Are you more likely to buy produce if it's picked by hand? Do labels such as local and organic conjure up imagery of small-scale farmers keeping money in the community and sustainable living and no pesticides or fertilizer?
It's a myth created by organic trade groups. There is a reason you see few small-scale farms run by anyone over the age of 40. While young idealists may initially invest in them, the reality is there is no substitute for the hard work and it is a lousy retirement plan. Picked by hand? I have to tell you, as someone who actually grew up on a farm that was small scale and the non-technological Idyll created by organic trade groups, there is a reason I got a scholarship to go to college, and that reason was to stop picking things by hand
If you want to see what a myth that notion of agriculture is, try even having no experience and growing a tomato on your window sill.
As I noted in Science Left Behind, the people most likely to buy organic food and rail against biology are in defiance of the data - we grow far more food than 40 years ago with, on average, only 10 percent of the pesticides, we have successfully dematerialized so that no one now worries about a Population Bomb, we worry about how to keep people from getting fat.
Splat goes the theory by Louise O Fresco
