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Organic food has ordinary benefits
Homegrown produce from a MyFarm
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Organic food production practices are actaually more energy intensive than conventional practices. Fertilizer and herbicides do use energy, but it is often forgotten 11 passes for weed control in organic practices for corn with a tractor that consumes lots of fuel compared to 3 passes with a conventional growing practice is a large amount of energy plus soil erosion. Livestock manure which is used in organic practices since no crop rotation can supply adequate nitrogen is as often pointed out as energy consuming as well. Combined with lower yields, energy per bushel in organic farming is several times higher, hence the reason for higher costs of production.
Organic food is perhaps not super nutritious compared to the other "food" we eat. But, one of the main benefits of not using tons of chemicals to produce food is that it is less energy/resource intensive. Any news story would be incomplete if the production side of this equation is ignored.
FYI: http://www.fao.org/docs/eims/upload/233069/energy-use-oa.pdf
Excerpts from the above UN publication:
"Conventional agriculture production utilises more overall energy than organic systems due to heavy reliance on energy intensive fertilisers, chemicals, and concentrated feed, which organic farmers forego."
"With lower energy inputs, organic systems contribute less to greenhouse gas emissions and have a greater potential to sequester carbon in biomass than conventional systems."
