Why you should care if the food you eat is organic or not

Shopping at the supermarket for produce and goods of all kind for that matter is very convenient and quick if you consider what it was like before we had supermarkets.  For meat, you went to the butcher's, for bread to the baker's, and when it came to vegetables, they were local and seasonable, meaning, what you got was what was locally grown and that was it.  Following World War II, in this country, anyway, that routine changed.  Efficiency was one of the keys and supermarkets made shopping so much easier and quicker.  No longer were we restricted to what was locally produced.   As the decades following the fifties came on, they became more efficient, and what was offered became much more global and far less seasonal and local.  Frozen and pre-cooked, pre-prepared and out of season produce became the norm.  I'm no expert and I'm certain there must be a dozen books or more out there about this bit of food history.

What we don't realize however, mostly because it isn't all that obvious is that the food which we have been buying at the supermarket is different than what we were previously buying before the advent of the supermarket.  Something else changed at the same time (mostly during the 1950's) and what changed was how farmer's farmed.   The 1950's brought forth the baby boom generation (I am one of them) and new concepts in the suburbanization of the U.S. and big corporations, agricultural concerns, colleges, scientists, all touted the new idea that crop productivity could be increased with the use of chemical fertilizers.  You could increase yields with chemicals, kill the bad bugs with chemicals, and could kill the weeds with chemicals; in fact chemicals were the answer to providing more produce to the rising population. What most of us don't realize is that for the most part, prior to the 1950's, all farms were organic.  This certainly had not occured to me. 

O.K. so back to the supermarket.  Supermarkets are a big business and for profit.  In order to reduce spoilage and maintain sales, vegetables being sold had to at least look fresh.  Wax was added to fruit to minimize moisture loss, and everything was picked before optimal ripeness so that by the time it reached market, it would be ripe.  Varieties that did not travel well, or had delicate skin, were not sold at market.  New varieties were created that  traveled well and did not bruise easily and looked ripe even though they weren't.  Again, people have written books on this subject, so ... onward.

Finally, chemicals do make crops grow and they do kill bugs but only for a time and with a very high cost.  The reason that the Chesapeake bay and a very large part of the Gulf of Mexico is a dead zone is due to chemical runoff from farms (and suburban lawns I might add).  50% of the nitrogen fertilizer added to the soil is utilized for plant growth, the other 50% turns into nitric acid.  Heavy metal fungicides (coppers) do not break down in the soil.  Without natural crop rotations (or a very limited rotation) salts build up in the soil.  All of these chemicals disturb the microflora in the soil which is essential to healthy soil maintance.  In the end, the net result is this: the vegetables harvested have less nutrition in them because the soil has less nutrition to give.  The soils of this country have lost 40% of their fertility.  Being an organic farmer means not only the use of natural methods to grow crops, but the maintance and rebuilding of the soil.  You simply can't take out more than you put back.  A good organic farmer not only provides you with chemical free produce but produce that has a far higher nutritional value as well.  Eating organic produce is a very beneficial health insurance policy in itself.