Imagine organic food was rationed and you weren't on the list. A 1975 cookie experiment explains why that would make you want it more. Then the notice comes down, and the real numbers aren't far off.
In March Fonterra forecast a record organic milk price. The final number beat it. Put it next to conventional milk and the gap between the two roughly doubled in a single season, while the ordinary price went backwards.
An Australian charity bought supermarket fruit and veg and sent it to a lab. In New Zealand, only the government does that, 300 samples a year. Its latest report found fipronil on NZ spinach. Here's what else it found, and what it doesn't test for.
National created the world's first organics minister, then told OANZ it has no specific policy for growing organics. Mike Butterick explained why on the last Vote Organic webinar, and had a go at other parties over market access while he was at it.
Daniel Eb finished his Vote Organic interview by telling organic voters his party probably isn't their best option. Here's what the Opportunity Party offers growers anyway, where it stands on GE, and what it said on the scorecard.
Some of you asked how to pay for this. Some of you didn't wait and sent tips. Now there's a proper way to do it, and everything stays free.
NZ First ticked six of seven boxes on OANZ's organic scorecard. Mark Patterson was asked about the one it didn't, why NZ First backed the ACVM bill, and what he'd do as organics minister. His written answers promise more than he did on the call.
The Greens were the only party to tick all seven boxes on OANZ's organic scorecard. So OANZ opened by asking Steve Abel why the word "organic" hardly appears in Green policy. Here's what he said on that, GE, small growers and exports.
ACT didn't fill in the organic sector's election scorecard. On 29 September its minister Andrew Hoggard showed up to explain why, and to set out what ACT will and won't do for organics: no money, no minister, and a Gene Technology Bill he still backs.
Fenton Hazelwood asked whose name is on the box when GM rules shift. Here's the same question from the shopping trolley: a GM tomato already approved here, a gene-silencing hive treatment being trialled here, and two rulebooks that disagree about what counts.
A Massey study found NZ children carried more of one pesticide marker than American kids, mostly from food. Studies that switched people to organic saw urine levels fall within days. What that does and doesn't prove, including the finding an organic site might skip.
A new baby, a bad news story, a weird ingredient. Twelve real reasons people start buying organic, and how much of the evidence actually holds up.
the month in food
September ran on the election: a first organic pledge, two parties that answered none of seven questions, and a bacon label the government won't fix. Plus who owns the biggest organic dairy farm, why McDonald's wants our beef, and a hot sauce that says organic.
gene technology
Farmers Weekly says consumers are warming to gene editing. The story names no survey. Surveys keep finding people don't know what gene editing is, the studies I could read in full all explained it before asking, and the speaker's funders include Bayer and Syngenta.
xanthan gum
I bought a Nelson hot sauce because it said organic and 100% natural. Then I looked up the thickener on the label: where xanthan gum came from, how it's made, and what it does in your gut.
organic
In 1976 a Lincoln lecturer who researched herbicides started an organic plot and borrowed a British name for it. Fifty years on, the Biological Husbandry Unit is still there, and it's throwing a free party.
organic
Buying organic isn't one decision, it's two jobs. Working out whether it's worth the money, then finding somewhere that sells it. Neither costs money exactly. Both cost hours. An economist in 1899 worked out why that's the part nobody counts.
Food System
Trust in news, government and supermarkets has taken a beating since 2020, and the packet won't tell you what's in it either. Trust didn't vanish; it shrank to people we can see. That's the grower at the stall, the farm gate, and the back garden.
Election 2026
Organics Aotearoa New Zealand put the same seven questions to seven parties this election. Two didn't answer. Here's where the other five actually stand.
Fruit and Veg
The spear you buy this spring was powered by last autumn's fern. Here's what else went into it.
International Organic Day
This goes out at the exact minute of today's equinox, the same instant Europe marks its Organic Day. New Zealand's own organic reform just closed for submissions. No ceremony. Just a SurveyMonkey link and an inbox at MPI.
Organic farming
A Herald column used Sri Lanka's 2021 fertiliser ban to warn New Zealand off organic farming. The Sri Lanka facts hold up. The comparison doesn't, and the column's author sits on the boards of a fertiliser co-operative and DairyNZ, which pays for content on the same platform.
Politics
In August, the organic sector told every party the same thing: nobody has a policy for us. On Sunday, one of them finally did.
beef
Underground Festival is moving to a Waikato farm that raises, kills, butchers and sells its own animals without any of it leaving the district. That chain is rarer than it sounds, and the gap it closes is the same gap that keeps the word organic off good meat.
