Bill

This bill is needed to eliminate any possible danger of contaminated fruits and vegetables purchased from Californian grocery stores. The use of pesticides, growth hormones, and fertilizers is abundant in California as well as the United States, and to halt their use will provide safer fruits and vegetables for the consumers.

This bill will benefit the people, plants, animals and the environment. Agriculture is responsible for 70% of the pollution to the country's rivers and streams caused by chemicals, erosion, and animal waste runoff. Organic farming may be one of the last ways to keep both ecosystems and rural communities healthy and alive. The runoff chemicals affect not only the life in the rivers, but also our drinking water. By growing organic fruits and vegetables, the agricultural impact on the environment is reduced. They preserve biodiversity by collecting seeds and growing a variety of plants. They naturally enrich the soil with manure and compost. They rotate crops in the fields and plant cover crops to stop weeds, nutrient leaching, and erosion. The people will be able to eat their fruits and vegetables without having to worry about pesticides or detrimental addictives.

The organic market we know today began evolving in the 1960s and '70s, when rising environmental awareness led to a backlash against pesticides and increased demand for "natural" products. Organic food prices are volatile. They can vary day to day depending on supplies. Organic carrots, for example, sometimes cost less than conventionally grown. However, organic food in supermarkets tends to cost more compared with the same food grown in a non-organic fashion, and not all consumers are willing or able to buy them. But in the long term, if the market continues to expand, consumption of organics should reach a state in which the cost per unit of processing, marketing, and distributing products is much lower. That price break, in turn, could bring many more consumers into the market. Consumer demand is a powerful force for change. Between 1989 and 1996 sales of organic products increased 20 percent annually. Every food category now has an organic alternative and more non-food crops are grown organically