1. Intensive farming has devastated soil quality and led to significant soil erosion. The heavy use of chemicals has had a detrimental affect on micro-organisms in the soil and single crop farming is resulting in topsoil being lost and therefore organic matter in soils being reduced…

2. One average, children receive more exposure than an adult to at least 75 widely used cancer-causing pesticides in food. (This is because a child’s diet is different from an adults. For example Children from 1 year of age, eat more bananas, peaches & apples than adults). The food choices you make now will affect your child’s health in the future…

3. Farms which use organic farming methods generally have more organic matter in the soil, more nutrients, less run off, and less erosion…
4. Water makes up more than 60% of our body weight and covers three-quaters of the planet. Despite water’s importance, it is estimated pesticides – some which may be cancer-causing – contaminate the groundwater Australia, the USA & many other Countries throughout the world, polluting the primary source of drinking water for more than half the worlds population...

5. American farms have changed drastically in the last 30 or 40 years, from family-based small businesses dependent on human energy to “super farms”, factory farms highly dependent on fossil fuels. Modern farming uses more petrol than any other single industry, consuming 12 percent of the country’s total energy supply…

6. More energy is now used to produce synthetic fertilisers than to prepare, cultivate and harvest all the crops in the USA. Organic farming is still mainly based on labour-intensive practices such as weeding by hand and using green manures and crop covers rather than synthetic fertilisers to build up the soil. Organic produce also tends to travel fewer miles from field to table…

Although more and more large-scale farms are making the conversion to organic practices, most organic farms are small, independently owned family farms of less than 100 acres. It’s estimated that the United States has lost more than half a million family run and owned farms in the past decade…

Although organic foods might seem more expensive than that of synthetically farmed foods, conventional food prices don’t reflect the hidden costs paid for by Taxpayers, including billions of dollars in government subsidies. It also does not take into consideration other hidden costs like pesticide regulation and testing, hazardous waste disposal and clean up strategies and environmental damage...

There’s a good reason why many chefs use organic foods in their recipes – they taste better! Organic farming starts with the nourishment of the soil, which eventually leads to the nourishment of the plant and ultimately of our palates…

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 1947 and 1974, crop losses due to insects have doubled – partly because some insects have become genetically resistant to certain pesticides...

Eric Smith