Organic food is someting that I have become more and more interested in over the last few months (3 weeks in the US will change a person), and so it was with great interest that I read the post Working the Land the Natural Way by NPR’s Melissa Block. Posted to the Chengdu Diary section, Melissa and Andrea Hsu write about a group of organic farmers near Chengdu:

It’s been almost four years since the project was launched, and of the nine households who have tried organic farming, only four are still at it. The others decided it just wasn’t worth it. Organic farming requires much more labor, the yield can be half or less of that of conventional farming, and besides, hardly anyone in Chengdu is eating organic. Our stock broker-turned-farmer estimates their customer base to be only 0.01% of Chengdu’s population.

Now, I have to admit … the article is short. TOO short, and that were there could have been a lot of sharing, there wasn’t, but I am glad to see that there was something like this going on out west, and that some of the basics were being recognized by the farmers:

Anlong farmer Gao Shengjian believes there’s a link between the use of pesticides and fertilizers on farms and the growing incidences of various diseases among the rural population.

and as someone who believes there is a significant link between food and health, I can only hope that they are able to move that .01% to 10% soon.