Organic, Naturally Grown or Regular Store Food: What’s the Difference?

By Jack Etzel

It’s likely that you haven’t heard of the Pennsylvania Association for Sustainable Agriculture (PASA). After all, 98 percent of us are not actively involved in farming. But to obtain the most informative answer to our Perspective question, we dropped in on the PASA’s western regional director, Greg Boulos. His organization promotes profitable farms that produce healthy food while respecting the natural environment.

North Hills Monthly Magazine: What’s the difference between organic fruits and vegetables and regular grocery store produce?

Greg Boulos: The regular produce you find in a grocery store is produced in a way that typically uses a lot of chemicals at various times throughout the production cycle. Producers spray early to kill bugs and to sterilize the soil, and they’ll plant seedlings that could be genetically modified. Organic production does not use any genetic modification. If an organic producer sprays, it would be a spray that breaks down quickly, usually within 24 hours, and it would be a type derived from plants.

NHMM: What about the organic certification? Where’s that come from?

Boulos: Originally, it was a grassroots effort to repopulate the farms with people who were thinking sustainably. The word ‘organic’ was their word for sustainable, but there were many different standards until the 1980s when the USDA created one standard for the whole country.

NHMM: How do you create an organic steak?

Boulos: (laughing) An organic steak? That’s interesting, because meat and dairy production is among the most difficult to maintain as organic. Organic animals have to be fed organic feed or graze in a certified, all-organic pastureland their entire lives. In the case of a chicken, for example, it has to be fed organic grain from the day after it’s born—its first meal—and it will maintain that diet its entire life. All organic animals receive no hormones of any kind and no antibiotics. If you must give an animal in a dairy operation an antibiotic, it must be taken out of the organic herd and never reintroduced.

NHMM: Regarding these regulations to qualify as organic, what benefits does the consumer realize?

Boulos: The benefits to the consumer are many, but mostly in the way of reduced pesticides and reduced chemical applications on the fruits and vegetables themselves. In organically produced groceries, there are less dyes and less chemical additives. You’re not going to find any of those things in organic foods.

NHMM: How can you measure the benefits?

Boulos: It’s mostly the chemical additives in food that cause deteriorating health. The more you consume things that are not whole foods, the less your body will be able to actually process it. People who are conscientious enough to buy organic foods because they want something good to go into their bodies know that it’s not really the organic food that’s keeping them alive and well longer—it’s the lifestyle that brings them to buy organic foods in the first place.

NHMM: Can you give me an example?

Boulos: My great-grandmother lived to be 98 years old. She would fry chicken in bacon grease, use whole butter, probably a half stick a day, and none of this affected her because during the majority of her life, chemical additives weren’t in food. They were naturally derived and were whole foods. It wasn’t until the 1950s that we saw chemical additives put in food, and not until the ‘60s and ‘70s that they became prevalent.

NHMM: Organic farming really isn’t new, is it?

Boulos: That’s true. In fact, I would argue that our first farming ever—10,000 or more years ago—was organic farming. They were using sustainable agriculture from the beginning, and I define organic farming as a subset of sustainable agriculture. It’s a brand of an agricultural system that’s been around since farming began, using techniques that aren’t included in organic certification, but they are recommended and are commonly used by organic producers, including crop rotation and soil science.

NHMM: Why do organic foods cost more?

Boulos: It’s a lack of subsidies. In large corporate industry farming, there are subsidies for not growing certain crops; there’s an economy of scale in large industrial agriculture. The government puts a lot of money into making sure that the food system is secure and making certain that the business of getting the food from field to plate is sound. The great majority of our food is produced in a monoculture. The crops are typically not rotated, especially in the Midwest. What you end up with is a food system that can produce a lot of calories very quickly, as opposed to a type of vegetable farming that doesn’t produce very many calories, but does include a lot of nutrients and micronutrients that aren’t found in other foods.

NHMM: Does the word ‘natural’ mean anything?

Boulos: Anyone can argue that something is natural, and others might not see it that way.

NHMM: Do you spend a lot of time teaching these concepts to others?

Boulos: I help teach farmers about different techniques, and help educate consumers about where they can get these types of healthier foods. And part of our mission is to help farmers become more profitable, especially the small, local and sustainable farming industry.

NHMM: That’s why the sign on your door reads ‘Buy Fresh, Buy Local?’

Boulos: That’s right!

To learn more about sustainable agriculture, and organic food in particular, try these websites: http:en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sustainableagriculture or www.sustainabletable.org/intro/whatis.

You can also do a Google search by entering the words organic farming, and find up to 13 million websites on the subject.