The TRUTH about Organic Labels transcript

today you can find organic stickers everywhere from apples to box mac and cheese the organic label is a symbol for consumers to know that the product that they are buying is created with certain higher standards but most people have no idea what those are and they might not be as substantial as you might have hoped [Music] hey there it's Levi from my Grandma's sitting room as you can probably tell here to let you know that we have launched a patreon now if that is not at all your interest please do not feel bad there's no hard feelings here just head right on down to this time stamp and you'll be back into our regularly scheduled content however if you're feeling it you maybe you're just even a little curious I I encourage you to listen because we got some stuff cooking up so we are launching a patreon page because as it turns out when you create content criticizing and critiquing brands on their ethical and sustainability standards a lot of Brands and companies don't want to sponsor your content now that actually in some ways is sort of like a good sign because that means that what we're doing is true and you know often pretty challenging to the status quo and that's great because that's kind of what we wanted to do but it does mean that it makes running a business harder so because we aren't as ad friendly on this Channel we are forced in some ways to reach out to you our audience who are really the people who have supported this channel from the beginning indirectly through YouTube AdSense now Beyond just like a financial thing I I think that these kinds of communities really do help make the content better especially for a channel like this where we are exploring subject matter that is beneficial to our audience we aren't just here for entertainment we're here to provide knowledge for you to help you make purchasing decisions and what makes our content better is if we know what you want to have information on so this patreon page is not just going to be a place where there's cool Nifty perks but also a place where you get to communicate more directly with us but on the perk side of things we do have a couple of nifty little things going on right now if you go over there we have our first iteration of a newsletter which we are going to be trialing out just a place where we can give you some behind the scenes sort of updates as well as some other headline worthy stories that we weren't able to fit into videos on the main Channel we are also going to be giving you early access to all of our videos and two videos over on our second Channel future proof Health now the rest of it I don't want to get too kind of specific on because the reality is this should be a space for you we want you to sort of guide and dictate what this space offers up so maybe that's like q and A's maybe that's uh you know early access to scripts or maybe you want to learn how we create our videos I don't know but that's sort of the point is that this is a space for everybody and if you made it this far through the ad thank you so much for listening if you are interested the link will be down in the description let's get back to the video hi everybody I'm Levi you're back here at Future proof yes in a weird location we're shooting in a restored Airstream today we made this video as a follow-up to our video about Whole Foods that we made way back in the day when I didn't have facial hair and still had youth in my eyes but we also made it because a lot of you have asked for a video about different certifications that we talk about on this channel but here's the thing with certifications we have made a incredibly complicated world of consumerism just walk into any grocery store Island I'm sure that you will be overwhelmed by the choice available and these certifications and labels are kind of our only guides to sort through all of this mess in order to make a choice and predictably the responsibility Falls onto the consumer to decode what all these labels mean and of course there's not a clear-cut simple answer some labels might actually mean something While others are just a total load of and there are a lot of food producers out there relying on the fact that you don't know how to make the difference and this can make a very simple trip to the grocery store incredibly stressful sometimes I know I also buy food and eat food so here is our charitable effort to try and clear up some of this mess around organic labels [Applause] okay so this is going to be a doozy let's start from the beginning first you have to understand that these labels were not like passed down from older Generations or from some kind of ancient civilization they're just rules that we made up like 30 years ago in the 1990s farmers in the United States came together to push back against the industrial farming complex that used pesticides on all their crops and stuffed their livestock full of antibiotics now the industrial food system today is a massive frightfully convoluted world that prioritizes the production of certain foods over others which we're gonna get into in a minute but surprisingly things actually used to be a lot worse now I know y'all hated history class so we're gonna Tick Tock style slam some history in your face hole back in the late 1940s pesticides like DDT were sprayed all over crops to kill off annoying bugs this diabolical weapon of modern science saved millions of humans but killed billions of insects but they basically killed everything else in the process and caused cancer answering humans which really sucks Rachel Carson wrote A Very Super Famous book about it called Silent Spring you might have heard of it nobody wanted to listen to her not surprisingly but eventually turns out she was right and she sparked basically the modern environmentalist