While Eileen Fitzpatrick’s Oct. 31 article “Organic farming shouldn’t be uncritically embraced” importantly raises the need for careful reflection of the growing organic food movement, I thought that her focus on “the blind following it has acquired” dismissed both the significance and problems of the rise of organic foods. Rejecting the simplification and glorification of the organic foods movement should not rebuke its value altogether, but rather provoke deeper thought about how to reform what is today a deeply diseased agricultural system.

Fitzpatrick writes that she is critical of the “sometimes questionable science behind [organics] and the view that it is a panacea for no less than cancer.” While nobody would argue that organic food is a panacea, it would be difficult to find a credible scientist that argues that the use of pesticides and other inorganic compounds has not had serious environmental and health consequences. Some studies put cancer rates among farm workers as high as 1200 percent above the national average. Communities further south along the Mississippi River have been evacuated due to high rates of toxins in the environment; this is the same river that boasts a Dead Zone near the Gulf of Mexico where little life is capable of growing, as accumulating pesticide runoff leads to environmental degradation that poisons wildlife as well.

Many farmers who switch to organic do so because they have relatives who fall ill or start finding dead birds on their property—Dave and Florence Minar, owners of Cedar Summit Dairy, arguably Minnesota’s best local milk, are one example. Even giant biotech corporations such as Monsanto recognize the impact of pesticides, as one of their primary marketing strategies for genetically engineered seeds is that it will reduce the use of chemicals (which, in fact, it doesn’t; it merely allows farmers to use just that corporation’s chemicals). Although the scientific community may be divided on other agricultural issues, the overuse of chemicals is probably not one of them. As University of Minnesota applied plant scientist Don Wyse has said,, significant research is dedicated to “cleaning up the aftermath” of industrial agriculture.

Fitzpatrick writes that “our idealist aspirations for an altruistic organic industry are … impractical.” I agree in the sense that the skyrocketing organic industry has not addressed deeper concerns that small family farmers have about their ability to survive in the face of large corporate farms; in some ways, it has made that struggle more difficult. When the FDA federalized organic certification, many small organic farmers saw it as a way for the government to undercut their market and spell their demise (Whole Foods, which almost consistently buys California produce even when comparable Minnesota goods are in season, is a shining example). The organics industry also does not address the labor issues involved in farm work, which is considered the second most dangerous occupation in the United States due to debilitating health conditions—the average life expectancy for U.S. migrant workers has been estimated at 49 years.

To that end, locally grown products often work more toward the viability of a sustainable food system than products that are subsumed under the politics of the federal organic certification. However, that organic has become a term useful in mainstream media does not mean it carries no meaning or purpose. It merely means we should still pay attention to advertising and the interests at hand. And why would we stop that?

Finally, I disagree with Fitzpatrick’s claim that organic food has become a “subject so adored” at Macalester. Because students are only here—by the time we leave—for four years, there is a tendency to dehistoricize serious issues and paint them in a potentially more shallow light than they deserve. Though I support Bon Appétit’s recent affirmation of organic and local foods, its increased marketing of such products does not constitute, as a whole, much more than the beginning of a commitment to a sustainable food system, let alone “the complete acceptance of organic farming into our liberal doctrine.” If this really was such a hot issue here, we would not see such a dominant presence of Coca-Cola or even Papa John’s on campus, both products based on exploitative systems of labor and animal cruelty.

Indeed, the Coca-Cola boycott campaign is another example: the recent campus focus is important, but we should not forget that Coca-Cola’s especially deplorable actions are simply part and parcel of a deeply unjust food system that capitalizes on consumerism in order to maximize profits at all costs. As activists, we must walk a fine line between cynicism and optimism; this includes a responsibility to carefully assess the measure of our progress and to not gloss over the issues at hand nor the gravity of the setbacks we face.

At its heart, the sustainable agriculture movement is as much cultural as it is environmental. It is about reasserting the human connection to the land, about utilizing the economy as a way to express that relationship rather than exploiting it. It is about creating a socially just food system that is not dependent on laborers that earn as little as $5,000 a year for a family of four, who are sprayed with chemicals from helicopters while they work in the field. It is about preserving local rural life and the link between the farmer and the consumer, rather than letting this way of life go the way of history books; it is about supporting farmers that face bankruptcy every day—and not infrequently commit suicide as a result. It is about restructuring society in a way that makes the source of food important again. To that end, the rise of organics does not simultaneously address all of these concerns, and its recent corporatization may exacerbate them. But nobody is expecting miraculous change; the point is that we need to think about these things, and we need to consider our individual implication in agricultural production. The fact that we can think so little about the impact of what we eat should be the first sign that something is wrong.