How is organic food and farming viewed? State, media and other views

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When writing my PhD, which was about consumers of organic food at farmers� markets, I included a section on how organic food is represented.

The state, -Teagasc, Bord Bia and the Department of Agriculture Fisheries and Food - had a difficult job. They had to describe organic as a specific thing, and yet not downgrade conventional food:

�Organic farming is a system of farming which avoids the use of soluble fertilizers, pesticides, growth regulators, feed additives and other chemicals� (Teagasc)

�Organic farming is an alternative method of food production, which is environmentally friendly.� (Bord Bia)

�Organic farming represents a different view of farming systems, which puts a strong emphasis on environmentally friendly and sustainable farming practices, with particular concern for animal welfare. Organic farming avoids the use of synthetic fertilisers, chemicals and/or additives.� (DAFF)

Non-state players were sometimes more specific. The IFA pointed out that they had no quibble with organic food, but that conventional food was produced by �sustainable farming complying with strict environmental and animal welfare standards�. In a position paper, they argued for

�The removal of scientifically unjustified requirements imposed by organic farming guidelines on agronomically effective and economically valid inorganic fertilizers. Since guidelines for organic farming practices are not necessarily science-based, it should be clearly specified that the justification for not allowing some inorganic fertilizer sources is for marketing purposes only and not for food or environmental safety reasons� (IFA 2003).

The media in general were mixed. Celebrity chefs were usually positive, though sometimes talked about preferring local over organic. Individual products or producers tended to get the soft-focus, rose-tinted treatment. Never a bad word was said about the biggest or the smallest, from Glenisk to local small-scale organic stallholders at farmers� markets.

However, over the course of the five years I spent doing the PhD, a marked trend started to emerge: it was no longer newsworthy, or eye catching, to say positive things about organics. Organic had already won the battle of language, so to draw people in, you now had to say something bad about it.

And it was often those who wrote the headlines as opposed to those who wrote the articles who did this: Usually, those who write articles don�t get to choose the headlines that accompany the articles - myself included.

In particular, this happened when the organic certification system worked and caught the odd chancer who was bending the rules.

When this happened, this occurrence often became carte blanche for an organic attack. So the UK�s Observer screamed in 2005 on its front pages � �the great organic food scam exposed�, mainly because one shop was convicted of fraudulent selling of organic food.

But the further into the article you got, the better, and better regulated, organic sounded.

It continues to this day, and shows no sign of abating. A couple of weeks ago there were a sequence of talks on organics, and it seems that Dr. Con O�Rourke (formerly of Teagasc) was invited to every one of them. Despite the fact that there were other speakers in attendance, O� Rourke�s statements made the headlines.

And the headline-writers had a field day. This paper, the Irish Independent and the Irish Times all shrieked from their front pages and on the headlines of the articles about how organic wasn�t that good after all.

But again, the further you got into the articles, the better organic sounded. Take the Times:

�Most organic food doesn't actually taste better than food produced with the use of pesticides, cookery writer Darina Allen told the meeting� began the article.

What was actually a caveat by Allen, based on the odd example such as old, out-of-date organic food being left for weeks on a supermarket shelf, became an exemplar of her overall position on organics - which it isn�t. This and other good news organic information slowly seeped out later in the article.

It�s as if the attendant journalists and headline writers back in HQ were waiting for one Mcnugget to present a misleading and unbalanced argument.

But this is how it is now for organics. Organics may have won the battle of language with consumers, but, and partly because of this, it now has to fight sloppy sensationalism.