Celebrate: Make the Organic Choice
By Barbara Duff, Organic Alliance
Excerpts from September 1999 Cover Story in Lakewinds Natural Foods Newsletter
...But what exactly is organic food? For one thing, it is earth friendly. Organic food is farmed and processed in a way that keeps synthetic fertilizers and pesticides out of the equation. Weeds and pests are controlled using environmentally sound practices that sustain and improve productivity, and ultimately, our own health. No pesticides or fertilizers harmful to the environment have been used in the growth processes of plants and no growth hormones or antibiotics have been dispensed to the animals.
Organic farmers combine the old with the new to implement technologies and scientific research that will balance the earth's natural ecosystem. They work with nature to build and replenish the nutrients in the soil through crop rotations, composting, and cultivation. In short, organic farmers follow a philosophy and methodology of farming techniques. Organic growers manage their farms as whole systems that must be ecologically planned and balanced to improve the soil and protect the groundwater. They focus on improving soil health and long term prevention of problems.
For example, organic growers:
- Rotate crops from field to field in order to manage pests and weeds and to improve soil health and fertility. In fields that are planted year after year in the same crop, pests and weeds build up, and fertility drops.
- Plow animal manure and vegetative matter into the soil as fertilizers.
- Monitor their fields regularly to help determine when pest or weed control with their tractors should be done.
- Recycle and compost organic wastes to create on-farm fertilizers.
- Combine old and new technologies. For example:
- Plant select bushes, trees and flowers to encourage populations of beneficial insects which will combat insect pests.
- Add equipment, such as devices to steam or flame weeds, to tractors.
- Operate farms of varying sizes: from 1-acre vegetable gardens in Massachusetts or California, to 3,000-acre grain and bean farms in North Dakota.
- Work to integrate animals into their operations to supply manure for fertilizers.
Organic growers do not:
- Simply substitute naturally-grown substances for harmful synthetic chemicals
- Neglect their fields or let them run wild in an effort to avoid the use of synthetic agricultural chemicals.
- Operate only small farms with hand implements.
- Plant single crops (monocrops) across their entire farms year after year. Monocropping depletes the soil of nutrients and encourages infestations of weeds and pests.