Organically grown food is growing in popularity among Americans and citizens of other countries, even though organic food prices are often higher. What is organic farming anyway and why is it more expensive?
Organic farm at Santa Cruz University. Image: onevilliageinitiative/flickr
Organic farming is simply a method of farming done without synthetic chemicals. The first agrarian civilizations farmed “organically” without relying on synthetic soil supplements to make their crops grow. Our grandparents today are also more likely to have experienced growing food organically, either on a farm, or at their own home. Synthetic fertilizers, pesticides and other chemicals meant to control food production simply didn’t exist in their time. Instead, natural farming techniques such as using neighboring livestock manure as fertilizer, rotating crop locations, planting a diversity of plants and other holistic land management methods were practiced to help keep the soil fertile and the produce healthy and rich in nutrients.
Organic Farming vs Conventional Farming
If organic farming was safe and effective for millennia, then why history’s sudden switch to conventional farming?
There are several reasons that pervaded the thinking of the time. As the US nation became industrialized, farmers dwindled and industrial workers grew, to keep up with food demands, farms were organized to become bigger, faster growing operations that were capable of feeding people living much farther away. Farms became centralized businesses that needed to supply a reliable product (produce) every year. Government subsidies hugely influenced this development. The introduction of synthetic chemicals helped achieve this end of a ‘mass production” of food, despite a dwindling production capability and quality due to heavy and the use of synthetic chemicals such as fertilizer and pesticides soil depletion.
The long term effects of farming is often misunderstood. First of all, in the long term, throughout thousands of years, farming (organic or commercial) will deplete the soil and turn a once fertile land, into a desert. Remember what farming actually is; it is the process of transforming nutrients from the ground into fruits and vegetables, which are then taken away from the land. Over time, even the best cared for farmland will eventually become depleted of resources and turn into desert land. The deserts of Iran today, once the flourishing Mesopotaimia, is one example. The 1920s Dust Bowl is a more recent example of what poor farming techniques can quickly produce.
Both these farming areas were “organic” and yet desertification took place. One way for humans to side-step this process is again, to properly manage the soil, without over-farming it. One way to stop the deserfication of farmland is to plant a forest on the area that is loosing soil quality, leaving it untouched for years, until the nutrients are restored naturally through a forest ecosystem.
So if organic farming techniques still lead to depleted soils, why is it so touted as being environmentally friendly?
There are several reasons why organic farming is superior to conventional farming. A farm that successfully grows purely organic produce, has both the art and science skills that is needed to deal with the many variables that will effect the outcome of the crops. In other words, it is a better farm. Also organic farming compared to commercial farming, slows down the process of depleting soils. What a commercial farm can do to ruin soils within a decade, takes hundreds of years for an organic farm to accomplish.
Healthy Soil Equals Healthy Food
Firstly, fertile soil, the foundation to any farm, is actually the by-products of living bacteria and protezoia found within that soil. In other words, living soil is a fertile soil ready to grow crops. When synthetic chemicals are introduced to grow crops, it is a sign that the soil is no longer being replenished by natural farming techniques and the farmer (or corporation) is trying to side-step natural systems and syntethically produce food- which has been mastered into a science. The greatest problem with synthetic farming is that not only do the chemicals effectively “kill” the living soil, what is not uptaken by the fruit or vegetable, are left in the ground and does not decompose, or break down naturally. Year after year in synthetic farming, thick chemical sprays are used to grow the food, providing the artificial“nutrition” of the plant, which we eat.
Organic farming is more expensive, mainly because such farms do not use such commercial methods of spraying synthetic chemicals to produce food. Farming, in the true sense of the word is an art and science. Farm subsidies of today reward large farm production and commercial techniques that embrace articfiality and output over quality and long term durability. What is ironic about government food subsidies is that they are there to help ensure “food security” of a nation, yet are actually promoting rapid soil depletion, making it harder and harder each year to grow natural healthy crops.
Interestingly, and perhaps unsurprisingly, because an “organic label” of food has such widespread appeal to environmentalists, foodies and other health concerned citizens, commercial farms have been producing their monocrops with “organic” fertilizer and the like to cash in on demand. The problem is of course that the USDA’s organic label is not wholly so, and allows for synthetics to be used as well. Have we gotten so far into a synthetic world that an organic certification only means partly organic?
There are growing alternatives of truly organic food. These sources are best found at local farmers markets, or the produce that you grow in your very own garden. Growing a front yard garden (or the backyard or on your patio) is one way to create a dense food forest that can produce high yields of diversified foods to supplement or replace your need to shop for fresh groceries.