The organic purists would have you believe that eating organic is better for your health and places a smaller environmental footprint on Mother Earth.
It’s also asserted that organic cattle and poultry farming are more environmentally sustainable and humane. So, are organically certified farms any better than the average? And are the assertions of a few tree-hugging greenies really the whole picture? It’s a fact that food production is heavily dependent on fossil fuel regardless of its certification.
Food and petroleum
An ecologist from Cornell (USA) estimated that to grow, chill, wash, package and transport a box of organic salad weighing 1 kilo from the point of origin to the plate of a US consumer, the cost in fossil fuel energy would be 478 kJ for every KJ of food. Assuming a box of salad (lettuce) weighs 1 kilo and contains 672 kilojoules of energy, that’s 38,720 kilojoules of fossil fuel energy for every box of lettuce.
Scratching organic hens
Most of us that buy organic or free range chickens do so in the hope that we are making the short lives of our next meal a little more comfortable. When organic and free range are mentioned, most of us envisage cows roaming over virgin pastures and chickens scratching in open pens, but in actual fact nothing could be further from the truth. Free-range hens are housed not much unlike their antibiotic eating brothers and sisters, living and dying in huge in huge sheds where space is a premium. The area provided for chickens to access fresh air and sunlight is no bigger than an average front garden and rarely used. The only upside for organic hens is that they are slaughtered two weeks later than there antibiotic fed counter parts due to the fact that they don’t grow as fast and take longer to achieve a similar body weight.
Fill the car with lettuce
So next time you open your organic salad box have a thought for the amount of fuel your lettuce may be consuming, it could be competing with your car.
Comments