TEN GOOD REASONS TO BUY ORGANIC AND BIO-DYNAMIC …

1. Protect Future Generations
   The Average child receives exposure to at least eight widely used cancer-causing pesticides in food. Food choices made now will affect your child's future health.
   
   
2. Prevent Soil erosion
   Soil is eroding seven times faster than it is being built up naturally. Soil is the foundation of the food chain. Conservation methods such as frequency of cultivation, levelling, mulching, organic growers must consider crop residue management plus design and maintenance of water application and drainage systems. Achieving control over any erosion is a pre-requisite for certification.
   
   
3. Protect Water Quality
   Pesticides contaminate water. Water makes up two-thirds of our body mass and covers three quarters of the planet thus polluting the very thing that sustains life.
   
   
4. Save Energy
   Modern farming uses more petroleum than any other single industry. More energy is now used to produce synthetic fertilisers than to till, cultivate and harvest all the crops. Organic farming is based on labour intensive practices such as hand weeding and uses green manuring and crop covers instead of synthetic fertilisers to support soil.
   
   
5. Keep Chemicals Off Your Plate
   Many pesticides approved for use were registered long before extensive research linking these chemicals to cancer. It is now considered that 60% of all herbicides, 90% of all fungicides and 30% of all insecticides may cause cancer. Pesticides are poisons designed to kill organisms so they can also harm humans. Besides cancer, they have implicated pesticides in birth defects, nerve damage and genetic mutations.
   
   
6. Protect Farm Workers
   Farmers exposed to herbicides have six times more risk than non-farmers of contracting cancer do and this figure is rising. Field workers suffer one of the highest rates of occupational illness. Farm workers' health is also a serious problem in developing nations, where we poorly regulate pesticide use and the use of banned chemicals in western countries is widespread.
   
   
7. Help Small Farmers
   Although more large-scale farms are making conversion to organic practices, most organic farms are small family owned farms. North America has lost more than 650,000 family farms in the past decade. The US Department of Agriculture predicts that half their farm production will come from 1% of farms by the year 2000. Organic farming could be one of the few survival tactics left for family farms.
   
   
8. Support A True Economy
   Although organic foods might seem more expensive than conventional foods, conventional food prices do not reflect the hidden costs of subsidies borne by society. These hide costs include fuel and transport subsidies, pesticide regulation and testing, hazardous waste disposal and clean up, environmental damage, sickness and so on …
   
   
9. Promote Bio-diversity
   Mono-cropping is the practice of planting large plots of land with the same crop year after year. While this approach tripled farm production between 1950 and 1970, the lack of natural plant life left the soil lacking in minerals and nutrients. To replace the nutrients, chemical fertilisers were used. Single crops are also much more susceptible to pests, making farmers more reliant on pesticides. Despite a tenfold increase in the use of pesticides between 1950 and 1970, crop losses due to insects doubled - because some insects had become genetically resistant to certain pesticides.
   
   
10. They Taste Different
    Organic farming starts with the nourishment of the soil, leading to nourishment of the plant, our taste buds, and us … it is something remembered from childhood.
    "Taste The Difference"
    

(with acknowledgement to the unknown author)

Article provided by: Organic Option