Top Five Reasons to Buy Local, Organic Produce

SustainLane
Last Updated: Tuesday, December 16, 2008

1. Taste: Conventionally grown produce is typically picked before it’s ripe and trucked thousand of miles; gas is used to trigger ripening. It lacks the flavor of local, organic produce that’s picked days instead of weeks before you eat it.
2. Pesticides in food: Conventional farming relies heavily on pesticides, which are poisons designed to kill living organisms. As far back as 1987, a National Academy of Sciences report estimated that pesticides are responsible for up to 1.4 million cases of cancer.
3. Pesticides in water: When pesticides are sprayed on food, they don’t just contaminate the food we eat, but seep into the soil and get into our groundwater. According to EPA estimates, pesticides contaminate the groundwater in 38 states, polluting the primary source of drinking water for more than half the country's population.
4. Safer food supply: Monocultures are notoriously susceptible to disease. Locally produced, organic produce involves a wider variation in seed stock and better control over the conditions in which animals live and breed, creating a better longterm food supply.
5. For our children: Modern agricultural strips the soil of nutrients, increasing the need for fertilizers, which further erodes soil quality. It’s an irresponsible way to treat earth that our children will depend on for the lifetime of meals they’ll need to eat. Transporting food long distances requires a great amount of fossil fuel energy, which pollutes our water and air, while adding to the harmful impacts of global climate change.

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