What are the advantages of the organic food? What are the disadvantages of organic food?

What are the advantages of the organic food? What are the disadvantages of organic food? How practical are organic foods in our country? How practical would such foods be in many Third World countries?|||NONE....it's just a scam for the gullible %26amp; paranoid.|||Advantages? You can charge some people more for it because they (for some reason) think it's better. There might be some things that organic 'theory' advocates that are useful (like biodiversity and biological pest control) but that's more due to a stopped clock being right twice a day than the organic promoters actually knowing what they're talking about, and those things are absolutely not exclusive to organic ag. Disadvantages? Ultimately, it's an ideology, not a science, and if you want practical solutions to anything, blind dogma is not a good place to start. You're restricted in what you can do because organic ideology says that it's better to log some more forest for farmland than using any nasty 'unnatural' chemicals or plants. In other words, no matter how safe or sustainable, any synthetic chemicals will not be allowed. Same with biotech crops. That makes no sense, but that's organic for you. It's less productive, more costly, probably worse for the environment (unless you don't mind logging the forests to feed the people organic couldn't support). Practical here? Not in any sense except for the farmer that gets to add on a price premium. More power to them if they want to pay extra for inefficiency, but it doesn't make sense. In the third world? Heck no. The organic promoters need to stay away from other countries that are in need of food before they cause starts a famine. Whatever flaws efforts to improve agriculture in third world countries has, and it does have them, one thing no one needs is an ideologue promoting a fallacious appeal to nature. I'm fine with teaching various low input agriculture techniques that might seem similar to organic in the developing world, but not by some organic quack.|||'Food' goes through many different hands before it hits your plate. Producer-%26gt;Bulk Handler-%26gt;Processor-%26gt;Packaging-%26gt;Retail-%26gt;C…





The producer has a few advantages, namely: less work and overall input costs (stick it in the ground and let it grow) therefore if there is a crop failure he is out relatively little compared to a conventional farmer with hundreds of thousands of dollars in the ground. Price is generally quite a bit better - however yield is generally quite a bit less. It works out well though because the infrastructure to run a smaller farm is less (less storage, less machinery) and the net return off of an acre is higher on an organic farm. There are literally NO grading standards in the organic world. Conventional agriculture (due to open market pricing) has developed extensive grading procedures so brokers can buy sight unseen from sources and not worry about quality. Organic producers can try different markets because sometimes they aren't so worried about quality when quantity is tight. Conventional agriculture is SO huge that if one supplier can't meet the quality there is always another one. So, generally there is MORE money per acre in organic (less inputs+high price makes up for less yield and the quality challenges) then conventional farming.





Bulk Handlers -%26gt; Charge more per tonne to handle product that is 'premium' however since there is very little of it makes hardly any differance. Most handlers will have a certain time (few weeks usually) where they will convert over to organic and move the produce then switch back to conventional.





Processor -%26gt; Takes premium raw product and produces an actual consumable retail product. This is where the money is made. Processors of specialty products make the spread between the raw product and the finished product.





Supermarket -%26gt; Probably no differance - not really much of an organic market for people shopping at a 'non-specialty/boutique farm)





Consumer -%26gt; Generally, risk and profit is all made off of the consumer or passed on to him. You are accepting all of the 'premiums' to be paid to the producer by purchasing organic produce. If you see an advantage in eating organic then paying 40-50 percent more is a value to you. Others (myself included) think its a load of horseshit so lazy producers can make more money and spend more time vacationing.





Third World Countries - because ultimately organic complexes are supported by the premiums at the retail level introducing pricing that enlarges the percentage of money that is expended on nutrition and levying that on demographics that are very sensitive to price shocks (starvation) doesn't seem that smart. Hard to sell your product if everyone is dead.