Misunderstanding for sale

In "Behind the Organic Industrial-Complex" Michael Pollan reveals some of the many ways that corporations are playing off people's good intentions to sell more products.  The people have been sold on the good feeling they get from buying organic but are unaware of what the term really means.  It has a meaning to chemists and it has a different meaning to the USDA.  Companies will jump through hoops and manipulate technicalities in order to legally label their agricultural products organic because they can sell these products at a higher price.

As an organic gardener the whole thing is quite confounding to me.  I do not spray pesticides on my plants for a number of reasons.  Most bugs that attack crop plants... well that was already biased in its wording.  The bugs do not attack the plants any more than i do.  They eat them.  And so do I.  And that i put the seed in a particular spot does not give me ownership or any exclusive claim.  From the plants perspective i do it as much harm as good.  

I do not spray pesticides out of laziness and frugality.  I spend almost no money on gardening- saving seed from year to year, making my own newspaper starter pots, transporting tools and produce by bike so as to not even spend on gas.  I feed myself without use of money and wouldn't deny anyone else that same joy. It is easy to grow way more food than I need.  So if bugs cause my plants (i use the possessive 'my' only in full understanding that it is mutual- they are my plants only because i am their gardener) to produce fewer fruits i will not starve but merely will have less work to do harvesting.  I do not wash my vegetables because i am not afraid of eating dirt and i know that that is all that there could possibly be on them.  

My vegetables are ugly by grocery store standards and while sometimes they taste better than anything you can buy other times they are tough.  But none of that bothers me.  I am not trying to sell them and so i have that much less superficiality to concern myself with.  It is liberating.