Organic Food Why

Reading Practice
Organic food: why?

Today, many governments are promoting organic or natural farming methods that avoid
use of pesticides and other artificial products. The aim is to show that they care about the
environment and about people's health.But is this the right approach?
Europe is now the biggest market for organic food in the world, expanding by 25 percent a
year over the past 10 years. So what is the attraction of organic food for some people? The
really important thing is that organic sounds more ‘natural’. Eating organic is a way of
defining oneself as natural, good, caring, different from the junk-food-scoffing masses. As
one journalist puts it: It feels closer to the source, the beginning, the start of things.' The
real desire is to be somehow close to the soil, to Mother Nature.
Unlike conventional farming, the organic approach means farming with natural, rather than
man-made, fertilisers and pesticides. Techniques such as crop rotation improve soil quality
and help organic farmers compensate for the absence of man-made chemicals. As a
method of food production, organic is, however, inefficient in its use of labour and land;
there are severe limits to how much food can be produced. Also, the environmental
benefits of not using artificial fertiliser are tiny compared with the amount of carbon dioxide
emitted by transporting food (a great deal of Britain’s organic produce is shipped in from
other countries and transported from shop to home by car).
Organic farming is often claimed to be safer than conventional farming - for the
environment and for consumers. Yet studies into organic farming worldwide continue to
reject this claim. An extensive review by the UK Food Standards Agency found that there
was no statistically significant difference between organic and conventional crops. Even
where results indicated there was evidence of a difference, the reviewers found no sign
that these differences would have any noticeable effect on health.
The simplistic claim that organic food is more nutritious than conventional food was always
likely to be misleading. Food is a natural product, and the health value of different foods will
vary for a number of reasons, including freshness, the way the food is cooked, the type of
soil it is grown in, the amount of sunlight and rain crops have received, and so on.
Likewise, the flavour of a carrot has less to do with whether it was fertilised with manure or
something out of a plastic sack than with the variety of carrot and how long ago it was dug
up. The differences created by these things are likely to be greater than any differences
brought about by using an organic or nonorganic system of production. Indeed, even some
‘organic’ farms are quite different from one another.
The notion that organic food is safer than ‘normal’ food is also contradicted by the fact that
many of our most common foods are full of natural toxins. Parsnips cause blisters on the
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skin of agricultural workers. Toasting bread creates carcinogens. As one research expert
says: ‘People think that the more natural something is, the better it is for them. That is
simply not the case. In fact, it is the opposite that is true: the closer a plant is to its natural
state, the more likely it is that it wiil poison you. Naturally, many plants do not want to be
eaten, so we have spent 10,000 years developing agriculture and breeding out harmful
traits from crops.'
Yet educated Europeans are more scared of eating traces of a few, strictly regulated, man-
made chemicals than they are of eating the ones that nature created directly. Surrounded
by plentiful food, it’s not nature they worry about, but technology. Our obsessions with the
ethics and safety of what we eat - concerns about antibiotics in animals, additives in food,
GM crops and so on - are symptomatic of a highly technological society that has little faith
in its ability to use this technology wisely. In this context, the less something is touched by
the human hand, the healthier people assume it must be.
Ultimately, the organic farming movement is an expensive luxury for shoppers in well-
manicured Europe. For developing parts of the world, it is irrelevant. To European
environmentalists, the fact that organic methods require more labour and land than
conventional ones to get the same yields is a good thing; to a farmer in rural Africa, it is a
disaster. Here, land tends to be so starved and crop yields so low that there simply is not
enough organic matter to put back into the soil. Perhaps the focus should be on helping
these countries to gain access to the most advanced farming techniques, rather than going
back to basics.

Questions 1-6
The reading passage has seven paragraphs, A-G.
Choose the correct heading for paragraphs B-G from the list of headings below.
Example: Paragraph A: viii
1..................... Paragraph B
2..................... Paragraph C
3..................... Paragraph D
4..................... Paragraph E
5..................... Paragraph F
6..................... Paragraph G
List of Headings
i Research into whether organic food is better for us
ii Adding up the cost of organic food
iii The factors that can affect food quality
iv The rich and poor see things differently
v A description of organic farming
vi Testing the taste of organic food
vii Fear of science has created the organic trend
viii The main reason for the popularity of organic food
ix The need to remove hidden dangers from food
Questions 7-8
Choose TWO letters, A-E Questions 7-8
Which TWO of the following points does the writer mention in connection with organic
farming?
A the occasional use of pesticides
B using the same field for different crops
C testing soil quality
D reducing the number of farm workers

E the production of greenhouse gases
Questions 9-10
According to the writer, which TWO factors affect the nutritional content of food?
A who prepares the food
B the weather conditions during growth
C where the food has been stored
D when the plants were removed from the earth
E the type of farm the food was grown on
Questions 11-12
Which TWO negative aspects of organic farming does the writer mention?
A Consumers complain about the extra cost.
B Organic food may make people ill.
C Farm workers have to be specially trained.
D It requires too much technological expertise.
E It is not possible in some countries.

Solution:
1. v 7. B OR E IN EITHER ORDER
2. i 8. B OR E IN EITHER ORDER
3. iii 9. B OR D IN EITHER ORDER
4. ix 10. B OR D IN EITHER ORDER
5. vii 11. B OR E IN EITHER ORDER
6. iv 12. B OR E IN EITHER ORDER

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Reading Practice

Organic food: why?

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Example: Paragraph A: viii

i Research into whether organic food is better for us

ii Adding up the cost of organic food

iii The factors that can affect food quality

iv The rich and poor see things differently

v A description of organic farming

vi Testing the taste of organic food

vii Fear of science has created the organic trend

viii The main reason for the popularity of organic food

ix The need to remove hidden dangers from food

A the occasional use of pesticides

B using the same field for different crops

C testing soil quality

D reducing the number of farm workers

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A who prepares the food

B the weather conditions during growth

C where the food has been stored

D when the plants were removed from the earth

E the type of farm the food was grown on

A Consumers complain about the extra cost.

B Organic food may make people ill.

C Farm workers have to be specially trained.

D It requires too much technological expertise.

E It is not possible in some countries.

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