The “organic” scam
Gee, color me shocked, I did NOT see this coming.
Factory Farming is Better Than Organic Farming
Some narratives are simply ubiquitous in our culture (every culture has its universal narratives). Sometimes these narratives emerge out of shared values, like liberty and freedom. Sometimes they emerge out of foundational beliefs (the US still has a puritanical bent). And sometimes they are the product of decades of marketing. Marketing-based narratives deserve incredible scrutiny because they are crafted to alter the commercial decision-making of people in society, not for the benefit of society or the public, but for the benefit of an industry. For example, I have tried to expose the fallacy of the “natural is always good, and chemicals are always bad” narrative. Nature, actually, is quite indifferent to humanity, and everything is made of chemicals.Another narrative that is based entirely on propaganda meant to favor one industry and demonize its competition is the notion that organic farming is better for health and better for the environment. Actually, there is no evidence of any nutritional or health advantage from consuming organic produce. Further – and most people I talk to find this claim shocking – organic farming is worse for the environment than conventional or even “factory” farming. Stick with me and I will explain why this is the case.
A recent article in the NYT by Michael Grunwald nicely summarizes what I have been saying for years. First let me explain why I think there is such a disconnect between reality and public perception. This gets back to the narrative idea – people tend to view especially complex situations through simplistic narratives that give them a sense of understanding. We all do this because the world is complicated and we have to break it down. There is nothing inherently wrong with this – we use schematic, categories, and diagrams to simplify complex reality and chunk it into digestible bits. But we have to understand this is what we are doing, and how this may distort our understanding of reality. There are also better and worse ways to do this.
One of my verymost favorite John Ringo novels, The Last Centurion, gets waaaaay into the weeds on the “organic” versus factory-farm tussle, which lovingly detailed digressions I found completely fascinating, as well as highly educational. So no, the above in-depth expose doesn’t surprise me all that much.
I may or may not have brought this up here before, but for quite a few years there my good friend Al and his ol’ lady Lisa (one of my former NYC roomies who moved down to CLT for good after a disastrous romantic entanglement with another old friend of mine, Joe) made an astonishing wad of on-the-side extra coin peddling “free range” eggs to one of the local yuppie-puppie grocery stores. Al and Lisa live way out in the boonies near Concord, on a big farm passed down to him by his grandmother through his mom, both long deceased. Once, when I was up at their place on one of my regular visits, Al walked me out to the “free range” chicken coop to help him collect those upscale eggs.
Al explained the whole “free range egg” dodge to me on the trudge out there from the century-plus-old farmhouse, and it struck me as just funny as all get-out. See, the coop was the familiar wood-and-wire structure roomy enough to comfortably house about ten-fifteen yardbirds and keep them safe from snakes, coons, foxes, and such-like critters, the distinction which made it “free range” being that this one had wheels. There was a beat-down circular track along which, every other day, either Al or Lisa had to roll the ramshackle rig a minimum of three (3) feet so as to maintain its “free range” status. Once in a while they’d let the chickens out to peck, cluck, and scratch around in the tall grass and dirt for an hour or so, after which brief spell of liberation they’d all be bunged back into the hen-itentiary again.
All in all, the whole setup was about as “free range” as every other garden-variety, stationary henhouse any country boy has seen a blue million of—ie, NOT. As with practically every other goobermint-mandated system, “free range eggs” is nothing but a pure-dee grift, designed from jump for one purpose and one purpose only: to fleece the sucker hordes out of as much of their hard-earned as can be managed without donning a bandanna and sticking a hog-leg Colt in their faces outright
Now that you know the score, feel perfectly free to amble right on past your grocery store’s “free range” and/or “organic” section wearing a knowing smile and head directly for the more reasonably priced but every bit as nutritious and/or healthy aisle with a clear conscience. Let the smarmy yuppie urbanites and/or hippie-dippie doofi waste their gelt on fraudulence and PC hype.
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