Last May, I attended the All Things Organic Trade show in Chicago. Besides a world class trade show and a very interesting Keynote address by Steve Levitt, author of,
“Freakonomics : A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything“, there were some excellent meeting sessions. One of these sessions was called “The Organic Legacy: Creating a better world for our children.” Speakers were Charles Benbrook, Ph.D., Chief Scientist, The Organic Center, and Alan Greene, M.D. Founder and CEO, Dr.Greene.com
Some of the highlights of this session were:
- The wealthiest, highest educated segment of the American population is less healthy than the poorest segment in England.
- Sperm counts in the U.S. have dropped by 2/3 from 1934 to 2006. The steepest drop occurring in agricultural regions.
- Our genetic make-up can be altered by things we do during our life. This is called epigenetics. In a study of identical twins, it was found that they had 50 times the variance in genetic make-up as adults than they had as children. These changes can be passed on to their children. For more on epigenetics see Epigenetics: A web tour
- There has been a startling drop in population levels of amphibians during the last several decades.
All of these facts can be significantly attributed to increased pesticide use in the growing of food crops.
If you find this interesting and would like to attend the 2007 show, here is a link: