Yes, organic farming will kill us all
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Yes, organic farming will kill us all
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Re: Yes, organic farming will kill us all
#2The general gist is interesting in order to captive the intended audience of sceptics, and the clickbait title is effective in that way.
Still, though, a clickbait title.
Furthermore, the usual consensus I hear is that we will need to change our practices drastically, we cannot let the "conventional" farming on life support indefinitely and we cannot let it destroy our sustenance. Organic farming is however still far from being enough to make us live.
The road is probably a reasonable mix of the two, which is actively researched.
Re: Yes, organic farming will kill us all
#3One thing I don't see him cover is how to deal with the "ecosystem" which will form around, and eventually consume, a fully organic permaculture farm. One of the big advantages of monoculture is that you usually only need to protect against a single class of pests in a specific area.
Re: Yes, organic farming will kill us all
#4The general gist is interesting in order to captive the intended audience of sceptics, and the clickbait title is effective in that way. Still, though, a clickbait title. Furthermore, the usual consensus I hear is that we will need to change our practices drastically, we cannot let the "conventional" farming on life support indefinitely and we cannot let it destroy our sustenance. Organic farming is however still far…
Clickbaity, yes, but in an obvious way. The article is a response to a criticism, and the title conveyed that well. As much as I dislike click baits, I didn't mind this one.
Re: Yes, organic farming will kill us all
#5The thing with conventional farming is that a lot of the costs (in terms of environmental damage which needs to be repaired) are currently externalized, i.e. payed for by the society, which indeed makes industrial farming more cost-effective than organic farming, at least for the farmer (though in many countries you can charge a good premium for organic food, which will often outweigh your additional cost). The same is true for the current industrialized way of raising livestock.
The real problem is properly accounting for all costs incurred by a given farming technique, which is difficult as the farming lobby seems to be one of the most effective ones in the world (at least judging from a European perspective).
In addition, the argument that industrial farming consistently produces higher yields than any organic farming technique seems at least a bit dubious to me, as there is a plethora of techniques that have been investigated over the years, and again the outcome of any study depends heavily on the timescale that you look at: Sure, heavy use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides will increase yield in the short run, it might actually decrease yields in the long term by degrading soil quality and triggering a biological arms race that makes it impossible to do farming without the use of heavy pesticides in the long run. Also, the external cost in terms of health effects on the population is still poorly researched and not accounted for in most cost calculations.
Re: Yes, organic farming will kill us all
#6One thing I don't see him cover is how to deal with the "ecosystem" which will form around, and eventually consume, a fully organic permaculture farm. One of the big advantages of monoculture is that you usually only need to protect against a single class of pests in a specific area.
The ecosystem can be of great advantage, different crops can help themselves in warding off the intruders. As an example I mix tomato plants with french marigold and basil. Some farmers have built impressive ecosystem where everything makes sense, type of plant, seasons, minerals, nitrogen, etc
Re: Yes, organic farming will kill us all
#7so this entire article is based on the assumption that current farming practice is wholly unsustainable. I'm not sure I buy into this. Surely it can be adapted as opposed to rejected and completely changed, can't it?
Re: Yes, organic farming will kill us all
#8One thing I don't see him cover is how to deal with the "ecosystem" which will form around, and eventually consume, a fully organic permaculture farm. One of the big advantages of monoculture is that you usually only need to protect against a single class of pests in a specific area.
A single point of failure is an advantage?
Re: Yes, organic farming will kill us all
#9The general gist is interesting in order to captive the intended audience of sceptics, and the clickbait title is effective in that way. Still, though, a clickbait title. Furthermore, the usual consensus I hear is that we will need to change our practices drastically, we cannot let the "conventional" farming on life support indefinitely and we cannot let it destroy our sustenance. Organic farming is however still far…
> Organic farming is however still far from being enough to make us live.
What I have seen says otherwise. There's a thing about chemical agriculture: when you first implement it, you get incredible yields. Then the soil starts dying (no more acari, no more fungi, compressed soil…), and the yields slowly go back to roughly the previous levels, only this time you need all the chemicals to sustain it.
If you suddenly say "let's go organic", you're in for a disappointment: the soil is dead, the yields you get will be terrible. Indeed not enough to feed the world. Fortunately, soils can be resuscitated. One component is rotting pieces of wood, that bring back fungi. You need other things I'm not aware of, but the idea is, in 3 years, your soil is good as new. Mostly. While you now can go organic with good yields, you still have the old chemicals dwelling in that soil. It will take 15 years before you're really free from them.
With a good (or properly resuscitated) soil, it appears organic agriculture have higher yields per unit of surface than chemical agriculture. However, it requires more labour. It would seem the yield per man-month may actually be lower.
We don't need more farming surface. We need more farmers.
Re: Yes, organic farming will kill us all
#10The thing with conventional farming is that a lot of the costs (in terms of environmental damage which needs to be repaired) are currently externalized, i.e. payed for by the society, which indeed makes industrial farming more cost-effective than organic farming, at least for the farmer (though in many countries you can charge a good premium for organic food, which will often outweigh your additional cost). The same…
And there is a huge unspoken problem yet.
In many areas of northern Germany, even with the extremely strict limits on fertilizer and pesticides that Germany has, the drinking water, rivers and oceans are getting so massively polluted that we’re seeing massive algae blooms and drinking water slowly becoming undrinkable.
It’s a massive problem, and there’s no way to solve these without massively reducing fertilizer and pesticide use.
If the choice is between being able to feed less humans, and having no drinking water, I’m sure which one I’ll pick.
EDIT: Because I’m getting downvoted, here are some sources:
> EU sues Germany over water tainted by nitrate fertilizer
> The European Commission has lost patience with Germany over the high concentration of nitrate fertilizer in its ground water. Taxpayers could now end up paying hundreds of millions of euros in fines.
http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-16-1453_en.htm
http://www.dw.com/en/eu-sues-germany-over-water-tainted-by-n...
https://www.thelocal.de/20161107/eu-sues-germany-over-water-...
https://www.euractiv.com/section/agriculture-food/news/eu-ta...