movement all hail rail cart all hail rail all hail all all hail rail oh [Music] all hail Rachel Carson thanks to this outcry the Environmental Protection Agency banned the use of DVT in the USA in 1972. however by then industrial farming wasn't going anywhere thanks to a colorful guy named Earl butts with one t not two which is sad but was the USDA secretary of agriculture under President Nixon in the 70s and he dreamed of an agricultural system that could feed the world on the cheap his idea was to modify corn wheat and soy production and as much of the other vegetables to make them cheap as possible for the middle class the dude is credited as being the patron saint of the fast food nation and he told Farmers you gotta get big or you gotta get out during this decade a lot of changed Farmers went into debt and had to take out huge loans to sustain the massive expansion that butts was trying to pressure them all into and it all collapsed in the 80s when Farms were producing way more than they could sell and based basically they were out of luck this is like the farm version of when Mom and Pop shops get bought out by Walmart and McDonald's all these little guys just couldn't handle the pressure to expand exponentially and the Investments required to fit the new mold were just way out of their league so they went out and all of the big companies just kind of took over and that's basically where we are today and the systems have just gotten more and more efficient advancements like synthetic fertilizers became way more affordable Machinery started to replace manual labor and then eventually everything just started revolving around these new cheap food sources the meat and dairy industries were the main beneficiaries of this as they realized that they could just use cheap grains to bulk up their livestock and produce more meat for a lower price and a whole bunch of other stuff that we don't have time to get into obviously and we're just barely scratching the surface here but essentially by the late 20th century most of the food production that was happening in the US was Consolidated into just a few companies who cared a lot more about profit and efficiency than the health and well-being of the planet and this drama is why the organic food industry arose as a clap back to this fast and furious approach everybody sort of saw the writing on the wall and it became obvious that we needed to come up with a solution so the organic food movement just had to try their best thanks to the passenger the organic food protection act of 1990 certifying agencies were created to identify the Farms that use organic practices the problem was there were no standards for organic practices on a national level so Texas could have a completely different thing than Wyoming et cetera et cetera to solve this problem Farmers asked the U.S department of Agriculture to develop a standard so that things could work properly in the USDA organic label was born in 2002 which is exactly 10 years after I was born fun fact you didn't need to know unless you want to send me a birthday card on my birthday October 29th 1992. okay okay okay so you get the scene you understand it's stage is set what not and you're wondering impatiently what does this label actually mean Levi here's the thing you may have noticed um that we've been exclusively focusing on the US in this video it's not because we think the United States is the best country in the world it's just that that's where everybody who watches our video is from but also because every other country on Earth has their own certification process with their own set of standards and guidelines and we just don't have the time for it as you're starting to see defining something can actually be a lot harder than it looks so for the sake of this video we're focusing on food production organic labels so you know with all that in mind here is our first actual definition of organic far too many minutes into this video the label organic generally means that the product in question is made using at least a certain percentage of natural ingredients and production practices today the USDA organic certification has four different labeling classes 100 organic organic made with Organic ingredients and specific organic ingredients according to the U.S department of Agriculture website they conduct on-site inspections audits residue testing and investigations all to ensure that the products meet their standards before they get that label in order to get that label on a single ingredient food like raw chicken breasts or bell peppers for example you need to have at least 95 percent organic and of course as you know the label has expanded to include multi-ingredient products too like box of macaroni and cheese which has to have at least 70 percent organic contents to be able to use the made with organic products labeled this last part is how we have ended up with Organic labels on a bunch of crazy packaged stuff like Pop-Tarts and this is a theme that you're going to see across the board The Organic certification is just a rule book for a certain kind of industrialized food in their efforts to regulate anything the organic label essentially has had to bend to the whims of these massive all oligopoly style corporations that control the food production industry in the United States they have to limit the scope of What organic actually means so that the big boys would play ball with them so let's try and answer a simple question is organic better for you than conventional food first of all it completely depends on what type of food you're even talking about right of course the nutritional difference between a organic or conventional TV dinner is going to be very different than the difference between an organic or conventional cucumber for young people