Who's afraid of a little organic garden?

Big, bad Ag, that's who. Great article from Barbara Damrosch.
"It seems like a pretty innocent idea, doesn't it? Planting an organic vegetable garden in your yard so that your kids can eat fresh, nutritious, safe food. But now that Michelle Obama has gone and done it, big agriculture is terrified that we'll all follow her example. First came a letter addressed to her from the Mid America CropLife Association, which represents the chemical fertilizer and pesticide industries, urging the first lady to give "conventional" agriculture equal time. One of the authors separately told association members that the thought of an organic garden at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. made her "shudder." And an industrial agriculture media group, CropLife, started an online letter-writing campaign to encourage Obama to use synthetic pesticides, euphemistically called "crop protection products," which her effort seemed to impugn."
Full text here. ~Thanks Tana for the hat tip.