The Shift to Organic Food and Organic Farming.

As soon as humanity started growing food for consumption, and started storing it for future usage, the global food scenario begun on a path, on which we have come a long way. Initially, the food used to be grown for personal usage, later the food became an integral part of exchange system or barter system, where food stuff were used to be exchanged, in return for several other commodities.

https://www.euractiv.com/

With time, as the human population grew, the need to commercialize food became more important than ever, and as the concept of markets came, it wasn't feasible for everyone to grow food for themselves, so to make food available to them, commercialization of food was necessary. When the overall human population, along with the count of individuals, who couldn't produce their own food grew, the stress was always there on productivity. To solve this problem, scientists came up with pesticides and fertilizers, which revolutionized the farming techniques overnight, and productivity multiplied several times. Pests, weeds and other agents causing damage to crops were no longer a problem, you spray it, and your problems were away in a flash, just like that, the same way you wished your life problems could vanish.

Now, with the problems solved, growing food should never be a problem, Right? Well, certainly this wasn't the case. Every solution comes at a cost, and in this case it was over utilization of fertilizers and pesticides etc., which , in a way led to exploitation of natural resources. Scientists started discovering positive correlations  between pesticides and diseases such as cancer, along with harmful effects to natural flora and fauna related to agricultural land, deterioration of natural contents of soil, soil pollution etc. Such things lead to a ban on some harmful chemicals such as DDT (dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane), which were observed to be having some serious health concerns to the consumer. 

But, all of this, led a pathway to resurgence of traditional pathways of farming, i.e. without the usage of any fertilizers, pesticides or other chemicals. Though, there is no internationally defined definition of organic food and organic farming as such, Countries have devised their own methods of categorizing foods under the terms organic food and organic farming, but almost each of them devises "no use of prohibited substances", for the product obtained, to be called as organic.  

USDA (United States Department of agriculture) has its own list of procedures, methods and substances which are prohibited to be used for producing an organic product, and along with these, the labels should have listed the contents present in the product along with percentage of these contents present. However, as per definition by APEDA, an Indian Government association, the organic products are the ones that are grown without use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides, and socially responsible approach. Europeans countries possess some different definitions, but many countries have accepted each others' definitions and norms of production, leading to ease of cross border trades.

The demands of organic products in globally on the rise, and now with people realizing the importance of healthy eating along with rise in lifestyles supported by concepts like Veganism, there will always be an increased demand for these products.

Want to know more about organic food and farming? 
You can refer to my friends blog,  on organic food and organic farming .