The reason I try to buy organic is for environmental reasons, not specifically for human health reasons. Pesticide use impacts migratory songbirds and other birds, predator birds, honeybees, worms, spiders, bats, and other animals.
I just wish I could trust that organic licensing actually meant anything. I've read about halfway through Green Gone Wrong, and ugh! There is so much fraud and exploitation! Small producers end up with exclusive contracts with major companies as their only option to market (because the locals can't afford to buy organic, and small producers can't afford the licensing on their own, so major companies get certified and their producers--only a sample of whom are visited!--can only sell as "organic" when selling under the major's label, not when selling independently, even though it's the same land, same methods, etc.), despite the rules saying old growth deforestation and monocropping aren't "organic" they still happen, and because organic has such high demand, they happen at possibly a
higher rate than when the non-organic crops! You don't have to wait several years for pesticides and other banned chemicals to "wear off" the land before being "organic" if you can claim it's been fallow for centuries (
pulls curtain closed just ignore that by "fallow" we mean "old growth rain forest").
Totally with you on the honeybees, etc.
I also wish there was a way to say "produced in an ecologically friendly manner" that didn't say anything about GMOs. We've been modifying organisms' genes for millennia through cross-breeding and decades using radiation. Oh, yeah, the old radiation method where you douse the seeds in radiation, plant them, and see what happens, having no idea how many genes were changed in the process...yeah, that sounds way safer than changing one specific gene.