Organic Farming for Health and Prosperity

Organic Farming Can Cure Our Earth's "Dead  Zones"!

The dead zone edging the Gulf of Mexico is now nearly the size of New Jersey!  Dead zone is the term used to describe the results of hypoxia, where the area affected has been depleted of oxygen.  In these areas, marine life flees or dies when the oxygen level makes survival impossible.

Dead zones occur wherever nitrogen and phosphorous from chemical-based agriculture leach into waterways, wash downstream, and empty into the ocean.  Spring floods in the Midwest exacerbate this devastating process.

Only Organic Farming Can Reverse This Deadly Process!

 

 

Farming organically greatly reduces the conditions causing dead zones.  Organic farmers do not use the chemical fertilizers chiefly responsible for creating dead zones.  Instead, their practice of planting cover crops, composting, their use of manure, and mineralized rock all increase the organic matter to create healthy soil.  When soil is healthy, water seeps slowly into the ground rather than moving swiftly along the surface, carrying with it soil and nutrients.  Moreover, the structure of healthy soil encourages plants to put down root systems that hold soil in place.

 

 

Organic Farming for Health and Prosperity

 

 

In August 2012, The Organic Farming Research Foundation produced a report called Organic Farming for Health and Prosperity documenting how organic agriculture transforms dead zones into living, breathing, thriving zones.  A modeling study comparing nitrogen exports into Lake Michigan under different scenarios found organic farming to be the sole land management practice that reduces rather than increases the amount of nitrogen in the lake. (http://ofrf.org/blogs/reducing-dead-zone-through-organic-practices.

 

The report expands on how more organic farming would not only conquer dead zones but would give new life to individuals eating organic food and to businesses marketing organic food in communities affected by the demise of healthy agricultural methods. 

 

Farming organically would not only resuscitate dead zones in the Gulf of Mexico and the Great Lakes region but would also revive the many other areas in the U.S. and around the world where unsustainable agricultural practices inevitably breed dead zones.

 

May the World Hear This!

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