This is certainly also true of patrons of the food industry, who have tended more and more to be mere consumers-passive, uncritical and dependent. Indeed this sort of consumption may be said to be one of the chief goals of industrial production. The industrial eater is, in fact, one who does not know that eating is an agricultural act, who no longer knows or imagines the connections between eating and that land, and who is therefore necessarily passive and uncritical-in short a victim. When food, in the minds of eaters, is no longer associated with farming and with the land, then the eaters are suffering a kind of cultural amnesia that is misleading and dangerous. One USDA estimate notes that we've lost as much as a third of the top soil in intensively farmed areas such as the corn belt.
Agriculture accounts for more than half of all suspended sediments discharged into surface water.
Part of my decision to join Fetzer Vineyards a few years back was the Fetzer family's commitment to growing grapes organically. Every grape the winery directly farms now is grown organically and this commitment has spurred other large wineries in California to begin to use organic farming techniques. It's also an important affirmation that organic farming can be mainstream and profitable. I would add that one cannot dine well unless one has chosen their food responsibly and in a way that recognizes that we are stewards of the earth and all that lives on it. This is the importance of organic agriculture.