Modern farming uses more petroleum than any other single industry, consuming 12 percent of the USA's total energy supply in the early 1990's. More energy is now used to produce synthetic fertilizers than to till, cultivate and harvest all the crops in the United States of America. Organic farming is still mainly based on labor-intensive practices such as weeding by hand and using green manure's and crop covers rather than synthetic fertilizers to build up soil. While this approach tripled farm production between 1950-1970, the lack of natural diversity of plant life has left the soil lacking in natural minerals and nutrients. To replace the nutrients, chemical fertilizers are being used, often in increasingly dangerous amounts.
Single crops are much more susceptible to pests, making farmers more reliant on pesticides .
Despite a tenfold increase in the use of pesticides between 1947 and 1974, crop losses due to insects have doubled- partly because some insects have become genetically resistant to certain pesticides. Many pesticides approved for use by the EPA were registered long before extensive research linking these chemicals to cancer and other diseases had been established. A 1987 National Academy of Sciences report estimated that pesticides might cause an extra 1.4 million cancer cases among Americans. The bottom line is that pesticides are poisons designed to kill living organisms and can also be harmful to you . In addition to cancer, pesticides are implicated in birth defects, nerve damage and genetic mutation.