Top Ten Reasons To Grow Organic PROTECT FUTURE GENERATIONS The average child receives four times more exposure than an adult to at least eight widely used cancer-causing pesticides in food. Food choices you make now will impact your child's future. PREVENT SOIL EROSION The US Soil Conservation Service estimates that more than 3 billion tons of topsoil are eroded from the Unites States croplands each year. That meals soil is eroding seven times faster than it is being built up naturally. Soil is the foundation of the food chain in organic farming. But in chemical farming, the soil is used more as a medium for holding plants in a vertical position so they can be chemically fertilized. As a result, American farms are suffering from the worst soil erosion in history. PROTECT WATER QUALITY Water makes up two-thirds of our body mass and covers three-fourths of the planet. The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) estimates pesticides--some cancer causing--contaminate the water in 38 states, polluting the primary source of drinking water for more than half the country's population. SAVE ENERGY American farms have changed drastically in the last three generations, from family-based small businesses dependant on human energy to large-scale factory farms. Modern farming used more petroleum then any other single industry, consuming 12 percent of the USA's total energy supply in the early 1990's. More energy is now used to produce synthetic fertilizers than to till, cultivate and harvest all the crops in the United States of America Organic Farming is still mainly based on labor-intensive practices such a as weeding by hand and using green manures and crop covers rather than synthetic fertilizers to build up the soil. KEEP CHEMICALS OFF YOUR PLATE Many pesticides approved for use by the EPA were registered long before extensive research linking these chemicals to cancer and other diseases had been established. Now the EPA considers 60 percent of all herbicides, 90 percent of fungicides and 30 percent of all insecticides are carcinogenic. A 1987 National Academy of Science report estimated that pesticides might cause and extra 1.4 million cancer cases among Americans. The bottom line is that pesticides are poisons designed to kill living organisms and can also be harmful to you. In addition to cancer, pesticides are implicated in birth defects, nerve damage and genetic mutation. PROTECT FARM WORKERS A US National Cancer Institute study found that farmers exposed to herbicides had a six times greater risk than non-farmer of contacting cancer. In California, reported pesticide poisoning among farm workers has risen an average of 14 percent a year since 1973 and doubled between 1975-1985. Field workers suffered the highest rate of occupational illness in the state. Farm workers health also is a serious problem in developing nations, where pesticides use can be poorly regulated. An estimated million people are poisoned annually by pesticides. HELP SMALL FARMERS Although more and more large-scale farms are making conversion to organic practices, most organic farms are small undependably owned family farms of less than 100 acres.     It is estimated that the U.S. has lost more than 650,000 family farms in the past decade. And with the US Department of Agriculture predicting that half of this country's produce will come from 1 percent of the farms by 2002, organic farming could be one of the few survival tactics left for family farms. SUPPORT A TRUE ECONOMY Although organic foods might seem more expensive than chemically grown foods, food prices in the U.S. and elsewhere do not reflect hidden costs borne by taxpayers. In the U.S. these included nearly $74 billion in federal subsidies in 1988 alone. Other hidden costs include pesticide regulation and testing, hazardous waste disposal and cleanup, and the environmental damage that our children will have to deal with. Author Gary Null says, " If...you add the real environmental and social costs of irrigation to a head of lettuce, its price can range between $2 and $3 more." PROMOTE BIODIVERSITY Mono-cropping is the practice of planting large plots of land with the same crop year after year. While this approach tripled farm production between 1950-1970, the lack of natural diversity of plant life has left the soil lacking in natural mineral and nutrients. To replace the nutrients, chemical fertilizers are being used. often in increasingly dangerous amounts. Single crops are much more susceptible to pests, making farms 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. TASTE BETTER FOODS There's a good reason why 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 to the nourishment of our well-being.