What Does Organic Farming Really Mean? - as part of the expert series by GeoBeats. What does Organic Farming really mean? Hi, I'm Judy with Judy's Homegrown. Organic farming is the process of, first of all getting certified by the proper agencies and following certain practices so that you don't use pesticide or fungicide. And what organic means to me is there's a lot more to it. If the soil has been handled properly, then it's much more nutritious for the plants and then we get that nutrition. If the plants haven't been treated properly with fungicide and pesticide what that does is kills the microbes in the soil. And the microbes are actually the most important part of getting nutrients to the plant. And one thing that people need to know is that when you grow organically the fungus in the soil for example micorisa, can extend the root system of that plant by over a 100 times, and what that allows the plant to do is to capture more nutrients from the soil, but it also allows the plant to sequester carbon in the soil. Plants take in Carbon Dioxide and they breathe out oxygen, and one of the problems of global warming is that we have too much Carbon Dioxide in the environment. And with a healthy plant that is growing in organic soil, that plant can take up to 100 times more carbon out of the environment and put it into the soil whereas what we're doing with conventional or what I like to say non-regenerative farming is we're not allowing plants to grow those micorisa, symbiotic relationships, and so our crops don't breathe as much and consequently we're not sequestering as much carbon as we could if we were growing things organically. So, an answer to the problem of global warming, is let's grow things organically. So, every time you make a choice for an organic product, you're also trying to save the planet from global warming, which is way more than most people realize when they choose organic.
