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Yes, organic farming will kill us all

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Re: Yes, organic farming will kill us all

#81

Post by TeMPOraL »

loup-vaillant wrote: post #28
dagw wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it's healthier (no poisonous pesticide in my apple!) That is simply not true. Organic farming uses pesticides just as conventional farming, and I'm not aware of any studies that find that organic pesticides are consistently better for your health than non-organic. Rotanone for example is popular with many organic farmers, and has been linked to causing Parkinson's disease. PS: This is not an argument against organic…

Depends on how we define "organic". If it can include pesticides, that's a bit depressing. There's a way to avoid pesticides altogether: grow local apples that thrive in the local environment. Some will get eaten by worms, some will rot… Select them out. You don't always need those pesticides.

From what I hear, it does. More than that - because "organic" is at least in some part based around scaring people with "unnatural things" and "evil chemicals", it limits its choice of pesticides, potentially excluding ones that are less toxic and less harmful, just because they're not "natural".

Re: Yes, organic farming will kill us all

#82

Post by riprowan »

avar wrote: post #20
kuschku wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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-impa…

To accurately assess the long-term cost/benefit of GMOs vs organic farming, one would need to understand the long-term externalized costs of each.

We understand the long-term impact of organic farming. We do not understand the long-term impact of many GMOs.

Re: Yes, organic farming will kill us all

#83

Post by XorNot »

thinkloop wrote: post #50

> we should be TERRIFIED that fewer than 1 in 100 Americans actually knows how to grow enough food to feed a family or more Am I the only one that found this to be high, and comforting? I looked up how many software engineers there are in the US, it's also around 1% (3.6m) [1] About 0.5% of us are lawyers [2] Double-checking the farmers stat, it seems there are 2.1m farms [3], each must be manned by at least several…

Also that's a stupid metric: subsistence farming is wildly inefficient and cannot sustain the population of any country today.

Re: Yes, organic farming will kill us all

#84

Post by geon »

grzm wrote: post #40
geon wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please don't use the word "chemical" like it is something unnatural or harmful. Water is a chemical. The active ingredients of natural fertilizer are chemicals.

I understand the point you're trying to make. Likely you understand the distinction your parent intends as well, and this is a commonly understood way to discuss the topic. Do you have a preferred alternative to suggest that conveys the same intent, preferably one that is also widely understood?

Use terms that convey the objection you have to it. Or object to the negative effects they have in the first place.

Re: Yes, organic farming will kill us all

#85

Post by rini17 »

justin_vanw wrote: post #12

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…

It's only your preconceptions that are ludicrous. In 1990s agriculture in Russia partially collapsed, so people turned to their small plots of land and "captured the food production". They were lucky they knew how - the communist government-managed centralized distribution was unreliable so the skill was handy. Of course, there's no hard data from this chaotic period, but being from eastern european country myself, it is fully conceivable. There's widespread home food gardening culture (only we don't call it "organic", just "how it was always done").

Re: Yes, organic farming will kill us all

#86

Post by roel_v »

KaiserPro wrote: post #46

I spent most of my early childhood (0-7) on an "allotment" it measured 90 rods by 10 feet, or some other useless unit of measurement. Next to the allotment is a standard farmers field. It was earmarked for housing about 10 years ago, and it was abandoned as an crop growing device there and then. There are two obvious features of this field: 1) its much lower than the allotment 2) it only grows algae. The soil in the…

"Now, this is where my thoughts get controversial:"

This is not controversial. It's widely recognized (even by conventional farming bodies) that soil degradation is a major environmental threat. At the EU level, while the Soil Directive proposal was withdrawn a few years ago, much other environmental work and legislation is about mitigation and monitoring of soil degradation / threats. There are different schools of thought on how to deal with it though; the 'let's go back to subsistence farming' idea isn't the only way.

Re: Yes, organic farming will kill us all

#87

Post by michaelt »

7sigma wrote: post #52
loup-vaillant wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reason why GMO is bad is probably not because of the "Modified" part. It's because they're optimised to withstand heavy pesticide use. Pesticides are bad. Also, that freedom thing: GMO are generally sterile, so you have to buy seeds every year from Monsanto. Great business model for Monsanto, not so much for the farmer.

"It's because they're optimised to withstand heavy pesticide use" Actually, GMOs need less pesticides than non GMO crop. Some of them produce their own pesticide (BT corn and BT cotton). "Pesticides are bad." Thats kind of the point, they are bad to pests that try to eat the crop "GMO are generally sterile" You are confusing GMO with hybrids and no they are not sterile, the just lose vigour after a few generations, s…

  Actually, GMOs need less pesticides than non GMO crop.
Depends what you compare it to.

Roundup-resistant crops allow roundup-intensive farming [1] which does less* environmental harm than some more harmful pesticides (if you ignore the development of roundup-resistant weeds). But lower intensity, less productive organic techniques use fewer pesticides and do even less environmental harm.

[1] http://sitn.hms.harvard.edu/flash/2015/roundup-ready-crops/

Re: Yes, organic farming will kill us all

#88

Post by bad_user »

latch wrote: post #80
bad_user wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The current definition of what "organic farming" is has been obviously corrupted by the current farming industry. In the end it's just a label. But the question remains: how can we do sustainable farming, without polluting the soil and the water and without poisoning humans? If we can't find a way to make that work, then we are all heading towards an apocalypse, because what we are doing currently isn't sustainable.…

Reducing the consumption of meat seems like a step in the right direction. It's a huge drain on water, land, energy and calories. At the very least, people should be paying for the real cost. Taking it further, instead of subsidizing these industries, I wouldn't mind seeing a beef-tax.

Lets not forget that CAFOs producing cheap beef, pork and chicken are only possible because of cheap corn, which is unhealthy for humans, since cattle aren't evolved to survive on a corn diet, being like a human being fed only candy, hence they also need to be fed with antibiotics, to prevent liver infections.

Corn that is subsidized by the government with your taxes. And where corn grows, nothing else does ;-)

Re: Yes, organic farming will kill us all

#89

Post by jeromenerf »

yoz-y wrote: post #14
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.

"Market will decide", as if.

Governments can (and some do) help to bootstrap a saner "organic" economic landscape by creating demand through regulations such as "school restaurants food should be 50% local and organic by 2020, 100% by 2030".

Re: Yes, organic farming will kill us all

#90

Post by KaiserPro »

roel_v wrote: post #86
KaiserPro wrote: post #46

I spent most of my early childhood (0-7) on an "allotment" it measured 90 rods by 10 feet, or some other useless unit of measurement. Next to the allotment is a standard farmers field. It was earmarked for housing about 10 years ago, and it was abandoned as an crop growing device there and then. There are two obvious features of this field: 1) its much lower than the allotment 2) it only grows algae. The soil in the…

"Now, this is where my thoughts get controversial:" This is not controversial. It's widely recognized (even by conventional farming bodies) that soil degradation is a major environmental threat. At the EU level, while the Soil Directive proposal was withdrawn a few years ago, much other environmental work and legislation is about mitigation and monitoring of soil degradation / threats. There are different schools of…

oh, I'm not suggesting subsitance farming, that just sucks balls. Have you ever tried to plough furrows with horses? that shits hard.

we need to be dumping literal mountains of shit on the fields again. we also need to stop killing the soil ecosystem, so that fungus, worms and all manner of other things can grown and break the soil up

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