There are more than 30 studies comparing the nutrient content of organic crops and those produced conventionally with chemical fertilizers and pesticides. In these studies, various individual nutrients in individual crops were compared, such as zinc in organic versus conventional carrots, or vitamin C in organic versus conventional broccoli. These results suggest that, on average, organic crops have a higher nutrient content. While the overall outlook is favorable for organic crops, there is too little data for most individual nutrients to say anything at all. Compared to crops grown with chemical fertilizers and pesticides, organically grown crops generally have a higher vitamin C content, a lower content of carcinogenic nitrates and better protein quality.
Further work is needed on other nutrients before any definitive conclusions can be drawn.
While this nutrient content data is interesting, it does not tell us anything about the health of people and animals that consume these crops. The most relevant studies then, are not those that simply assess nutrient content, but are those that feed organic or conventional feed to animals and then look at how healthy they are. There are 14 such animal studies that have been performed over the last 70 years. The ten positive studies are summarized in Table 1. Again, these results support the notion that organically produced crops may be more conducive to good health and hence more nutritious.