Organic produce is labelled organic when it has been grown, raised, harvested and packaged without the use of harmful chemicals, such as fertilizers, pesticides, insecticides, growth hormones or antibiotics. Organic also means the produce has not been genetically modified.
When we choose organic we not only look after the health of our own body and immune system but also the health of our family, the health of our soil and the health of our planet. The best way to get organic produce in the home is to grow it yourself. If that’s not an option, try your local grocer, farmers market, or search the internet for a company that delivers organic produce to your door.
Organics & Animal Welfare
Organisations for animal protection generally agree that organic agriculture is the most animal friendly form of agriculture. Farm animals are allowed more space for their typical behaviour, eat better quality food, and are less subjected to body modifications.
For example raising meat birds organically, on pasture, is both environmentally sound and animal-friendly. If you eat meat please steer clear of anything caged and farmed in inhumane ways.
The Missing Link Between Health and Agriculture
– from ‘Food Matters’
The world-wide debate on the effects of conventional farming practices on soil fertility is getting a lot of attention. And so it should, as many start taking ecologists’ warnings more serious and are discovering for themselves that maintenance of soil fertility is critical to the sustainability of our food supply.
Conventional farming practices see the soil as a means to an end. Driven by the dollar, soils are used and used and nutrients are drawn out of the soil rendering them as new deserts. Without crop rotation the soils are, if you will, raped of their minerals. Farmers are then forced to periodically saturate their crops with unnatural chemical fertilizers.
These fertilizers however are made up of primarily 3 nutrients: Nitrogen, Phosphorus and Potassium, but where are the rest of the 52 minerals needed for optimum soil health? They are missing!
So poor soil health is leading to poor plant health and when plants are deficient they lose their defences and then the bugs come. Then the farmers come crying to the chemical companies for help who are more than happy to supply these deadly toxins like pesticides, herbicides and fungicides.
What we end up with from conventional farming is not just poor soil health and poor plant health but also our food supply becoming deficient and toxic leading to our bodies becoming deficient and toxic.
Over the short term these vitamin and mineral deficiencies manifest themselves as mood swings, lack of energy, joint pain, failing eyesight, hearing loss and thousands of other ailments that medical science would tell us to accept with advancing age.
Over the long term these deficiencies contribute to major illnesses such as cancer, heart disease, diabetes and mental illness.