by Ira Woodward

Created on: April 28, 2008   Last Updated: May 07, 2008

I've had the privilege of eating from my mother's and also my own vegetable garden. I've also been lucky enough to live with someone who worked on a local organic farm and shared the fruits of his labors with me. All of this has taught me that the taste of freshly picked fruits and vegetables is unrivalled. Surely their nutritional value is similarly incomparable. These experiences, as well as the facts I have been able to gather, lead me to support the movement towards local, organic agriculture.

Modern industrial agriculture is beset with problems, many of which have been brought to public attention through efforts of many environmental activists. To review, these include destruction of topsoil, use of harmful chemical pesticides and herbicides, monocultures that increase risk of disease and massive crop failures, burning of fossil fuels to run expensive and polluting machinery. Also, producing for the world market creates inefficiencies such as pollution from shipping, and deterioration in quality as the product is not fresh.

The rewards of local, organic, small scale production are many. Hand tools, for example, have a much lower negative effect on the environment than tractors, crop dusters and other farm equipment. Industrial fertilizers have a tendency to exhaust the organic material in the soil, requiring factory produced chemicals that companies add to the soil. Organic practices rely on locally produced compost, as well as various mixes of manure and other animal products that are less harmful to the soil. Simply living closer to where ones food comes from is a benefit socially; it increases the likelihood that consumers will get to know the people who produce their food, and establish supportive relationships to make sure those people are taken care of. In modern agriculture, laborers are often abused and exploited; their distance from the eventual consumers of the food helps exacerbate this trend. The diversity of vegetables in a garden also protects against disease and crop failure. It also supplements nutrition. Finally the fact that organic agriculture takes so much work might seem negative on the face of it, yet we have an unemployment problem worldwide. So putting people to work in order to produce quality food can help to solve this problem.

We are in the midst of an environmental crisis. Its clear that modern society is destroying the planet; we don't take account of the limitations of the earth to both produce our goods and receive our waste. Businesses consider pollution to be someone else's problem, and deforestation is rampant in the drive to produce ever more timber and farmland. As one small facet of the solution, local, organic agriculture is common sense. It has a much lower negative effect on the natural environment, and it is more healthy for human beings. I will be admiring my mother's garden again this year; the taste of each tomato will be made that much sweeter by the knowledge that our labor is helping to slow the earth's destruction.

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