The most contentious pesticides used on potatoes have been phased out in Europe, meaning there’s not much difference between organic and conventional. In addition, more blight resistant varieties have become available in the last few years.
Certification for organic varieties on the other hand requires seeds and seed potatoes be regrown for 3 years under organic conditions before they can be sold as organic. Mostly ‘organic conditions’ is an administrative issue, requiring fees and inspections. I’ve been involved in the lobbying of this issue, and it’s intended to give a commercial advantage to those who have organic planting materials.
Now, suddenly, organic potato growers are at a disadvantage because they can’t use the newer blight resistant varieties. They’re stuck growing the older varieties where certified organic planting material is available. Somehow this is ‘news’, and is featured in an article here, on a website that’s almost unreadable because of the volumes of fake news there. Their proposed solution is we should buy more expensive organic potatoes, grown from outdated varieties with lower yields, in order to make it more profitable for growers to grow certified organic varieties that are not significantly different from conventional varieties.
I think the message here is also that when you buy organic products, you support:
- Fake News
- Deceptive and Misleading Lobbying
- Products that Unfairly Compete with Small and Local Producers
- Overpriced Products in Supermarkets Displacing Cheaper Ones
