That's not unpopular much longer. Here's an unpopular version: Organic crops are cruel and selfish. They take up more land to produce the same crop and use 'natural' pesticides and herbicides which are often more toxic than synthetic herbicides and persist in the soil longer. They contribute to global famine by taking land away from more productive crops. They contribute to drought and desertification by taking land from less thirsty crops. They sustain the narrative that they are superior nutritively without proof. They contribute to deforestation and only exist to make rich people feel accomplished when really they've done nothing.
I like organic for totally selfish reasons I'll admit - it just tastes better. Sorry, but strawberries I bought last week tasted like water and almost were at apple-level of crunchiness. Them organic local strawberries are the best (even if they are the size of a gmo raspberry).
They taste better probably because they are slightly more perishable and therefore had to be sourced closer. The same strawberry could be grown using conventional methods to taste as good or better. I think it's just supper hard to differentiate good tasting berries from bland ones when the good tasting ones look the same or uglier and thus get the price premium. It's strawberry season BTW go out and pick some local ones. The farm fresh ones will blow you mind. No need for organic
Maybe the question should be more about heirloom v conventional? Most conventional veggies and fruits have been bred for packaging and aesthetics over flavor. Consider the conventional tomato. It is bright red, has a thick skin and is shaped to perfectly fit in a packaged box. It tastes like water. Conversely, Heirloom tomatos are oddly shaped and multi colored and taste so much better. But are harder to package and sell.
There's a degree of that. But if I may go against the spirit of this thread and push back a little, the main thing I look for is local, which often means organic by happenstance. I think it's dangerous for all our food to come from one place (such as California).
For the same reasons, local food can be just as bad, if not worse than organic food. It takes far more energy to grow citrus fruit in New York City than it does in Chicago. It would be terrible for the environment to insist that all the citrus fruit consumed in northern cities be grown there, instead of warmer climates.
Maybe, but I'm not exactly seeing a big push for this. I mean, the farm share we buy from doesn't sell anything that won't grow in our area.
I think the biggest strangeness in this whole debate is that there is now supposedly a dichotomy between organic and GMO. In my mind I don't see them as mutually exclusive but I guess it depends on how you define such. If all crops used by humans have been "genetically modified" in some way, how the modification or trait selection is a problem in and of itself is not clear to me. Arguably the debate should be more around the systems which underpin them today - increased fertiliser usage, land degradation, monoculture, seed monopolies, scale of production etc. For example, imagine a scenario where GMOs are developed for the public good - drought resistance, productivity increases, whatever. These are then cultivated in line with organic "principles" i.e. companion cropping, no-till, reduced reliance on synthetic fertiliser - take your pick. Where is the contradiction? I'm not sure there is one and maybe it can help to address the problems with food production we have today.
To add to that: they make people feel good - and that's a part we can't afford to discount when it comes to promoting something. Making people feel good about shit they don't need has been the backbone of advertising ever since Freud's nephew started promoting cigarettes for women as "torches of freedom". We are emotional creatures and will gladly fall for anything that promotes feeling good about ourselves, even if it's detrimental for our health and other resources. To make people feel good about products that are actually good for people is something we could learn from advertising. Facts don't work for people who don't seriously engage with those. Sure, GMOs might be the future - hell, they've always been the basis of farming - but when people are terrified into thinking they might be killing planet Earth by using them, there's no sheet of facts you can provide that would help alleviate that, let alone reverse the idea. If you want to be in the same vein, make people worry about killing sustainable land with too many organic crops. If you want to do better, let them know that what we're doing now is just an advanced version of millenia-long practices (those pocket dogs didn't come from nowhere), as well as that now we have more control over what we eat than ever as well as some of the great side effects, like saving children from dying out of lack of vitamin A.They sustain the narrative that they are superior nutritively without proof.