This is the VOA SpecialEnglish AGRICULTURE REPORT.
Farmers who grow organic food do not use chemicals to increasetheir crops or control insects and disease. However, a new studyshows that chemicals can still be found on organically grown food.The study showed that organic crops had far fewer chemicals thanother fruits and vegetables. The publication Food Additives andContaminants reported the findings.
Organic food is one of the fastestgrowing areas in American agriculture. Industry officials estimatethat American stores sold almost eight-thousand-million dollarsworth of such food in the year two-thousand. That is atwenty-percent increase in sales from the year before.
Many Americans believe that eating organic food is more healthfulthan eating food grown with chemicals. Some people are willing topay more for such food. Yet several reports claim that some organicfoods have just as many chemicals as other crops.
Scientists with the American group Consumers Union supervised thenew study. Consumers Union publishes Consumer Reports magazine.
The scientists collected and examined information from threeearlier reports on chemicals in the American food supply. ConsumersUnion, the United States Department of Agriculture and the state ofCalifornia prepared the earlier reports. The combined reportsstudied more than twenty different crops and more thanninety-four-thousand fruits and vegetables.
The scientists found that chemical pesticides to kill insectswere present on almost twenty-five percent of the organic fruits andvegetables. The chemicals also were found on almost seventy-fivepercent of other crops.
Two of the reports included foods that were not organicallygrown. They were grown with reduced use of chemicals. Foods in thisgroup had chemical levels between those for organic and traditionalcrops.
The scientists also examined why organic foods contain anychemicals at all. They found that most of the chemicals in organicfoods were unavoidable results of earlier chemical use in theenvironment. They say other chemicals may have been blown onto theorganic fields from nearby farms. They also say some of the foodtested may have been sold as organic although it was not organicallygrown.
This VOA Special English AGRICULTURE REPORT was written by GeorgeGrow.