"Organic" Farming and the True Cost of Food-A Small Farmers Perspective

[KT2000]

87. Read your post in the other thread

and found your statistic of longer life astounding. Did this particular study mention any of the chronic diseases that chemical exposures play a role, such as diabetes, Parkinson's, lowered IQ, learning disabilities, and many autoimmune illnesses?

You can check out the current research into the many ways that exposures to toxic chemicals affect the human body. This article contains an interview with Linda Birnbaum, Director of NIEHS, where she discusses the direction of research. Then you may want to head over to Environmental Health Perspectives and do searches of chemicals used in pesticides and herbicides.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=birnbaum-government-toxicologist-qa

A neighbor began his career as a chemical engineer at a huge corporation and quit when he realized the introduction of all these chemical products was in effect human experimentation. They were not really concerned with health effects.
He is now a successful organic farmer and he farms many acres around the community. Advantages over conventional farming for the locals:

1. Locally available produce.
2. No pesticide drift onto neighbor's homes and yards.
3. Pregnant women living nearby his fields will not be exposed to chemicals known to affect the development of the fetus.
4. Children waiting at the roadside near his fields for the school busses are not exposed to pesticide drift.
5. People walking the roadsides near his operations will not be tracking pesticides into their homes. (Often pesticide levels are higher inside homes than outside because it does not degrade very fast indoors due to the absence of sunlight and rain.)
6. More labor intensive so locals are hired to work there.