WHY ORGANIC FARMING?

 

WHY ORGANIC FARMING

A maize field where organic manure is used.

The use of chemicals in farming has caused a lot of environmental and human health problems for a long time

Why we must advocate for organic farming?

Organic farming means growing crops using fertilizers that are organically made.

These fertilizers include compost manure (a decomposed mixture of plant and animal matter), green manure, and bone meal.

To make this type of farming work properly "Crop rotation" needs to be practiced.

A good example is rotating cereal crops like corn or maize with legume crops like groundnuts or beans.

The reason is legumes have got a unique way of fixing nitrogen into the soil using their root structures called nodules.

This means that the next crop to be planted where a legume was planted last season will have enough nitrogen.

Organic manure is simple and cheap to produce.

There are a lot of ways to produce this kind of manure

One such way can be found here https://envirosocafrica.blogspot.com/2021/11/way-to-go-for-new-rural-homes.html?m=0

Organically grown food is way healthy than one grown using chemicals and genetically modified.

It is also important to note that chemicals particularly pesticides and herbicides used in agriculture have got a serious negative effects on the environment and human health.

To give a good illustration of what happens I will use a food chain.

So this is what happens with chemicals from the container to your body as the final consumer of food grown using chemicals and genetically modified.

Chemical Container------->Plant------>Human Body 

The chemicals that we apply in our fields end up in our bodies.

How?

We are the final consumer of those crops that we spray with pesticides, not all the chemical is eaten by pests some remains on the plant, some get washed off by rain and if it's in large volumes ends up in water sources, fish consumes the chemical and stays in their bodies, human beings catch the fish for consumption and ingest the chemical through eating them.

As the last consumer human beings are the most affected.

It sounds scary and dangerous but honestly speaking it is the proverbial "testing of our own medicine"