How Sustainable Agriculture Works

This is a subject that's close to my heart. My wife and I have a small organic vegetable operation and sell our produce at a local farmer's market. Growing healthy, sustainably raised food is important to us, but I'll be the first to admit that it's much harder and more expensive than conventional farming. If we were trying to run a much larger farm, it would be very tempting to use packaged chemical fertilizers that are cheap and highly effective. Every time I lose a crop to a bug infestation or a fungal disease, I understand why chemical pesticides and fungicides are such a godsend for agriculture. But as a father of three young children, I'm also concerned about the unknown effects of chemicals in our food and water. I applaud research efforts and increased funding to make sustainable farming practices more effective and more profitable so that consumers don't have to pay extra for safer, healthier food.

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