You hear a knock at your door and go to answer it. There, right at your doorstep, is a man or woman holding out a box filled with produce. You smile, knowing this is not just any produce, but this is your order from an organics produce vendor who delivers right to your doorstep. The time of year determines what sorts of foods are in the box. It could be sweet onions, collard greens, swiss chard, apples, pears, walnuts, vine-ripened tomatoes, sage, basil, or any number of organically grown foods that were ready and ripe for the picking that week.

Alternatively, if no home delivery organic food service is available in your area, you may opt in to a CSA, or community supported agriculture farm, and pick up your share of produce during the growing season from that farm. You pay a fee to join the CSA, and this fee goes to defray the farm’s operating expenses. In return, you get a share of the produce each week in proportion to how much you have invested in the farm.

Farmers’ markets offer locally grown organic foods and herbs to the public usually on weekends, and offer a lot of local color with entertainment and a wide variety of dogs accompanying the shoppers. Organic foods, including organic herbs, are at the top of many people’s weekly shopping list. Here’s why.

• Organic herbs cut out the use of pesticides made from synthetic materials

Organic farms tend to focus more on soil quality than traditional farms. Soil quality has to do with the nutrients that are available in the soil for plant roots to use as food. It also has to do with soil tilth, or the texture of the soil. Soil that has been amended with compost has a lovely, loose tilth, which is perfect for plant roots to be able to stretch out and take up nutrients from the soil, and loose enough for them to get the oxygen they need as well as the water they need for growth. All of these things factor in to the quality of food that can be produced on a piece of soil.

Synthetic pesticides are made in large part from petroleum-based products. They are very effective, but at a cost, both monetary and dietary. As fuel costs have skyrocketed, so too have synthetic fertilizer and pesticide fees, costing farmers much more to produce the same amount of food. These chemicals also leech into the soil, where they are picked up by the plant roots and conveyed to the fruit of the plant. Because organic herbs are grown without the use of synthetic chemical, these toxins are not present in organic foods.

• Organically grown foods help to protect groundwater and wildlife

Consider this: Traditional farms in modern times are now factory farms, in that large agricultural companies have bought up many small farms, combining the acreage into one mega-farm. Farming on this scale of thousands of acres means that on a traditional farm these acres are also covered in synthetic fertilizers and pesticides. When lands are irrigated, or heavy rains occur, there is a tremendous amount of runoff of water, water containing toxins, that has no where else to go but into the groundwater. Ground water is used as part of city water supplies, so this is not the place where you want to add toxic residues.

Neither do you want the groundwater from these factory farms to end up in runoff that finishes up in streams and waterways. The chemical pesticides and fertilizers harm fish, and also harm stream bank plants that can be killed by herbicide residues or can be encouraged to grow excessively by fertilizer residues, overtaking native plants and thus eliminating food sources for scores of native wildlife. These are non-issues with organic herbs, because none of the toxins are used on these plants in the first place, so there is no damaging runoff from the lands that produce these healthy crops.

Herbs in bulk that are grown organically do not harm the land or waterways, and they are safe to eat, because they come to you the shopper without any harmful toxins attached. Organics make long term, sustainable sense for farmers and consumers alike.