Go Organic!

How many times have you heard or said this yourself, “I’d buy more organic produce/meats/products if they weren’t so expensive!” We are so conditioned to believe that the whole cost of a product is computed into the suggested retail price that we never question the price disparity between 2 products except to think that the company the makes the more expensive one is guilty of price gouging. So, how much do we really know about the true costs of our food? There was an excellent article in last month’s Mother Earth News magazine called the “Ecology of Pizza’ (or Why Organic Food is a Bargain) by Sandra Steingraber, that clearly shows the real cost of factory farming. She points out that the costs that are not factored into the price tag of conventionally grown food are: “fertilizer-contaminated groundwater, insecticide-contaminated fish, herbicide-contaminated rain, dead honeybees, poisoned wildlife, deformed frogs, eroded soil, toxic algae blooms, ozone depletion and antibiotic resistance”. She goes on to say “…farmers don’t pay for the economic consequences of erosion, leaching and drift. Instead the cost of filtering silt and poison out of tap water is passed along to the water utilities, and ultimately to everyone who pays a water bill.” So what this means is that this extra cost is not tacked onto the price of your broccoli and lettuce but on your water bill or somewhere else, it’s harder to make the connection. In the article, Steingraber notes Cornell University professor David Pimentel who states that “U.S. farmers spend about $10 billion on pesticides each year to protect about $40 billion of food crops, and the external costs of pesticide use add up to another $10 billion. He includes the costs for lost work caused by poisonings of farm workers, treatments for pesticide-induced cancers and the maintenance of complex regulatory systems to monitor pesticide residues in everything from applesauce to lake sediments. Pimentel points out that his calculations did not include many public health costs, so the actually figure is higher.”
So, does it still feel cheaper to buy non-organic products? The scariest part of the entire chemical, hormone, antibiotic and GMO’s (genetically –modified organism) is that we really don’t know the full toll that it will take on our bodies and on the planet. We just have vague reassurances from the FDA who are deeply planted into the back pockets of all of the companies that manufacture said products. I don’t want any of that crap in my or my baby’s body, what about you? Take a look at the rest of the article for more details and decide for yourself. Looking for options? Google CSA’s to find a local organic farm to get your food from. Peace!
http://www.motherearthnews.com/release/7744/