Organic Farming

The current drive towards natural farming isn't just about eating healthier, although this is part of it. It is helpful for you to eat organic crops, as everyone knows, and the absence of pesticides or human-made fertilizers is a definate bonus. However, when we obtain foods grown by natural farming methods, it is about more than just buying food. It's also about buying an idea, and an image of purity and "dogoodedness". We like to think that we are buying in to a bygone time, while simultaneously indulging in a Utopian future. You see, the images associated with natural farming are quite ambiguous. On the one hand, they incorporate this ideal of the family farmer, who has worked the land for generations upon generations with blood, sweat and tears. On the other hand, there is the idea of working for the future, and starting a new way of life that will preserve the earth and help to undo some of the damage that we have all done. Both of these ideas of organic farming, however, are just a partial piece of the organic pie.

As we all know, natural organic food is excellent in quality and flavor. However, unless we specifically know that it comes from a small, local natural organic farm, their is a chance that it is does not. Natural farming is big business now. Do we think that nationwide chains stocks themselves soley out of the ma and pa farms that operate with one tractor, a couple of barns and a few animals. If we do, we need to rethink our position. There is so much money to be made with natural and organic farming, that the big food product bullies have taken it over, the same as they did with the rest of farming almost a century ago. We can get food grown organically locally, but we have to go to your local organic food store or Farmer's Market to do it. If you find yourself at the local health food store browse the labels and ask the health food store employees where the food has originated.

Our idea of rebuilding the future is also a tad bit off the mark. Although organic farming in my opinion is superior for us, our kids and the enviroment because it does not put the same toxic pesticides and fertilizers into the soil, this advantage doesn't address the commercial agriculture techniques. The farming techniques that are being used wreak havoc on both the topsoil and the ecosystem through their huge fields harvesting just one strain of one kind of plant year after year. We need to increase no-till farming practices across the planet or, "we face serious climate, soil quality and food production problems in the next 20 to 50 years". That warning from scientists appeared in the journal Science.

Bascially In no-till agriculture, farmers plant seeds without using a plow to turn the soil. The soil will lose most of it carbon content during plowing, which releases carbon dioxide gas into the atmosphere. As you know, increased levels of CO2 in the atmosphere have been associated with global warming.

It is this, in addition to, the pesticides and fertilizers that do the most rotten stuff to our natural environment. By supporting our local farmers, farmer's markets and reading our labels we can go a long way in helping preserve the soil from which our food comes.

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