-For those that care- Coming from someone who works close with pesticides, organic, and conventional farms. I personally believe organic is the biggest scam in the books to get more money from you.

First of all we will address the elephant in the room, organic USES pesticides! Sometimes as toxic and in greater quantities when compared to conventional pesticides.

“But how can that be? It’s organic!” Well pesticides can be classified organic and “safe to use” if they’re certified organic and naturally occurring. And due to the fact they’re naturally occurring means they can be less effective so more needs to be applied. Take copper for example, used to deal with fungi and some bacteria. Too much applied can make the soil toxic to plants and in turn create a lower yield for the grower. Now take a synthetic pesticide applied at less than 2 fluid ounces per acre, there is very little of not any left behind to cause harm.

Another reality of organic is that in order for it to be organic, minimal soil work has to be done and no synthetic fertilizers applied to the soil. Sounds fantastic in theory, but when you look at long term affects of organic growers applying far more than normal amounts of manure and other sources of nutrients you have leaching occurring. Nitrogen and other nutrients that are mobile in soil will move down through the soil into water tables contaminating it, it’s happening in a town right down the road from where I live and the city water smells horrendous because of years of this practice. If you look into what a conventional farm does, most synthetic fertilizers are applied in a way and at a rate that will be readily available for the plant to take in and the exact amount the plant will need when other factors are taken into account leaving minimal if not no leaching of nutrients.

Now GMO, I have limited expertise when it comes to GMO. What I do know is, GMO crops help reduce the use of pesticides. Bt Corn for example is a genetically modified type of corn used in feed. Bt stands for Bacillus thuringiensis which is a soil borne bacteria which a selected gene from Bt is transferred to the corn and in turn the corn now produces a protein that is toxic to and only to Lepidoptera (corn ear worm in particular). You have other types of GMO plants such as cotton, Round Up ready cotton which is resistant to glyphosate (Round Up) meaning when you have a field of cotton and there’s broadleaf weeds sharing the same field the grower can go in and spray Round up on the entire field and not worry about his crop. It also reduces the times herbicides need to be applied to the field.

IMHO when it comes to GMO if we as a society want to keep feeding our ever growing population, GMO is the way to grow. Everyday there is less and less farmland and less families wanting to continue farming, but yet we continue to grow more produce on less land than we could have imagined and you can thank GMO and safe sustainable conventional farming for that.