food

Given that the EPA is now apparently rubber stamping whatever pesticides come across their desk, there is still a health argument, but when it comes to environmental sustainability, nitrogen is an elephant in the room. Crop productivity is as high as it is because of Haber-Bosch nitrogen, and if you remove that as a possible input, your options are:

• Haber-Bosch nitrogen obtained by first feeding it to animals in the form of conventionally grown crops and then applied as manure or meat, blood, and bone meal
• Naturally fixed nitrogen as concentrated in fish or pasture-raised chickens or cattle
• Mined nitrates (naturally mined minerals qualify as organic)
• A mysterious fourth thing (on farm nitrogen management with legumes, but that's a supplement and not sufficient to produce high yields)

I think there's a case for a sensible system that combines synthetic nitrogen fertilizers with smarter soil organic matter management practices and IPM that doesn't rely on pesticides as a first resort, but such a system would still be less productive (in terms of gross output) and more complex than commercial farming, so there needs to be a market for it. "We didn't completely throw the baby out with the bathwater" farming.

Those same people probably think recycling helps save the environment too.