I have done a lot of reading, testing and visiting of farms for my own small farm. The promises of safe, healthy food at higher yields than conventional conventional farming sounds great.
I have researched 4 types of farming
Unfortunately i will not be able to provide links to scientific studies or books at this time.
The differences between these 4 types are basically:
Because organic farming relies on classic pesticides the farmers are often forced to use dangerous types that are dangerous to humans and wildlife.
Because modern conventional farming has advanced techniques for choosing crop types and protecting them from pest they can get away with using very little synthetic pesticides. Unlike classic pesticides synthetic ones have to pass a lot of safety testing before they can be used. Rule of thumb: modern synthetic pesticides are safe
Finally due to the options modern conventional farming has, the crop will usually end up being better tasting, prettier to look at, bigger in size and cheaper to produce.
In the organic vs conventional discussion a lot of people fail to realize or mention that modern conventional farming is at a "space age level", near my home there is a tech research company that designs cutting edge farming machines. These things are basically huge robots that can run a farm almost on their own. Almost all of the farming here occurs in greenhouses that have full climate control with pests being naturally dealt with through the use of wasps and ladybugs, note that these are not organic farms.
I've been wondering whether there's any solid evidence that organic food is healthier than conventionally produced food-- the arguments I've seen on the subject have been theoretical/aesthetic.
I'm interested in anything in the range from personal stories to scientific studies, but would prefer to avoid extremely general arguments or claims that people who prefer one or the other are demonstrating character defects.
Edited to add: Thanks for the replies. I'm hoping for experiments which test the effects of food produced in various ways on organisms, especially multi-cellular organisms. It was interesting to find out that plants which have to fight off insects for themselves have more mutagens.
The mutation experiment is very cute, but it leaves out the possibility of damage that isn't related to mutation-- for example, hormonal effects. Also, if it's done on a standard bacteria acquiring the ability to make a particular nutrient, this might not be a test for mutation in general.
I realize experiments on organic vs. conventional would be difficult, especially if you're tracking human health. It would be very hard to avoid confounding factors like other lifestyle factors and income.
"Conventional food" is actually a large blob of a concept-- different pesticides, fertilizers, etc. are used on different foods at different times, so finding out what people are actually exposed to would be difficult.