Why Support Organic Farming?
Like doctors who take the Hippocratic oath – “First, do no harm” – organic farmers seek to produce food without creating the dangerous bi-products characteristic of industrial farming methods. Additionally, they pledge to enhance soil fertility and exclude chemical toxins from their growing methods. Organic farmers improve soil fertility through the application of compost and minerals and the plowing in of cover crops – sometimes called green manure. The goal is to not only provide the needed nutrients that vegetable roots absorb directly, but to increase the amount and diversity of sub soil microbial activity that plants coexist with and depend on for vigorous growth. A scant teaspoon of healthy soil contains on the order of a million species of bacteria plus countless numbers of fungi, protozoans, nematodes, arthropods, and earthworms – all interacting to form a food web with the vegetables we eat. Remarkably, the total mass of a healthy sub-soil biosphere greatly exceeds that of all
