By supporting organic agriculture, the consumer is supporting a sustainable model of land use. |
Save Energy American farms have changed drastically in the last three generations, from family-based small businesses dependent on human energy to large-scale factory farms highly dependent on fossil fuels. Modern farming uses more petroleum than any other single industry, consuming 12 percent of the country’s total energy supply. More energy is not used to produce synthetic fertilizers than to till, cultivate, and harvest all the crops in he US. Organic farming is still mainly based on labor-intensive practices such as weeding by hand and using green manures and crop covers rather than synthetic fertilizers to build up soil. Organic produce also tends to travel fewer miles from field to table. Food Travels Shorter Distances Eating food produced locally enables people's immune systems to learn which particles are harmless o the body. Hay fever, asthma, and allergies occur when the immune system overreacts to benign airborne particles such as pollen or components of food as if they were highly toxic. Autoimmune diseases such as arthritis, multiple sclerosis, and early-onset diabetes occur when the immune system mistakenly attacks healthy cells of tissues in the body as if they were foreign cells. Keep Chemicals Off Your Plate Many pesticides approved for use by the EPA were registered long before extensive research linking these chemicals to cancer and other diseases had been established. Now th EPA considers that 60 percent of all herbicides, 90 percent of all fungicides, and 30 percent of all insecticides are carcinogenic. The bottom line is that pesticides are poisons designed to kill living organisms, and can also be harmful to humans. In addition to cancer, pesticides are implicated in birth defects, nerve damage, and genetic mutation. Protect Farm Worker Health and Small Farmers A National Cancer Institute study found that farmers exposed to herbicides had a six times greater risk than non-farmers of contacting cancer. The US continues to lose family farms, making organic farming one of the few survival tactics left for family farms. Support A True Economy Current prices for conventionally grown foods do not reflect the costs of federal subsidies to conventional agriculture, the cost of contaminated drinking water, loss of wildlife habitat and soil erosion, or the cost of the disposal and clean up of hazardous wastes generated by the manufacturing of pesticides. Consumers can pay now or pay later. Although organic foods might seem more expensive than conventional foods, conventional food prices do not reflect hidden costs born by taxpayers in the form of subsidies. Other hidden costs include pesticide regulation and testing, hazardous waste disposal and clean-up, and environmental damage. Promote Biodiversity Mono-cropping is the practice of planting large plots of land with the same crop year after year. While That approach tripled farm production between 1950 and 1970, the lack of natural diversity of plant life has left the soil lacking in natural minerals and nutrients. To replace the nutrients, chemical fertilizers are used, often in increasing amounts. Single crops are also much more susceptible to persists, making farmers more reliant on pesticides. Despite an ever increasing use of pesticides, crop losses due to insects continue to rise—partly because some insects have become genetically resistant to certain pesticides. |
|
