Image: Flickr, business.garden

Wouldn’t you like to know what you are putting into your mouth when you eat?  When you take a bite of your juicy red apple, what are you getting?  Well, if it’s not organic you aren’t just getting your apple.  In fact, you are getting way more than you bargained for.

When food is not grown organically, there is so much sprayed on it that you might wonder why all these chemicals are “necessary.”  Well, let’s take a look at what is sprayed on the plants and why.  The plants are sprayed with pesticides, which are chemical compounds that are sprayed to get rid of anything unwanted, whether they are insects, fungi, or weeds.  Let’s take a closer look at the pesticides used.

Insecticides

First there are the insecticides.  These are the chemicals that keep away the bugs that would otherwise devour the crops.  The chemicals are carefully designed to kill the insects without hurting the plants themselves.

Herbicides

Next there are the herbicides.  These are the chemicals that are designed to get rid of the weeds, those unwanted plants that compete with the food crops for the water and nutrients in the soil.  The trick with these chemicals is to design them so that they will kill off the weeds without affecting the crops.  Careful engineering of these chemicals is necessary for this to succeed.

Fungicides

Fungicides are another important chemical that is sprayed on the crops.  This is sprayed to reduce, destroy, or otherwise impede the growth of fungi on crops and the spread of fungal spores that might infect the crop.  When fungi spread they spread quickly and the chemicals easily take care of this problem.

Fertilizers

Finally, there are the fertilizers.  Yes, fertilizers can be non-organic.  Of course, the base ingredient in organic fertilizers is manure and you can easily use the manure from any farm animal you have on hand.  The other ingredient in organic fertilizer is compost, which is the decaying remains of what was once living material.  After all, think of nature’s cycle and of the leaves falling from the tree in the forest.  Those leave decay and feed the soil so that it can bring forth new life in the spring.  On the other hand, non-organic fertilizers are simply a concoction of the chemicals that are known to be found in healthy soils and that are known to be what the plants eat.

Image:Flickr, Perceval-de-Mons@world.free

The use of chemical fertilizers does nothing to enhance the quality or life of the soil.  They just do not enhance the soil fertility.  They also do no encourage the existence of microbes in the soil.  In other words, chemical fertilizers might provide plants food, but they do not give them true life and health.  These chemicals are also more costly to produce and they can contaminate the surrounding water.

Aside from all the things listed above, non-organic plants can be genetically modified, which is done to improve the plant so that they can produce a higher yield.  However, if the plants were farmed organically, they would thrive and naturally be healthier than their non-organic counterparts.  Knowing all of this, wouldn’t you feel better if you knew what you were putting into your body?  I strongly suggest you think about this the next time you buy your produce at the grocery store or local farmer’s market.  After all, you deserve to know what you are eating.

If you have any questions please comment to this blog post, I will do my best to answer them. Please visit Organic Lifetsyle Blog regularly to find out more about organic and healthy lifestyle.

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