a huge amount of food into the market at a lower price, and that has for the most part been what the farmer has always attempted to do. There is not, though, a clear defining line here; organic on one side and conventional on the other. The conventional farmer has certain "tools" at their disposal; fertilizer, pesticides, and practices which they use or not depending on circumstance. The same is said for the organic farmer and neither will use a thing unless need arises. Too often a "tool" is employed out of need alone and rarely as a prevention, an idea whose time has come especially with sustainable agriculture. The boundry is invariably blurred as not all of those "tools" are used and those "tools" are often borrowed from one dicipline to another. Both have regulations that dictate things like public saftey as well as environmental safety to name a couple, with the organic farmer having added regulations that determine whether they can be certified "organic". Just for the record, states and/ or regions leave this regulation for the most part to agencies that are NOT affiliated directly with the government, at least here where I write from, the USA. It is totally a "civilian" company/ corporation and their means of self support are fees collected as any other business. That might be a conflict of interests. Now, for some consumers, the end does not justify the means. They want food without chemical contamination and/ or without the environmental contamination. For that they will spend more money (this almost fuels an elitism). And more often than not more money is involved in the organic growing of food. Most of the chemicals in conventional agriculture, and I mean as much as 90%, are used to remove those few little brown spots on your apples and to push for the little higher 2-3% bulkiness and count of an acre yield. The organic consumer will embrace the couple of little brown spots here and there, the inconsistancies of lettuce heads and cucumbers, and the lower yield/ higher price of the smaller grains in their cereals and breads. They want to at least feel as they consume their meals, that some earth father and earth mother are surveying their land as they wander it in sandaled feet with tie-dyed tee shirt blowin' in the wind. Organic does not always assure one of total land protection and conservation, though. Products used in the growing of organic foods are frequently no less injurious to the land and consumer in some ways and the cost is so much higher for them, giving rise to an industry of companies who, like all companies are there to make money, bottom line. Some tactics, like plowing and nitrates in general that are used by both groups are injurious no matter who employs them. No fault there but organic agriculture products  are not always as they seem and those products and promises bring one back to the times of the "snake oil salesman" who will sell you a miracle in a bottle for a nickel.

Agriculture regardless of the end products all frequently rely on the plow, the tool itself responsible for more damage to the environment than any other practice in history, even though it has given huge returns. Monoculture, the system of growing huge tracts of a single species (plant or animal and keep in mind that both fall into the heading of agriculture) is a very difficult thing to accomplish in a world whose diversity is based on species population diversity itself. Nature and environment was not a monocultural process, but one of interaction. A box puzzle is a great many pieces that are all different and interlock in one special way only to make a whole. It is not all squares the same size and color. The question of which is better in terms of agricultural practice needs to address whether it is sustainable agriculture, which goes beyond that and conciders issues of not only keeping the land healthy, but making it better. Even beyond that it addresses the concept of that acreage as a puzzle piece in our planet puzzle. What about the river that flows threw it? What about the ocean that the river goes into? As the plow will ruin the structure of the soil, what about no-till practices and building/ maintaining/ improving the land? Because monoculture causes many of the problems associated with farming, what do I companion plant to allieviate that and when will I rotate a crop and when/ how will I allow that land to heal and grow stronger. Organic agriculture was a step in the right direction in terms of addressing a huge number of issues associated with modern farming and the huge populations that need to be fed, but to go from "here" to "there" is more than a step. To be fair to all growers, each of them embraces (or not) ways to give the consumer a great product at a reasonable cost and they do it in a way that they believe takes a number of interests into concideration; theirs and their workers, the consumers, and the environment. So it is more, you see than just the generalization of "which is better, organic or conventional". Sustainable agriculture is another form which is both similar and at the same time different in that it's scope is broader, and still not completely on the mark, yet. I can't completely discount conventional agriculture because we have a huge population of people to feed and this is how it is done. A starving man feeds his family food regardless of where it comes from. Agriculture in quite a dynamic thing and we move by necessity to a better place where we feed everyone and keep our land and sea, our world, a vital and happy place. A great journey of learning. So you see it is more than which is better. There is a third option, sustainable agriculture.

Answer 4

You might take a look at this question. you are likely to get about the same answers on your question.

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;...