"Organic" farmers busted, one kills himself.

[hunter]

45. My primary interest in organic agriculture is insecticides and contaminated groundwater.

There's good evidence that insecticides interfere with neurological development in children.

Nitrates and other agricultural toxins are another huge problem when they contaminate drinking water.

Farmers tended to use far more inexpensive synthetic nitrogen fertilizers than necessary, disrupting more "natural" soil chemistries and biologies, which in turn required greater applications of herbicides and pesticides...

These days it's much easier to minimize and even localize the application of synthetic fertilizers.