Reply With QuoteOriginally Posted by Scrofula
It is both. Most fruit & vegetables have been bred specifically to respond best to chemical fertilisers and pesticides. The important thing is for them to grow big.
This thinking for this science and type of mass food production was conjured up in the UK during and post-war where there was rationing and food shortages for years. There were big changes made in the country to make sure we always had a food excess from now on. In a similar way, I think the cold war supercharged this kind of agriculture and food production in the USA.
The old varieties which were not so dependent on fertilizers or pesticides usually grew smaller but were a lot tastier. Having much more concentrated flavour. Organic farming uses these older varieties and is the reason why a few things taste so much better when organic. Carrots are a good example. Organic carrots taste rich & tasty even raw. But chemically grown carrots are much larger & insipid tasting. But with something like bananas it is unoticable. Organic would simply mean the workers and local residents to the farm would not have to deal with so much pollution from pesticides and fertilisers.
