Yes, organic farming will kill us all • Hacker News Board

Re: Yes, organic farming will kill us all

#11

Post by geomark » Tue, Jan 17, 2017, 9:49 AM UTC

snovv_crash wrote: post #3

One 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.

I've dabbled a bit with permaculture while reading a quite a bit about it. They talk about combining plants into a "botantical guild" such that pests are deterred or controlled in a way that yields are maintained. I've not been successful with it. I live in the tropics and pests are ferocious here, much more so than where I lived in the US. The only success I've had is with low yield native plants.

Re: Yes, organic farming will kill us all

#12

Post by justin_vanw » Tue, Jan 17, 2017, 9:51 AM UTC

I think this is just an example of 'elitism' on the part of the author. It is ludicrous to think that there is a chance that the 'local/organic' movement will ever capture more than 1%-2% of food production. Most people don't care, and some fraction of people that do care are intelligent enough to decide that additional cost for no increase in quality is not worth it.

So this is 'elitism' because people think that a very high-cost, niche, atypical behavior is in some way a 'threat' because 'everyone will do it'. Maybe everyone the author knows, but only a tiny percentage of people overall.

Re: Yes, organic farming will kill us all

#13

Post by SeanDav » Tue, Jan 17, 2017, 9:54 AM UTC

There is a lot of discussion in generalities in this article and precious few hard facts. I would love to see a less chemical approach to farming but articles like this are not going to convince very many people that organic is a viable method of feeding the masses.

Re: Yes, organic farming will kill us all

#14

Post by yoz-y » Tue, Jan 17, 2017, 9:55 AM UTC

Quarrelsome wrote: post #7

so 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?

Marked will decide. In France I already see more Bio (Organic) shops around than those selling conventional food. I don't go there because of the price but the demand is clearly growing. Most of the organic food is produced by the same companies that do conventional farming anyways, shift will come.

Re: Yes, organic farming will kill us all

#15

Post by loup-vaillant » Tue, Jan 17, 2017, 9:56 AM UTC

Quarrelsome wrote: post #7

so 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?

This particular assumption is pretty safe: current farming practice depends heavily on oil. For energy of course, but also for chemicals. Nothing that depends that heavily on fossil fuels is sustainable in the long run. Whatever change we devise, we need to weaken that dependency.

> Surely it can be adapted as opposed to rejected and completely changed, can't it?

Personally, I see organic agriculture as a modernization: it's healthier (no poisonous pesticide in my apple!), easier on the soil, but it's not easier. The knowledge required to grow food organically is quite precise, and research is still ongoing.

Re: Yes, organic farming will kill us all

#16

Post by adrianN » Tue, Jan 17, 2017, 10:03 AM UTC

loup-vaillant wrote: post #9

grive wrote: post #2

The 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 s…

I don't think the yields go back to pre-fertilizer levels, otherwise we wouldn't be able to sustain so many more mouths than before Haber-Bosch.

Re: Yes, organic farming will kill us all

#17

Post by avar » Tue, Jan 17, 2017, 10:04 AM UTC

Organic isn't the answer, it's trying to address some legitimate concerns, but it's a movement full of scientific woo-woo that's been legislated.

For instance, organic farming thinks GMO's are bad, but is just fine with irradiating large fields full of plants to accomplish random mutations through radiation breeding.

This article is one example of this, the author decries traditional corn fields, and as a counterexample wants us to believe that some hilly permaculture farm in Austria which just from the looks of it obviously has to be harvested & maintained by hand would be a viable replacement.

Organic is largely just a western luxury product supported by people with no concern about producing food at true scale, and how we can satisfy the global food supply without impoverishing a large part of the population by doing manual labor on farms.

There's no panacea when it comes to farming, but GMOs seem to be the best shot we have.

Re: Yes, organic farming will kill us all

#18

Post by jaimebuelta » Tue, Jan 17, 2017, 10:05 AM UTC

We first should get a good definition of what "organic food" is, as currently (at least in Europe) is, more or less, equivalent to "crops grow using tradicional methods". The "tradicional methods" is very vague, but gets described in some laws. That's the main reason why is less efficient, is not using the latest improvements. "Organic food" is also an incredibly silly name, as there are no "inorganic food", but whatever.

What is NOT guaranteed by those laws is that the food is:

- More ecologically friendly (some tradicional pesticides or fertiliser are quite nasty, and you may need to use much more)

- Better (either as more nutrients or tastier)

- Locally produced (and Co2 emissions can be high when you purchase an organic crop produced in Australia)

- Produced in small farms (there are big corporations as well)

- Rigorously following the rules, as inspections are small

Again, the key word here is GUARANTEED. Some organic farms may be doing things is a good way, but most are not improving anything, and there's nothing in the "organic food" industry as a whole that promotes a good analysis.

Given that they are "tradicional methods", I find difficult to change into a more "let's try to improve farming into a more sustainable and less aggressive endeavour". Which I think is what we all want. And I think the "conventional farming" is, at least, in a better position to approach this problem.

Re: Yes, organic farming will kill us all

#19

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Jan 17, 2017, 10:05 AM UTC

kristopolous wrote: post #8

snovv_crash wrote: post #3

One 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?

[deleted]

Re: Yes, organic farming will kill us all

#20

Post by avar » Tue, Jan 17, 2017, 10:06 AM UTC

kuschku wrote: post #10

ThePhysicist wrote: post #5

The 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…

Start by picking GMOs instead of the woo-woo that is organic farming. See e.g. a German-funded meta-analysis[1] that found that:

"[...] the adoption of herbicide-tolerant (HT) soybean, maize, and cotton, and insect-resistant (IR) maize and cotton has resulted in a 22% increase in average yields, a 37% overall decrease in pesticide use, and a 68% increase in farmer profits.".

1. http://www.theskepticsguide.org/gm-impact-meta-analysis