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For a long time, agricultural companies have been trying to increase
their profit margins by raising harvest yield rates and by reducing operating
expenditures. Naturally, during the farming process, these companies will
have to resort to heavy use of non-organic and inexpensive inputs such
as chemical pesticides and fertilizers to maximize the outputs and to
reduce the operating costs.
Although this methodology
has increased the outputs, the use of toxic chemical pesticides and fertilizers
has caused many ecological and health problems. Problems include:
- The ecological
system of wild lives has been severely damaged by toxic chemical pesticides;
- Excessive usage
of toxic chemical pesticides and fertilizers is depleting the nutrition
of the soil and eroding soil, which induces more floods;
- Chemical pesticides
and fertilizers are being washed into the river or silted under the
ground, which further aggravates water pollution;
- Agricultural
produce with excessive chemical pesticide residuals is creating health
hazards for people.
In
light of the problems caused by these non-organic farming methods, and
the growing awareness of health and environmental protection, agricultural
companies have increasingly attached importance to organic agriculture,
which respects the natural capacity of plants, animals, and land, and
refrains from the use of chemo-synthetic fertilizers, pesticides, and
pharmaceuticals.
This growing
awareness of environmental protection is prompting strong demand for organic
agricultural produce. Based on a report published by the International
Trade Center (ITC) in October 1999, 10 developed countries including the
United States, Germany, Japan, and France had combined recorded sales
of organic agricultural produce of over US$10 billion in 1997. In the
past five years, organic food sales have been growing at 25-30% per year.
According to the June 2001 edition of Agricultural Economics, organic
food sales are forecast to reach US$58 billion in the United States by
2006. In most organic food markets, demand far exceeds domestic supply,
and imports are required to meet the excess demand. Agricultural Economics
estimates that imports account for 60% of the organic food demand in Germany
and the Netherlands, and 70% in the United Kingdom.
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