The first Devil's Avocado Award* goes to Tyler Rigger's article "No Spray, no thank you"
Tyler's first submission went well (besides his snowboarding head shot). He introduces an interesting anti-organic perspective to our overly organicized shopping tendencies. I think whether we want to believe it or not, Organic tags catch our eyes and make us feel better about our purchases regardless of taste. I commend Tyler's commitment to assume an unpopular stance about groceries (not for the first time this year, see this smoking gun piece which is in the same vein). Tyler's pondering lead us to wonder about how natural resources and more specifically crops, are being under-utilized by organic farming. He asserts that we can actually produce more food with less land if we use pesticides and other scientific "technologically cutting edge" farming techniques.
Here I have to play Devil's Avocado...
While we may be more efficient farmers if we use pesticides, overall health could (and does) suffer from pesticide use. If the effects of the nightmare pesticide DDT are still under your radar, check this article in Science Daily linking the chemical to breast cancer that was published two days ago. Just because we could make more tomatoes, doesn't mean those tomatoes are still as good for us (in fact they might end up killing us).
So couldn't the question really be, would we rather have less starving people but more famished or diseased people?
Are we willing to trade "world hunger" for "world cancer"?
Roll this one around next time you're pushing your filling your grocery carts.
Good article Tyler. Congratulations on being the first recipient of the Devil's Avocado Award*
I hope you don't mind that it was organically grown.
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