Goodness! I had no idea that my question could create such a debate! 🥒🍅🥕🌽🌶🍏 Good gardening everyone!
Well, I think the fairest reply to that is "well done"...
The common phrase used for many subjects is that "this is a minefield" - you can take it further in that the mines are usually in 'no mans land' and organic seeds represent one such subject between the established views.
It's a bit like a marriage where you agree about most things but there are a few flashpoints surrounded by barbed wire. I think that realistically this is healthy.
However I'm convinced that any ideology or dogma creates unnecessary conflict - the distinction between 'chemicals' and everything else is (as many have already said) - completely imaginary.
On the other hand the difference between people who want easy money and those who want to improve the world couldn't be more real.
First, do no harm. I'd add - especially long term harm, especially insidious harm.
There's also a real difference between on one side: a minority who want clear rules, absolute truth (and ideally the belief that they don't need to listen to anyone else), and on the other hand a minority who accept that life is messy and millions of years have made life so used to it that it won't work properly without messy (so they don't need to listen to anyone else). We are all between these two extremes.
I've just gone well past the battlefield metaphor and I don't want to go back - so I'd hate to see armed camps emerge like in politics etc.
I regard myself as a passionate moderate - but moderation is a delicious paradox - if you have too much moderation it becomes immoderate.
Still, somebody has to do it:
The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity (though that's the only bit of Yeats' doomy rhyme that I agree with).
Organic growers in the 70s were too concerned with finding a safer way to grow to be bothered about the completely imaginary concept of "completely safe".
You'd be surprised how many "scare" deaths are safer than an adult than catching a peanut in their mouth.This was a US researcher quoted in 80s (?) New Scientist and now appears to be completely lost, but despite being a tiny fraction of choking deaths I
think it turned out to be more dangerous than lightning strikes and shark attack etc.
Once you've avoided the obvious pitfalls above, then and only then, you might be able to get away with saying
What works, works.
Cheers.