The Benefits of Organic Farming

By Bill Moriarty

Organic farming is a wonderful endeavor for anyone who would like to grow beautiful and tasty vegetables on their own land in an environmentally friendly way. The methods of organic farming combines the knowledge of ecology and modern agricultural technology with traditional farming practices based on naturally occurring biological processes.

This type of farming uses many different methods to improve the fertility of the soil. These methods include crop rotation, cover cropping, and application of nutrient rich compost. Contrary to popular beliefs, organic farming can compete with traditional farming practices quite effectively in growing corn, soybeans, wheat, barley and other grains as well as many types of vegetables and fruits.

Organic fertilizers are an important part of an organic farming operation because the fertility of the soil is vital to healthy and bountiful crops. Organic fertilizers are made from many different types of naturally occurring substances such as bat guano, feather meal, and fish meal. Commercially manufactured organic fertilizers include compost, bloodmeal, bone meal, humic acid, amino acids, brassin and seaweed extracts.

The advantages of using organic fertilizers are many but one of the main benefits is that these fertilizers and soils are proven to be better for your health as well as the environment and will not affect the size of your yield. Organic fertilizers also have the advantage of not having certain problems associated with the regular heavy use of artificial fertilizers.

Reapplying artificial fertilizers regularly and with ever increasing amounts to sustain soil fertility becomes necessary when synthetic fertilizers are used. Also eutrophication of bodies of water can occur resulting in polluted water supplies and large scale fish kills. Because of their natural makeup, organic fertilizers increase physical and biological nutrients in soils and help the soil retain them, thus minimizing the risks of over-fertilization.

Organic farming may be most widely recognized for what methods it does not use like artificial fertilizers and synthetic herbicides; however, it is more important to define organic farming by the methods that are being used. Farming organically entails the development and preservation of an ecological system where problems are solved naturally and this balance is maintained through the proper implementation and management of such practices.

Organic farming has become one of the fastest growing segments of the agricultural industry in the United States recently and today, the vision of organic farming as ecologically sustainable agriculture practiced by small farmers is headed toward more large scale farming operations to provide ethically sound and healthy food for many.

My name is William Moriarty and I live in the sunny south. South Carolina to be more precise and I have a beautiful plot of land there that I am developing into an organic vegetable farm. I have created a blog on organic farming and modern homesteading that I intend to build for the foreseeable future so that I can document our progress and so that I may communicate with other like minded people. I hope to learn all I can about this great way of life that I believe will help us overcome some of the environmental issues that are affecting our world today. You can check it out at http://organichomesteader.com

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