Originally published February 15 2006
Britain's Soil Association rides the wave of consumer interest in organic foods
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
Spiked-online.com covers the recent success of Britain's Soil Association, which has grown with the public interest in organic foods.
Celebrity chef Jamie Oliver, meanwhile, collaborated with the Soil Association for his high-profile TV campaign last year to improve school dinners.
The conference had a 'chillout zone' where delegates could enjoy massages and facials; and they wined and dined at 'the world's first organic cocktail bar'.
We live in times where anything manmade is seen as tainted, dangerous for our health and the environment; natural things tend to be seen as good.
Even the Soil Association, back in 2001, admitted that the 'perception that organic food is "good for you" appears to have been largely based on intuition rather than conclusive evidence'.
The speakers were coasting the wave of today's political sensibility, and so felt little need to justify their position, or engage with alternative arguments.
Jonathon Porritt, the green author who was appointed by Tony Blair to chair the Sustainable Development Commission in 2000, said that farmers had to 'wake up and smell the carbon'.
Dissenters were cast as selfish, or else too afraid to face reality: 'There is a lot of denial and a lot of fear', Porritt told me afterwards.
Meanwhile, politicians are apparently greedily counting votes and damning the long-term consequences.
'All farming should be organic', said one delegate Much has changed since the Soil Association's founding 60 years ago, but one thing has not: its upper-crust appeal.
Buyers of Spiezia organic beauty cream don't get their hands dirty; they just hand more cash over the counter.
This is why, although the organic market has grown enormously, it is still only one per cent of the total food and drink market.
This leaves old farmland as slack, which gives farmers room to play around with organic farming.
Ironically, then, organic farming is really only a viable option because of the gains in agricultural productivity elsewhere in the economy.
All content posted on this site is commentary or opinion and is protected under Free Speech. Truth Publishing LLC takes sole responsibility for all content. Truth Publishing sells no hard products and earns no money from the recommendation of products. NaturalNews.com is presented for educational and commentary purposes only and should not be construed as professional advice from any licensed practitioner. Truth Publishing assumes no responsibility for the use or misuse of this material. For the full terms of usage of this material, visit www.NaturalNews.com/terms.shtml