WHAT IS ORGANIC FOOD?

Organic foods are grown without the use of herbicides (which are used to kill weeds) or insecticides (used to kill insects) or fungicides (used to kill fungus which might attack plants)  For animals, the food they eat has to be organic, they must not be given any growth hormones (to get them to grow faster or produce more milk or eggs) or antibiotics.  For processed foods, most of the ingredients by weight must be organic, and only natural preservatives, colors and flavors can be used (for example beet juice is red).   To be classified as organic, plants cannot be grown from genetically modified seed.  There are more details for some products (eg: maple syrup cannot be rendered with a chunk of pork fat) but the basics are covered above. 

Land used to grow organic crops cannot have been used with GMO crops, nor can they have grown chemical fertilized or pesticide sprayed crops in the previous 4 years.  A third party organic certification agency is required to inspect the farm operation to determine if they are actually farming organically.  If the producer is not fully complying with the standards of the certifier, they are not registered.  Certified organic means that the food has been grown according to organic standards, and has been tracked through an audit trail from field to consumer. 

While we cannot eliminate 100% of the spray drift in this poison crazy world, we can state with confidence that you get a much lower dose of pesticides by eating foods that at most have been touched by a bit of accidental spray drift, than to eat things that have been directly soaked in agricultural poisons.  Most organic foods contain no chemical residues. 

We consider it to be undesirable to eat these chemicals because they:

• Can have acute health effects in sensitive individuals;
• Long term effects are difficult to study, but in my opinion, likely to be serious;
• Consumption of such food encourages farmers to use the chemicals, which has serious environmental impacts for the flora and fauna on their land;
• Many of the companies producing agricultural chemicals are doing nasty things in the world .

Claims made by chemical companies that their products are safe have been found by actual research to be untrue, and in most cases very misleading.    For information on what is known about acute or long term impacts of different agricultural chemicals, look at the WEB site of the Northwest Coalition for Alternatives to Pesticides.  This site has everything you want to know about pesticides, in a very readable, and yet strongly science based site. 

Organic food is also desirable because organic practices are much better for the soil and build or at least maintain the fertility and the amount of soil organic matter for future generations to work with.  It does not have the “mining” mentality of chemical farming.  The organic food system, while still profit oriented, is much more concerned with growing good quality food than is the mainstream system which is almost exclusively profit focused.

The links below may be of interest to you.

ORGANIC TOMATO LIFECYCLE ANALYSIS

(A description of the environmental impacts and costs of producing food using a continental agribusiness approach verses a local organic approach.  case study analysis of tomato production and distribution).

ENVIRONMENTAL POETRY LINK

(If you like poetry and are interested in food or the environment, this link's for you)

EAT HEALTHY FOODS NEWSLETTERS

Food First! is the newsletter of Eat Healthy Foods.  Each one covers a different topic.  For example, volume 1 is our Food Quality Guidelines.  Volume 2 is about Genetically Modified Organisms.  If you are interested in these issues, you will enjoy Food First!

ESCAPE THE EXPERIMENT

(an article examining the evidence proving that pesticides are in our food and water and are not good for us.)

ABOUT GROWING ORGANIC FOOD

Good links to organic farming info;

Good links to organic gardening Info;

Links to organic certification agencies;

Our garden products.

How do you control weeds without chemicals?

How do you control insects without chemicals?