The first benefit of organic food production is confidence: You'll enjoy your dinner much more when you learn that organic agriculture assures safe food, environmental protection, animal welfare and economic development, according to agricultural researchers at the African Studies Centre of Coventry University in the UK. The benefits reach your table as produce unadulterated by pesticides, grown by farmers who extend the reach of ethical trading practices and eliminate environmental toxins and unnecessary fertilizers.
Healthier Food
You can wash conventional pesticides from food--but if you don't scrub it well enough or choose foods the pesticides soaked into or took up through their roots, you may still eat substances not meant for human consumption. Organic food producers do not spray toxic bug-killers on their crops or mix similar substances into the feed they give their animals. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, farmers who want to sell products as organic must avoid any non-agricultural ingredients, synthetic or non-synthetic, not tested, approved and documented in the "National List of Allowed Synthetic and Prohibited Non-Synthetic Substances." Organic food is protected while under cultivation from pests by inherently less harmful bio-pesticides. These substances, usually extracted from pest-resistant plants, generally only target a specific or closely related insect, but are harmless to humans or other mammals. They also degrade quickly and leave no after-harvest residues on your groceries.
Sustainable Agriculture
Farm profit from organic food production has been rising since the early 1990s, according to the Food and Agricultural Organization, or FAO, a United Nations agency. In some cases organic farm produce is sought by discerning shoppers at a premium--up to 20 percent higher than conventional produce. Coupled with the organic farmer's use of crop rotation, mulching, integration of livestock and produce cultivation and other methods--which support soil sustainability and eliminate expenditures for synthetic fertilizers--organic production is an expanding market. Organic farmers represent a cohesive market force worldwide. In developing countries, organic farmers have developed the power to enforce ethical trading standards in markets often characterized by unpredictability and external market pressures, as documented by Coventry University researchers.
Pollution Reduction
The FAO reported in 1999 that some developed countries such as Germany and France subsidize farmers, or compel them legislatively, to use organic farming techniques to decrease water pollution. This trend has accelerated throughout the European Union and the Americas. Commercial and artificial fertilizers often wash off cultivated land into rivers, lakes and reservoirs with rain in the growing seasons and during the springtime snow-melt and runoff. This fertilizer burden forces excessive algal growth, depletes aquatic oxygen levels, kills fish and overworks municipal water purification systems. Use of bio-pesticides also lowers environmental toxin levels and protects useful insect species and the birds, bats and ground creatures which rely on them for a safe and plentiful food source.
Member Comments