watching a TV dinner was like this microwaved meal that you would eat by yourself in front of the TV or even as a family unlike today where just every meal is eaten in front of a screen boom roasted when it comes to the nutrients in a single food item you're basically getting the same thing whether you're going from an organic apple versus a conventional Apple the only real difference is that eating conventional Foods puts you at a higher risk of pesticides and insecticide exposure because organic crops are limited on the kinds of things that they can use to grow their crops did you get all that because here's another twist that not a lot of people understand just because a food product has the USDA organic label on it does not mean that there are absolutely no pesticide residues on that product several pesticides are approved by the USDA they're just different ones that have been decided to be less bad there is of course debate on whether or not this small amount of residue that you might ingest is actually going to be dangerous but organic foods just means that you're buying something with a lower potential for exposure but what about the workers see the organic label also doesn't say anything about ethics recent Studies have shown that organic farming is not synonymous with better working conditions while they aren't necessarily inhaling the non-organic pesticides workers on Organic Farms usually have to do more back-breaking work because the farming is more intensive as a result this is because organic farming uses more Hands-On processes and less machine scenery and organic produce usually requires more physical working hours than conventional produce does not enough research has been done to thoroughly compare the different working conditions of each but we do know for sure that workers do not have enough Protections in place but this just goes to say that if you're buying the label because you think people are being treated better that's not necessarily the case and then we get to the environment oh my God now most experts do agree that fewer pesticides and less intense pesticides are better for biodiversity soil quality and pollution levels but here's the thing conventional industrial agriculture has manipulated nature to create the perfect Emoji tomato and to make corn crops that produce 10x what their natural ancestors did this is what nature looks like normally and this is a conventional farm this is what bananas look like normally and this is what bananas look like today without all the cheat codes of the modern industrial food complex organic processes just can't produce the same amount of food with the same amount of land as a result organic farming at this scale just isn't as efficient and as we see global population continuing to rise it's hard to see a world in which this kind of organic farming is able to meet the demand which leads us to the price why does organic food cost more sadly the organic label is expensive and there are two main reasons for this demand and production costs in 2021 the global organic food and beverage Market was valued at 188 billion dollars and it's expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 13 until 2030. this growth is happening across all food categories which tells us the consumers today are willing to pay higher prices to feel better about their food choices that's actually a good thing but you also have to keep in mind that organic food was already more expensive than conventional food before people cared about it because it just costs more to make it conventional Farms are a lot bigger than most Organic Farms so they can charge less money per unit that they produce it's the economy of scale here the cost of scaling an organic farm is a lot more than it is worth typically and that is why there is just less to go around which drives the price up even more and then on top of it it's like just the final little nail in the coffin it's that getting the certification itself also costs money we talk about this more in our Whole Foods video which you should definitely check out it gives you more of the farmer's POV and if you've made it this far holy all right just put it up put it up here dude we freaking did it that was uh that was a haul that was a long boy and if you're here with me I'm gonna freaking like your video because I'm impressed but since you made it we get to get into some of the exciting stuff this these are the things that are actually gonna make you feel good about yourself instead of just leaving this video depressed and sad today we are seeing a Renaissance of pre-colonial indigenous and nature centered food production all over the world from a ton of different communities and on top of this we're also seeing huge booms in Tech driven farming Solutions like vertical farming as well these are system disrupting Technologies and truly Local Foods and they are going to be your best way to ensure that the food that is on your plate is the healthiest and most nutritious that it can be I bet you any money if you do any Googling around where you live you'll be able to find a farm market or a stand or some sort of CSA that you can get your food from there is a ton of marketing dollars that have gone into making you feel better about buying certain things over other things and to keep you confused and in the dark about how your food is actually produced and it would be amazing if there was just a single table that just said this is good this is bad but that is not the world that we live in now while this video might not have given me any hope for the organic label itself I hope that it has given you some hope for local small scale food producers near you please go and support people in your community thanks for watching this video and we'll see you in the next one [Music] thank you