Organic food is now the fastest-growing segment of U.S. agriculture. In 2007, the value of retail sales of organic foods was estimated at more than 20 billion U.S. dollars. According to the Food Marketing Institute, more than half of Americans buy organic food product at least once a month. The industry is expected to be at a rate of 18 percent per year until 2010, sales of organic food is one of the fastest growing sectors in the U.S. economy is generally weak. Organic food, cut their budgets is not an option for many people who are fighting for their survival.
What does it mean, green?
According to the National Organic Standards Board:
“Organic agriculture is an ecological production management and promotes greater biodiversity, biological cycles and soil biological activity. It is based on minimal use of external inputs and on management practices that restore, maintain and enhance ecological harmony.
“The word is a bio-labeling term that stands for goods under the authority of the law concerning the manufacture organic foods. The principal guidelines for organic production are to use materials and processes, the ecological balance of natural systems and to improve that to integrate the parts of the farming system into an ecological whole.
“Organic agriculture practices can not ensure that products are completely free of residues, but the methods used to minimize the pollution of air, soil and water.
Deal “organic foods to keep processors and distributors of standards that the integrity of organic agriculture held. The main objective of organic farming is to optimize health and productivity of interdependent communities of soil, plants, animals and humans.”
This definition soft sounds meaning people associate with the term, such as the use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides is grown for food. Canada `s newly formed organic regulation specifically prohibits synthetic fertilizers, pesticides and genetically modified organisms (GMOs).
The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) puts it this way: “Organic crops are without most conventional pesticides, fertilizers, petroleum or sewage-sludge-based fertilizers increased. Animals on an organic farm raised are fed organic food and access to fresh air. They are not given antibiotics or growth hormones. ”
The USDA allows a sliding scale that reduces some of the hardships of his own definition. In this scale, that only products that are made exclusively from controlled biological materials and methods, such as “100 percent organic means, while those who are identified only 95 percent of the composition of purity” organic. Both categories offer a USDA seal. The salt and water as ingredients, except that of observation.
Then there is another category that will allow the use of up to 30 percent organic materials and production methods, but which may be legally labeled “with organic ingredients”. Products containing less than 70 percent organically, it is not allowed to call itself into an organic form. However, organic ingredients to be labeled as such.
Simply read these definitions and find out what is not contained in a product labeled organic is a strong incentive to buy only organic products.
Organic farming offers a Difference
Only in the U.S., more than one billion pounds of pesticides into the environment as a result of non-organic methods published. Some of them are very persistent and remain in the environment long after use. Extensive analysis of pesticide residues found by the USDA that are conventionally produced fruits and vegetables three to four times more often contain residues of pesticides than organic produce, and they are eight to eleven times more likely to contain multiple residues and wastes into new levels and fifty to seven times larger than the residues in organic samples.
A recent study reported in Environmental Health Perspectives found that the body of organic fresh fruits and vegetables for corresponding conventional food, the median urinary metabolite concentrations were pesticides, malathion and chlorpyrifos from a high level will be reduced to a level not recognized or unrecognized in the vicinity.
Conventional agricultural methods can cause water pollution. Since 1995, a network of environmental organizations began, including the Environmental Working Group, testing tap water for herbicides in the corn belt and in Louisiana and Maryland. The results suggested a wide contamination of tap water with many different pesticides at levels that serious health risks. In some cities, herbicides in tap Federal Health for life after weeks or months passed at a time. The elimination of polluting chemicals and nitrogen leaching by organic farming methods used, in combination with soil building, works to prevent environmental pollution and to protect water resources and to spare.
The term “natural” has no real meaning
The parameters of the word “organic” are quite clearly defined and specified. Many other food manufacturers want to maintain the attractiveness and receive the higher price of organic food, without going through the rigors of organic certification. Instead, they label their food as “natural.” This term does not in any way mean that the product meet the criteria for bio-equivalent products.
If it seems there are more products labeled natural, it’s not your imagination. Almost everyone who does not want an organic farmers take advantage of America `s desire to eat healthier too. One third of all new U.S. food and beverages in 2008 marked the claims of being “natural” or otherwise healthy. But concepts like these have nothing to do with the nutritional value of the final product. The term “organic” refers only to that generated as the product and do not relate to the nutritional value of the product.
The USDA, the regulatory authority for meat and poultry, said that these products can be described as “natural” if they contain no artificial ingredients or added color and will be processed only minimally () is a vague claim. But if the term is used, the label must also have an additional explanation, such as “no added colorings or artificial ingredients.”
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) may be the term “natural” is used on food labels if the food with no added colors, artificial flavors or contain synthetic substances. This can be a big gray area. When asked in 2005, more precisely in the definition of “natural”, rejected the FDA. Shortly thereafter, the Center for Science in the Public Interest sued Kraft Foods for demanding an “all natural” for their drink Capri-Sun The suit was dropped, as the force agreed to take the outside of the label claim. 7 Up-makers tried to make the same claim, but avoids the concept of the label under the threat of legal action.
Why does organic food cost so much?
Prices for organic foods reflect many of the same cost as conventional products in terms of growing, harvesting, transport and storage. Organic food also must comply with strict rules governing all these steps, which are in a labor-intensive processes and management. Organic farming is generally on a smaller scale. It has been shown that if all the indirect costs of conventional food production, such as cleaning polluted water, replacement of eroded soils, costs of health care for farmers and workers counted in the price of food, organic foods cost the same or even less than conventionally grown foods.
A survey conducted in July 2008 revealed that were among the customers who buy organic products reported, 56 percent of household income over $ 100,000, and 36 percent had incomes below $ 25,000. These data show that the decision of the green store is a question of priorities.
Although the organic industry is expected to be 18 percent per year until 2010, the sagging economy could grow lead some Americans to carry them back on purchases as environmentally recorded as expenses. But in the long run, this decision is obviously not viable in view of health damage and losses, productivity associated with a diet of conventional crops, as well as the hidden costs of conventional purchase. And then there `s think tastes.
Sources:
Organic Trade Association, www.ota.com.
