The birth of the USDA organic label & why growing organic food is important

With so much activity at the federal level trying to protect pesticide companies and opposition from MAHA and the public to protect people from pesticides, it’s an exciting time to talk about contaminants in our food. Of course, I talk about this every day and have received countless eyerolls over the years from friends and family for my choices to buy organic food or, heaven forbid, decline conventional food at a potluck. My former in-laws actually banned me from saying the “O” word (“organic”—not orgasm) in their home. They, and incalculable others, believe USDA organic labeling is a joke played on gullible foodies and environmentalists like me to garnish my hard-earned money—and that conventional food is totally fine.

Are we still really debating whether conventional American food is safe to eat?

Pesticides have been used in agriculture for less than a century. Yet we citizens of the United States, the third biggest global producer of food (1), are plagued with chronic disease. The statistics are staggering and the connections between direct and indirect contact with a wide range of pesticides and its link to disease is becoming clearer.

If conventional food is safe, why was the USDA organic criteria created, in the first place?

Since the inception of synthetic insecticides like DDT, originally used to treat insect-borne diseases during World War II, the modern world has embraced pesticides for agricultural use, despite also banning many of them (including DDT which, it turs out, is a persistent organic pollutant) due to their human and environmental harm (2).  In 1974, two years after DDT was banned, glyphosate was approved as an herbicide. Since then, it’s use has flourished, so to speak.

By the 1980’s, when pesticides had a stranglehold over large-scale farming and organic farming was fringe, there became a lot of confusion about what it meant for a food to be “organically grown.” Lacking in standards for growing, harvesting, producing and labeling foods, Mark Lipson, a farmer, environmental studies graduate of UC Santa Cruz and the first paid staff member of California Certified Organic Farmers organization, called for action—by cold-calling the USDA (3). By 1990, The Organic Food Production Act to standardize organically grown foods was initiated into the US farm bill. But it wasn’t good enough—hundreds of thousands of public comments opposed certain mandates, like allowing GMO foods to be considered organic. The language changed, omitting GMOs and prohibiting fertilizers, sewage sludge and irradiation. Accepted in 2000, the USDA organic label became effective in 2002.

While USDA organic infrastructure and labeling have gone mainstream, the meaning behind the label is rather misunderstood. It certainly sets a standard, which I’ll address in a future article.

For now, let’s compare modern farming with modern medicine. In conventional farming, pests are obliterated with non-specific pesticides (like glyphosate) that kill everything except the main crop, many of which are genetically engineered. Lack of biodiversity invites more pests. With no predators (because they’d already been obliterated, too), more pesticides were required. This vicious cycle continues and causes chronic problems for farmers to constantly treat with more synthetic chemicals.

In modern medicine, pathogens, bacteria and symptoms of disease in the human body are treated with broad-spectrum antibiotics that kill the entire ecosystem or pharmaceutical drugs that result in many side effects and imbalance. Lack of biodiversity causes a fragile immune system, impaired gut health, and demand for more nutrients, making the body susceptible to diseases. With a barren ecosystem, there is nothing to restore balance and, therefore, diseases could worsen or pathogens could thrive, thereby requiring more synthetic treatment.

Both modern farming and modern health suffer from being reduced to monocultures that, when exposed to nature itself, cannot prevail on their own.

An organic farm can be compared to a holistic health—also still considered fringe, yet implemented for thousands of years, like organic farming. On an organic farm, when a pest or weed arises, a farmer regards other changes in the ecosystem, such as beneficial pests or lack of nutrients, and invites natural elements to balance out pests.

In holistic health, an opportunistic bacteria or pathogen may be tamped down or eradicated by the addition of friendly commensal bacteria, botanicals and other nutrients to restore a balanced ecosystem, which naturally protects itself against pests.

Both organic farming and holistic health may require more investigation and a longer pathway to understanding root causes, but when stressful situations are eliminated by concentrating on soil health/microbial diversity, a plant/human remains healthy.

Unfortunately for natural ways, big ag and big pharma are money-making businesses with research, marketing and litigation tactics in place to ensure we rely on them for a productive food system and band-aids for the resulting dis-ease. Hence, most US farmers rely on herbicides like glyphosate to grow commodity crops on a massive scale. Currently, between 280 and 287 million pounds of glyphosate is sprayed on US crops each year (4) with over 1 billion pounds of pesticides used annually (5) on agriculture, forests, public parks, golf courses, roadsides, plus home and garden use. Approximately 90% of major commodity crops like soy, corn and cotton have been genetically engineered to withstand herbicides, like glyphosate, insecticides, or both (6). In 2024, 96% of soy, 92% of corn and 90% of cotton was genetically modified to withstand RoundUp, Monstanto’s token glyphosate-containing product (6).

Some insight into the widespread implications of pesticide use might help us understand why organically grown food matters. In one recent study, pesticides were found in 90% of tested water samples (7). Even the EPA discloses that 50-100% of all pesticides contaminate soil (8). An array of chemicals are commonly found in infant cord blood (9) and scientists have drawn connections between pesticides and modern diseases like obesity, heart disease, autoimmune conditions, hypersensitivities, neurodegenerative diseases, respiratory ailments, reproductive issues, cancer and infectious illness, to name a few (10).

And yet, the government prefers to protect pesticides, Big Ag and Bayer/Monsanto over human and environmental health. In February, hypercapitalist President Trump sought to protect Bayer/Monsanto with the executive order called Defense Production Act, designed to force our country to produce more glyphosate as part of our nation’s security. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., US Secretary of Health & Human Services who has opposed pesticides his entire career, supported the order, agreeing that too many farmers rely on pesticides and that removing them would destroy our food system.

Ensuring food production contaminated with carcinogens and endocrine disrupting chemicals is not defending food security; it’s offensive to innocent people and soil, water, air. Thankfully, Florida Senator Anna Paulina Luna agrees. She rallied to remove language from the 2026 farm bill that would have protected Bayer/Monsanto from lawsuits over their products and human health. This victory occurred only a few days after the Supreme Court divided about whether Bayer/Monsanto could be sued at a state level for not labeling RoundUp as potentially carcinogenic.

Growing food with organic practices is about the long-term vision, not the short-sighted, more is better, efficiency is best vision of our modern food system. Organic growing is about respect – for Mother Earth which provides everything we need to grow food and thrive; respect for our bodies and what we consume for our vitality; and respect for all living things—from microorganisms in soil to workers in fields. While “organically” grown foods remain the minority in an under-funded, under-researched industry, yet are considered elitist, imagine how the conversation—and our health—would change if organic farming received the same level of government support as conventional farming?

Originally written for and published by 5BGazette.

Don’t miss the article about fat-soluble toxicants in the diet – and how to reduce them.