The Best Reasons To Grow Food Crops Organically

Have you ever gone grocery shopping and found a warning nestled in your produce? A warning found in broccoli said, wash for three minutes and rinse well before eating. What the warning was referring to was washing away the pesticides on our food. While washing our food is a good idea, you cannot simply wash all the poisons away. Pesticides soak down under some thin skinned fruits and vegetables we eat. These pesticides have been linked with cancer and many other diseases.


Organic farming is a form of agriculture that excludes or strictly limits the use of synthetic fertilizers and synthetic pesticides. Instead of using pesticides, they rely on natural methods of maintaining productivity and controlling pests.
With such practices as crop rotation, green manure, composting and biological pest control, organic farmers maintain soil quality and prevent soil erosion. Over 30 Billion tons of topsoil is eroded each across the United States and Europe because of non-organic farming methods.


Modern farming techniques strip the soil of nutrients and minerals because of mono cropping. Single crops are much more susceptible to pests. Despite a tenfold increase in the use of pesticides, some insects have become genetically resistant to certain types of pesticides. Non-organic farmers must use larger amounts of pesticides and continually seek evermore-potent ones.


Another best reason to grow crops organically is to insure the foods antioxidants. Organically grown fruits and vegetables have higher antioxidant levels than their non-organic counterparts.
The reasoning is within the plant itself. A plant will produce Flavonoids in response to plant stressors. Plants produce bitter or harsh substances as protection from predators. If a plant is not stressed because a pesticide is protecting it from bugs, the need for production of Flavonoids is reduced. The plant that is organically grown will produce more Flavonoids because it has to protect itself from predators. Humans reap the rewards of organic farming with better tasting, and healthier foods.


Modern farming use more petroleum than any other single industry with all their equipment. Since organic farms are smaller and usually family operations, they depend on human energy and conserve fossil fuel. For small farmers who find competing with large commercial farms difficult, organic farming may be one of the few survival tactics left.
With the monster equipment of modern farms, you might think non-organic farming would be much more productive. With the arsenal or pesticides, fertilizers, and fungicides which non-organic farming has at its disposal, you might think this method would produce much more food. Studies have shown that organic farming is just as productive, if not more so. A study in the 2008 issue of Agronomy Journal showed that organic methods could yield crops equivalent to those of non organic without depleting the soil.


There are many reasons to grow our food crops organically, but the best reason is to save the planet. All the other reasons, are just parts of this one big reason. As Aristotle once realized, “The whole is more than the sum of its parts”.


Sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page