Chemical Agriculture vs. Organic agriculture... p.s. im not late

Stephanie Santiago
Chemical agriculture vs. Organic Agriculture
There have been multiple debates about both. One being, chemical agriculture is not right they’re poisoning our food and that organic agriculture is right, it’s the way that it should be, natural. Chemical agriculture has been seen as the evil kind of farming where as the organic farming is being seen as the way to go, since it’s seen as all natural. There are pros and cons to both ways of farming.
Chemical farming started with the development of growth regulators. Growth regulators were a product of World War 2 technology; ammonium nitrate became ammonium nitrate fertilizer. The growth regulators helped farmers control pests from getting on their plants. Due to the increasing population farmers needed a way to grow food and grow it fast. Thus the requirement of commercial fertilizers, herbicides, insecticides, and fungicides were born. Insecticides kill insects, and they usually contain phosphorus and chlorinated hydrocarbons. Insecticides down degrade easily and they can accumulate in your body too. Fungicides kill fungi on crops and such; they are most of the times sprayed directly on the part of the plant that we eat. Fungicides also contain traces of metals like copper and mercury. Herbicides kill weeds they work by blocking the plant’s metabolism. The amount of the different pesticides that the agricultural chemical industry is about 45,000, to 50,000, 600 of them being active ingredients .
Organic agriculture, the USDA National Organic Standards Board defines Organic agriculture as:
"An ecological production management system that promotes and enhances biodiversity, biological cycles, and soil biological activity. It is based on minimal use of off-farm inputs and on management practices that restore, maintain, or enhance ecological harmony. The primary goal of organic agriculture is to optimize the health and productivity of interdependent communities of soil life, plants, animals and people. ”
This type of agriculture is the oldest technique of farming and was the only way of farming until chemical agriculture was introduced in WW2 . When it became more known to people that chemicals were having a negative effect on the environment and on the consumer’s health, people started recognizing the benefits of eating organic food.
So there are two options to chose from organic farming or chemical farming. Both sides can easily be argued. They both have pros and cons.
Chemical agriculture pros being they produce a lot, it doesn’t take as long as organic farming. Chemical agriculture they use machines to produce plants faster. It also doesn’t take that long for the plants to grow since they are using all kinds of fertilizers to make it grow faster.
Organic agriculture pros being its poison-free, tastes better, and last longer. Being organic means it’s free of harsh pesticides, fungicides and herbicides. Organic food also tastes better since it’s grown longer and the nutrients and sugar have more time to make it into the plant. It also lasts longer because the plants are nourished naturally so they can, as a result, be stored longer. Now the cons of organic farming are limited productivity, use of no GM crops, requires lots time and you need to be skilled. It takes more time for organic farming to produce a lot because they don’t use big machines that might diminish the soil life and soil fertility, which is key for organic farming. Organic farmers don’t use GM crops. GM crops are otherwise known as genetically modified or engineered crops, for example there are some crops that are engineered to resist pests or tolerate herbicides. Being an organic farmer requires a lot of time. Organic farmers have to interact with each plant and see what it needs and what it doesn’t. It also requires a lot of skills; you need to know how to farm, for one, because organic farmers don’t have any help from pesticides, fungicides and herbicides.
It is easily seen how organic can topple over chemical agriculture, on the pros and cons list. But is it reasonable for all of us to switch from mostly chemical agriculture just to organic agriculture? Most likely no. Chemical agriculture creates large amounts of food in short amounts of time where as organic agriculture isn’t like that, it’s the opposite. With a population of 6,706,993,152 , and counting, chemical farming seems to be what we need.