is organic actually organic?

            We are presented with quite the moral quandary right from the get go in this part of the book. Suddenly something that has been a stable standby for years, the term “organic” may not have the meaning or the relevance we’ve thought it had. I honestly had no clue, none at all, that this was even possible. I’d bought rather fully into the ideal and idea that Organic food must be organic, couldn’t be anything else. Boy, was I wrong.

            In the end, like many other things, Organic became industrial. Pollan gives us a detailed history lesson in why exactly the organic movement fell to industrial standards. In a way, I can see why I happened, people have to make a living, and at the time, it seemed that going industrial was the only way to keep up. But there’s also the fact that now, the industrial organic food is no longer even what I would rightfully call organic. When synthetic flavorings are fully allowed, and letting a chicken roam for the last week of its life are the standards, the food produced a faux pas form of organic, organic in title alone.

            I got rather heated, rather angry about all this. Though Pollan explains why it happened, and does so calmly, I couldn’t believe it half the time. Perhaps part of this anger is from being deceived, believing as I did that those big name organic foods were actually organic. But it also makes me wonder. In all modesty, I like to think of myself as fairly well informed. Yet I knew nothing of this, so, how many Americans out there are frantically buying food labeled as organic and charging extra just to get something that isn’t really what it claims to be?

            Pollan points out the literary gymnastics performed by the writers of the organic labels, where they write everything they possibly can to convince one that this food is actually organic. Such is something that is to be expected from industrial anything in America, a side effect of capitalism at that. It’s not bad per say, but it is deceitful at best, in that fashion of not directly lying but not telling the truth either.

            Now, Pollan does give us hope though, or perhaps, a counterexample. Further into this part, we get a view into the ecologically based farm on which he stayed for a week. In this farm, everything is balanced, in a natural way. Chicken manure keeps the grass growing strong, grass keeps the cows strong, and the cow manure keeps the chickens strong. It’s cyclic, I believe Pollan even describes it as being looped, and that’s a good way to see it.

            This farm is truly organic, not perhaps due to lack of synthetics, but in how it functions. This farm functions on the basis of natural principles. It’s amazing to think that this entire farm is fully self sustained and doesn’t require much of anything but what it has to run. This is how we should be farming, this is what the title “organic” should invoke, working with nature, not against it, to create the food we require.