Why Organic? Part One, or Some Good Dirt

I'm going to save the alarmist stuff for later: those who don't already know that bad stuff about commercial agriculture wouldn't really hear it anyway, right? We'll start with some basics.

At the heart of organic agriculture is an approach to plant nutrition completely different from its commercial counterpart. (I am using the phrase "commercial agriculture" to denote today's "standard" methods of using chemicals to grow things, attempting to avoid more inflammatory buzz words. I do acknowledge that any organic farmer who sells his products is commercial.) Organic growers follow the age-old precept of feeding the soil. They know that good, healthy plants require good, healthy soil, and most of their energy goes into the long-term maintenance of this under-foot ecosystem . Good soil is abundant with life, from beneficial bacteria and fungi to earthworms, all of which work to make the nutrients in the soil accessible to the plants. Organic farmers tend to the life of the soil, knowing that healthy plants are sure to follow.

In contrast, commercial growers focus on feeding the plants, giving them specific nutrients for a specific short-term goal, usually a higher yield this year. Unfortunately, the compounds containing these nutrients are detrimental to the beneficial organisms in the soil, so over time the only nutrients the plants get are the ones in the "fertilizers." It's a bit like popping a vitamin C tablet instead of eating a varied, healthful diet; any good effects are going to be short-lived. So the farmer has to give successive generations of crops more and more of these "fertilizers," as well as insecticides to protect the ever-weakening plants from bugs, and herbicides so sickly crop plants don't have to compete with weeds for the dwindling supply of nutrients. It can be a bit of a downward spiral.