A good example of what can happen is a look back at Cuba. When Cuba was in Support of the Soviet Union it flourished with a rich supply of oil and was assured a premium to grow and produce sugarcane. Its agriculture was set up like todays mainstream farms heavily dependent on energy and subsidy. When the soviet union was broken up and there funding almost disappeared overnight leaving the small country with out any oil for energy, there large producing farms couldn't transport food for export or to the locals to sustain them. In David Suzuki's book The Sacred Balance he talks about the nations caloric intake falling by 30%. In the turmoil urban agriculture sprung up around cities and produced more than 80% of the vegetables consumed in the cities. The food was being grown in yards and vacant lots. In todays Cuba, David says more than 10,000 urban farms provide fresh, cheap organic food to local neighborhoods, that provide jobs to thousands of people and yields are comparable to industrial agriculture. They do it organically by creating an ecosystem of plants that benefit each other. Some repel insects that effect others, and others help draw nutrients into the soil. They actually rebuild the top soil in there farms which leads me to our next problem in massive modern day agriculture.
Chemical pollution from fertilizers and degradation and loss of tops soil. In the natural ecosystem the top soil is alive with millions of microorganisms so many of which it might make them the most abundant species on earth. When things fall to the soil they become the soil after microorganisms fix them self to dead matter and start to break it apart. The soil helps us grow our food and filter and store ground water and yet we seem to destroy the top soil by adding chemical fertilizers and over producing crops that pull all the nutrients out of the ground making it barren and devoid of nutirents. So we slather the land with fertilizers that run off and pollute the water and the ecosystems down stream and since there are only a hand full of us that actually live at the top of the stream it effects all of us. When we over harvest trees for lumber and do not do it correctly massive amounts of run off remove the top soil that took thousands of years to develop. The soil began to collect when the rocks on earth were weathered from water and wind. As elements and minerals began to mix and gave life to smaller microorganisms, which led to larger and more complex life, our soil levels began to increase, with death comes life and life comes death. From the decomposing of plant and animal life and mixing with inorganic matter from the earth more and more soil gathered, root systems held the matter together and got bigger which in turn made the plants grow bigger, which gave home and food to all terrestrial species of life. Half of the volume of good-quality surface soil is a mix of broken down rock and hummus. In temperate climates the rate of growth in top soil is 5 centimeters per millennium so we really don't want to keep wasting this stuff. It is so important to us to maintain this thin layer that creates all of our food because we cannot exist without food. We eat food and it becomes us, our bodies take the food to fuel or cells which form our bodies. We hardly pay attention to food being real any more its all so packaged, clean, al lot of time processed from its original form, and not to mention weeks old from being harvested.
The next debate over the new movement in Organic Agriculture is the affordability. There are hundreds surveys out there right now that contradict each other. Many say that organic food is over priced and the immediate health benefits are negligible. Others show that the price for calorie is higher but when the calories are used responsibly the price is lower or the same. Example being if your looking for a snack and you grab the 1$ bag of highly processed corn in the form of a chip with about 250 calories in the little bag or you grab an organic apple for 1$ with about 30-50 calories your spending more for your food if you listen to the supporters of many large corporations, but doesn't the apple fill you up and fuel your body better and for longer since it isn't shooting your blood glucose levels through the roof. Iowa state university economists showed that the annual external costs of agriculture in the United States which includes soil erosion, loss of habitat, and pollution to water and land falls between 5 billion and 16 billion dollars annually, which is double the epa's budget in 2005. Conventional crops are highly subsidized by the government making them artificially cheap and afforable. When you tack on the money that is spent to clean up after conventional farming we are paying a ton of money in taxes so we can go to big box groceries and pay for cheap food.
We could go on all day evaluating how we acquire our food we have not even touched on the animals and fish we harvest, and have barely scratched the surface on farming. So try and support local farming, ask questions it doesn't need a usda label to be organic and good for you. One local farm I buy produce from hasn't sprayed chemicals or used fertilizers on there crops in over ten years after the farmer got extremely sick from spraying his crops and being payed to raise them for a large company. He now farms a smaller piece of land and says some of my food might not be the biggest or prettiest, it might have some nibbling from bugs but it tastes better and I am still alive.
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