Do you buy organic food? If so, why?

Organic Food

Organic foods are produced by farming in ways that do not use pesticides or synthesized nutrients or other chemicals considered potentially harmful such as growth regulators. This means that it is necessary to find other ways to keep pests and diseases down and to maintain suitable nutrient levels in the soil.

One way is to use crop rotation. Crop rotation makes it harder for pests and diseases to build up in the soil, as their host plants are only grown in one place every four or more years. With some plants such as root crops (for example turnips or potatoes), it is possible to use mechanical weed control between the rows. With other crops such as wheat or barley it is not. Different crops require different nutrients. Growing clover plus grass allows the grass to shade out most of the weeds. The clover, being a legume, has nodules on its roots which fix nitrogen into the soil for use by following crops. Animals grazing on the grass also help to keep the weeds down, and then some provide organic food for humans. Animals overwintered in barns on straw provide manure which is spread over the crops to provide nutrients. Alternatively, crops (green manures) can be grown specifically to add to the nutrient content of the soil. Organic farming is more difficult if it does not include animals.

Organic farm means that it is not necessary to import nutrients and pesticides, which have adverse environmental affects such as harm to wildlife and to the waterways and aquifers (underground layers of porous rock holding water which can be extracted for our use). The energy needed to create these chemicals and to transport them is also saved. For example, a cereal crop may need 50-70kg of nitrogen per hectare, which entails about 150 litres of oil to produce. There is not necessarily any saving in the amount of machinery use on farms, however. Organic farming is not simple, as you cannot simply buy and apply a chemical spray to deal with any problem that comes up. Also, in the UK at least, the cost of chemicals has more than paid for itself in increased yields. However, it is not always cost-effective to precisely tailor chemicals use to the exact needs of a farm, so chemicals tend to be overused. The chemicals that get into our drinking water may be harmful to our health. Nitrates have been a problem in Europe, for example.

There are those who argue that organic farming cannot produce a high enough yield to feed the world. Others say that while yields may be lower, they should still be adequate and that organic farming gives more resilience in times of drought, and each farmer would be spreading his or her risk by growing a greater variety of crops. The amounts of different kinds of crop grown in each country might change. The main losers would be large corporations who make money from fertilizers, pesticides, or large scale monoculture farming. Many countries and farmers are in debt from buying their products.

Another problem with intensive farming that organic farming may help to reduce is soil erosion, which can lead to situations such as the "Dust Bowl" in the USA in the 1920s. If the soil structure is well maintained, there is less need for irrigation, too. If irrigation is necessary but there is not enough, then water will be drawn back up to the surface to evaporate, bringing dissolved chemical salts up with it. This salinisation can make the soil unsuitable for most crops. This has happened a lot in Australia and the USA in particular.

Rachel Carson wrote in "Silent Spring", "Over increasingly large areas of the US, spring now comes unheralded by the return of birds, and the early mornings are strangely silent where once they were filled with the beauty of bird song". Birds feed on insects and on seeds. Herbicides allow more autumn sown crops to be sown, which means fewer stubble fields for the birds to feed in over winter. Pesticides mean fewer insects for them to eat. Birds at the top of the food chain pick up concentrated chemicals from the birds they eat which can kill them or their young. So organic farming can be good for the birds. One insect whose loss can be felt is the bumblebee, which pollinates many plants, including food plants.

Organic farming also does away with administering drugs routinely to livestock to promote growth or prevent disease (though animals are treated if they need it, and kept out of the food chain where necessary). Intensive farming with routine administration of drugs can cause the drugs to get into the food chain, and to make it a lot easier for bacteria resistant to drugs to develop. When a disease does hit intensive animal farms, such as classical swine fever, it can necessitate the slaughter of millions of animals. It can be hard to tell a vaccinated animal from a diseased one, and new vaccines tend to be bioengineered.

So, people produce and buy organic because they care about their health and that of the environment. Last, but not least, many people believe that organic food simply tastes better.

Demand for Organic Foods Soaring

The market for organic foods in the United States has grown from $3.57 billion in 1997 to $10.38 billion in 2003, according to Organic Trade Association, and are expected to reach $14.5 billion by the end of 2005. Organic foods are grown without pesticides, fertilizers, biotechnology, antibiotics or growth hormones. The range of organic foods has also grown.

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