The Environmental Working Group lists kale as one of the most contaminated foods on the market, topped only by strawberries and spinach. -- Time
I would say grow your own. Those three crops can be grown by anyone, even if in a porch box. I find strawberries to be too much trouble to grow in volume, but my wife loves taking the grandchildren out to the strawberry patches to harvest their fill. Spinach can only be grown here in the spring or fall due to the long daylight, but kale grows her (or is harvestable) almost all year long. You just have to dig it out of the snow in the winter if it isn't protected.
It's a shame about the kale. A few years ago I went to Whl Foods, 70 miles from me, and bought a few bunches of organic kale to freeze. When I started to wash it, it was covered in kale lice - very difficult to see. I had to throw it all away. I was told that farmers who get kale lice, just turn it under and replant. My local grocery store had frozen organic strawberries for a while. I bought organic fresh strawberries recently at Whl Foods. I ate turnip greens growing up. I wonder if they're any safer.
Speaking from experience, it's impossible to grow vegetables or fruits these days without using at least some insecticides. My only advice is to wash it thoroughly before eating.
It is somewhat difficult where you live, @Shirley Martin, but we have very few vegetable pests here, thus no chemicals to control them. If you just have a small garden, you can use a row cover and very few things will get through it...unless they are already in the soil under the cover, of course, but that can be addressed too. It is always good to thoroughly wash fresh produce, even if it says it has been washed. Organic produce is especially important to wash as manure is often used as a fertilizer, and you don't want that in your salad. Some recommend using a dilute vinegar solution to wash produce, as it denatures some insecticides, but it won't remove the wax that often coats veggies to keep them from drying out.
On the flip side of the coin, ..on the least contaminated list is.. Corn, Broccoli, cabbage Pineapples ..to name but a few...
I do not know why those three are the top three but to me, everything that grows has to be washed especially and doubly, those veggies that are grown low to the ground and hand picked. Naturally, we wash them for bugs, sediment, fertilizer and pesticides but the folks who pick them are not always as health conscious as we might like them to be. It’s a hard and with the exception of gaining a paycheck, a nearly thankless job but they’re out in the fields and when ya gotta go, ya gotta go. Nuff said.
I always thoroughly wash produce. Washing or peeling fruits and vegetables won’t protect you from systemic pesticides spread throughout the plant's tissues. This is from Consumer Reports, 2017
I notice your link is from 2010. Have they made progress since then? Lowe's says it will cut out neonic pesticides – by 2019
Fortunately, most farmers don't use systemics on food crops, as their is a big hassle involved. Monsanto once developed a potato that contained a pesticide, but the FDA made them register it as an insecticide and everyone who knew about it didn't want to eat an insecticide-containing potato, so Monsanto withdrew it from the market.
How do they keep organic apples and peaches from having worms? My BIL has a peach tree. He didn't spray it last year and every one of them had several worms. It was a total crop failure. Truthfully, I don't have a lot of faith in organically grown produce. I don't think it is possible to have picture pretty produce without using something to control bugs and worms. Maybe where @Don Alaska lives because I can see how the extreme cold would eliminate most of the pests. But certainly not here in the deep south.
There are insecticides that are acceptable within organic standards, but most organic farmers worry more about the taste than the appearance. I visited a cousin in Pennsylvania who had a large pick-your-own orchard. He had one orchard for the city folks from Philadelphia, and one "for folks who know about apples" (his words). The city orchard had stuff like Red Delicious and other varieties found in stores. The other orchard was organic and contained mostly heirloom varieties like Old Homestead--not as pretty but with much better flavor. You are correct, @Shirley Martin it is much easier to grow organically in the North, at least from the pesticide point of view.