As I worked more with organic farmers however, I began to see the importance of organic agriculture beyond simply superior taste. To the maximum extent feasible, organic farming systems rely on crop rotations, crop residues, animal manures, legumes, green manures, off the farm organic wastes, mechanical cultivation, mineral-bearing rocks and aspects of biological pest control to maintain soil productivity and tilth, to supply plant nutrients, and to control insects, weeds and other pests. This approach to agriculture brings us inevitably to an understanding that what we eat and how those things we eat are grown affects all of the planet in a profound way. The Gaia theory, which is both a physical and spiritual concept, proposes that the earth is really a single organism-every cell affecting every other. The destruction of one cell creates losses in the whole system.
Every act has an effect on every other part of the system.
More and more farmers are finding that mutating strains of insects, fungi and other diseases require ever increasing amounts and more expensive applications of chemicals. Chemistry offers a quick fix, rather than making changes that achieve long-term balance. How we treat our own bodies offers a good example. This same process holds for chemical farming. Farmworkers have respiratory, neurological and skin diseases at a rate many times higher than their non-farm brethren.