When I saw a label of organic, I immediately assume it's over-priced fraud product. To me, it's same as those stupid product which claims magical cure for cancer.
Whether you prefer the flavour, or think the restrictions of organic are necessary or not, or don't go far enough are another matter.
Those production and husbandry standards aren't always quite what we expect them to be. You should see how "free range" chickens are raised. Australian farmers who actually care about the welfare of the chickens and the quality of the end product have been trying to create a new brand "pasture raised" or "pastured eggs" (in the case of eggs) because lobbying by the major producers watered down the standards to the point it's disgusting to see chicken feedlots where chooks are free to range at 10,000 hens per hectare.
Free range is marketed to imply old time farm yards with a few dozen hens happily pecking around some rural spacious idyll. The reality is depressingly different. Whether you care about organic aims at all, buying EU organic gets you the "most" free range eggs from best treated hens, that you can get at the supermarket. Which is more than a bit silly.
You won't be surprised to learn I'm in favour of much stronger regulation and definitions on food and production labelling. While we're at it, adding carbon impact to labels.
https://newfoodeconomy.org/organic-food-fraud-usda-doj-randy... This was a case just last month. $142 million in false organic grain over 7 years that was shipped as feed to animals later sold as organic.
Thankfully the EU is doing better, though that may well change markedly for the worse here in the UK after Brexit. Especially if the much mooted, and one-sided UK-US trade deal is made real, not just mythical rainbows and unicorns.
In practice worse pesticides and fertilizer imply that huge quantities are used still yielding less per square meter.
They do not, in fact it is a last resort.
[0]https://www.ecfr.gov/cgi-bin/text-idx?SID=94361624bc8858349d...
The difference is that there are no restrictions regarding the use of 1) synthetic pesticides 2) man-made fertilizers, 3) GMOs and 4) antibiotics.
So Integrated Farming is just like Organic Farming, but without the bullshit.
On the other hand, the amount of energy used to grow, process and distribute the product is likely to be higher than for non-organic due to less efficient fertilization, more cultivation, lower yields due to pests, and smaller-scale production units.
What about the presumption is wrong?
Also https://www.ams.usda.gov/grades-standards/organic-labeling-s...
“Organic”
“Organic” can be used to label any product that contains a minimum of 95 percent organic ingredients (excluding salt and water). Up to 5 percent of the ingredients may be nonorganic agricultural products that are not commercially available as organic and/or nonagricultural products that are on the National List.1
Principal display panel: May include USDA organic seal and/or organic claim.
Information Panel: Must identify organic ingredients (e.g., organic dill) or via asterisk or other mark.
Everything?
You quote a bunch of resources, and none of them support the presumption you made "lower amounts of pesticide and herbicide residues in the product, hence some tiny lessening of the probability of getting cancer. Some would also assert that the products have better nutritional values". The presumption is understandable, intuitive, but has no basis in reality.
The presumption seems to be that organic farming is closer to traditional farming and avoids practices that pollute the products and the environment. However, the government doesn't see it that way, and describes (in the resources you quote) "organic" in a way that does not require to avoid polluting practices as such, but only certain types of polluting practices... while farmers/manufacturers (obviously) compensate for them.
In particular, if we're talking about produce, then the large growers who want to satisfy the USDA Organic Label criteria of "Produce can be called organic if it’s certified to have grown on soil that had no prohibited substances applied for three years prior to harvest. Prohibited substances include most synthetic fertilizers and pesticides." achieve that by using nonsynthetic fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides in large quantities (as they're less efficient as the "default" materials). The substances replacing standard synthetic fertilizers and pesticides are not safer for humans, they're not safer for the environment, they're simply "more natural" because of arbitrary criteria.
While an organic farmer could make produce with less pesticides, that's not cost efficient, so on average mass-produced organic produce that meets all the USDA Organic Label requirements generally has more harmful herbicide and nitrate residues than the "default" non-organic produce. A friend works in food safety testing labs, and most of products that exceed the allowed limits of various unhealthy substances or are near the limits come from certified organic farms.
Citation needed.
In fact, the organic program requires farmers to manage the weeds and insects using methods besides pesticides, and only allows non-routine pesticide use in the exceptional case.
>friend works in food safety testing labs, and most of products that exceed the allowed limits of various unhealthy substances or are near the limits come from certified organic farms.
This is likely due to contamination and fraud, since the letter and the spirit of the law in the United States do not permit routine use of pesticides of any type.
All that said, our current practices and facilities cannot recycle or produce enough non-fossil fuel fertilizer to support or agricultural practices.
In order to produce fertilizer renewably in an artificial way, ie draw it from the air and water in a chemical facility, we need to increase our energy usage in making fertilizer 10x or more over. Which essentially means we need near the current entire world's worth of energy production produced again, renewably, for the sole production of fertilizer.