Chemical analysis has shown our commercially grown food has a 40% deficiency of vitamins and minerals when compared to commercially grown (no, not even "organic") produce from only 50 years ago. To what would you attribute that change, if not mechanized/chemical agriculture and the ongoing depletion of our soils?

I make compost at home and grow vegetables in pots. When using potting soils and chemical fertilizers, the soil was good for a year, then became little more than sand, silt and mica - heavy, compacted and almost impervious to water, and I am surrounded by people who throw away their worthless potting soil every year. Unsurprisingly, I don't have any insect infestations or plant diseases worth noting, either. Stronger, healthier plants also have a far greater ability to fight off whatever ails them.

You may also be interested to know that the GM crops have been found to have 15% lower productivity, in spite of their being engineered to make them immune to insect infestation (BT corn and soybeans) or "round-up ready" to allow them to out-compete weeds. That they're all hybrids and farmers can't save the seeds for replanting - not to mention Monsanto's ongoing campaign against those farmers whose heritage crops they have contaminated with GM genetic material or that those crops with BT genes (both corn and soybeans) seem to be causing all kinds of problems with allergic and digestive problems - and I'd rather be doing it my way.

Further, the widespread cases of food contamination are all from factory farms, even if that's not what we've been told. The complete lack of oversight and ability to competently investigate by the government reeks of a cover-up. The FDA is owned by the people they're supposed to be regulating - the same people who supply food to every supermarket in the U.S.. Thanks, but no thanks.

I realize I'm not a scientist, but I've got fifteen years of experimentation under my belt and grow some of the best tomatoes and peppers I've ever tasted, each and every year. The food at the grocery store may as well be made of cellulose, water and food coloring by comparison. There's just nothing in it.