Organic farming permits organic pesticides, half of which are cancerous as well and may have worse environmental impacts [0]. The organic label doesn't guarantee that you're getting more ethical/better/safer products - and it is worth a lot of money.
A few thoughts:
Does 'organic' regulation permit the use of paraffin coatings? I imagine the prolific use of paraffin in conventional produce could make rinsing away pesticides quite difficult.
Copper sulfate is one of the most common organic pesticides that I am aware of. It's certainly nothing to gorge on. However, when handled safely, it may be preferable to directly engineering a pesticide into the plant.
On the organic farms I tended, there was very minimal use of pesticides or herbicides. The inherent diversity of the farm allowed the temporary discontinuation (rather than synthetic maintenance) of problematic plants, and either experimentation with others, or the continuation of what was presently working. For weed control we relied on hay and profuse weeding by hand, some of the weeds being edible (amaranth) and providing snacks during the process, at least for me ;) Personally, I prefer this method to glyphosate.
The term "natural" may not be synonymous with "healthy and safe", but it does functionally delimit e.g. Roundup from acetic acid.
"For weed control we relied on hay and profuse weeding by hand,"
For a while I've said that "robotic fast food joints" are one of the touchstones I'm using to say that robotics has really arrived. I've been considering adding "robotic weeders" to my list. How much would our agriculture change if instead of pesticides, we physically weeded everything?
The robot may not even need to "remove things by their roots", which would be quite complicated; if it can sweep by reliably every two or three days just trimming everything that isn't desired crop would probably do fine.
Bushy plants low to the ground might take more work, but given the way corn grows it seems like we could robotically weed corn pretty effectively.
Of course, it would result in less hours/pay for some, but I'd still welcome effective robotic (solar-powered?) weeding anytime. Maybe it would work with corn, but the vegetables I'm accustomed to are delicate and I suspect it would be a great undertaking to duplicate the efficiency of the hand on a large scale. I'm honestly not sure if "trimming" would work or not. Seems frightfully difficult to me, but so is ingenuity. PS: I am not a professional farmer, so take my opinions accordingly.
Organic farming permits organic pesticides, half of which are cancerous as well and may have worse environmental impacts [0]. The organic label doesn't guarantee that you're getting more ethical/better/safer products - and it is worth a lot of money.
[0] https://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~lhom/organictext.html
Funny, when I first saw your comment it was collecting negative votes, so I came in to lend it some support. Now it's on top!