Organic Food

Organic food refers to foodstuff produced according to organic farming methods. Generally, it concerns the preservation of natural ecosystems and biodiversity, environmental protection, animal welfare, and the social and ecological impacts of agricultural systems. Its definition is multifaceted and varies greatly according to spatial, temporal, and sociocultural processes.

Consuming organic food might entail a critique of intensive food systems. It can be perceived as a “beacon,” which illuminates the failings of mainstream agricultural production and promotes an alternative way of consuming and producing food that is socially, ethically, environmentally, and economically sound. It can be associated with countercultures of food consumption and production, an ethics of care (for both humans and nonhumans), a turn to quality food, and also with increasing levels of reflexivity in contemporary societies as a response to globalized and invisible food risks. Organic food consumption is often deemed as an ethical and political act.

For many consumers, organic foods render a plethora of meanings: healthier, fresher, nutritious, seasonal, ecological, safe, ethical, homemade, tasty, not genetically modified, traditional, aesthetically appealing, small and dirty, expensive, exclusionist, and untrustworthy. Many of these meanings are contradictory and defy a scientific knowledge base. For example, it is contentious whether organic foods are healthier or safer than conventional products due to their microbiological contents. All these meanings reveal the complexities of organic food—a notion recently scrutinized regarding its innocuous associations and counterculture features, so detrimental in the emergence of the organic farming movement in the early twentieth century.

[Page 1067]This movement emerged as the result of a set of ideas, philosophical principles, and trials of new agricultural practices. Some of its pioneering figures were European. Austrian philosopher Rudolf Steiner developed biodynamic agriculture in the 1920s. In 1930, Hans Müller and Hans-Peter Rush expanded further the method of organic-biological farming. In the 1940s, British-born Sir Albert Howard, considered the father of organic agriculture, was pivotal in describing composting techniques to ensure soil fertility. According to Philip Conford, these writings were inspirational for the foundation of the British organic farming association—Soil Association—set up in 1946 by Lady Eve Balfour.

In the United States, four main factors were pivotal in the emergence of the organic farming movement: the campaigns centered on alternative production technologies (instigated by Howard's writings), the health and pure food crusades, the 1960s counterculture movements (wherein hippy cultures were paramount in their dissemination), and modern environmentalism. Eventually, the culmination of the organic food movement came with its regulation, institutionalization, and commercial globalization, mainly in the 1990s. By linking local geographies to global economies, organic food moved from its associations with a hippy counterculture to “yuppie chow,” notes Julie Guthman.

Undeniably, organic agriculture has seen remarkable growth over the years. In 2008, the biggest extensions of organically farmed landholdings in the world were located in Australia, Argentina, China, and the United States. In Europe, 8.2 million hectares were managed organically (1.7 percent of its total agricultural land). International sales of organic food and drink have reached U.S.$50 (Willer and Kilcher 2010).

The academic interest in organic food reflects the growth of this sector on a worldwide scale. One of the ongoing debates within the social sciences literature comprises the unpacking of organic food contradictions through examining conflicting logics across local-global food systems. This discussion has focused on the tensions that pull the organic food sector in two different directions: a move toward “conventionalization” and globalization (apparent in the bourgeoning of an organic food industry) and a countertendency toward the preservation of the movement's original principles, often associated with localized and re-embedded food systems. This brings to the fore different forms of analyzing this “organic paradox.” For some time, theoretical thinking revolved around limiting polarized conceptualizations based on alternative/conventional pairs. The conventional organic industry with its narrow meanings confined to production standards contrasts with an alternative organic food system, encompassed by broader meanings of organic food (from environmental, through food aesthetics, to ethics). The latter would serve to preserve the “alterity” of the organic food movement, often encapsulating postorganic values beyond the confines of regulations, notes Monica Truninger.

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