Don’t know at this point that I’m going to get this done tonight; but will come back to it.
And thanks for the appreciation!
His math is wrong. His basic-ass elementary school arithmetic is off by orders of magnitude. It took you longer to write that post that it would have taken to check the math. Or even give it a sniff test. Randomly googling topics one doesn’t know well and accepting results from “gmoanswers dot com” without question has the expected result.
If anyone here is having trouble, like the supposed ivy league professor, with how percents work or how million and billion mean different things, let me know where you’re stuck and I’ll give you a hand.
Here’s a hint: 0.001% of 6000 lb/ac not 6 lb/ac
Here’s another hint: 10 ng/g is not 0.001%
It would be interesting to find some useful studies to explore this question. U.S. poor may have higher income than the average person in, say, Thailand but when access to healthcare and other factors are considered, I doubt they achieve the same contentment level, let alone qualify as ‘wealthy elite.’
But I think you’re correct that “organic farming” is not the solution to feeding a large human population, now 7.6 billion and still counting. Humanity has “painted itself into a corner” where we are dependent on pesticides, fertilizers, GMOs and habitat destruction. :eek: And governments and large corporations often rely on continued growth.
Unfortunately the real solution — discouraging population growth — cannot be discussed in polite company. Some will “argue” that with 8 billion people we can expect 34.8 new DaVinci’s and Mozart’s, but only 17.4 if there were only 4 billion people — impeccable arithmetic, but insane logic. Others will scream that rationalists want to starve 4 billion babies to death. Good luck to all.
Don’t compare income. Compare quality of life. Who has access to electricity, modern plumbing, clean water and food and basic public services like fire, police and the like? I think you’ll find that US (as well as other 1st world countries) poor are MUCH better off than the vast majority of humanity.
No one said they have more contentment than our own ‘wealthy elite’…I said that in comparison with much of the world, even in supposed advanced countries like China, the vast majority of folks don’t have access to the quality of life things our own poor do. And they aren’t going to be eating ‘organic’, unless you mean ‘dirt farming at the bare subsistence level’, in which case yeah…most of the poorer countries are totally organic!
If you want to look into the question you posed here deeper, maybe start another thread on it, as it IS an interesting subject IMHO.
A couple of quick things about this. First off, we don’t need to discourage population growth…the trajectory is already slowing growth and we are basically in the momentum stage. It will slow and decline on its own without us doing anything, even leaving aside how things like climate change and such will put additional pressures on the population. Second, we don’t need to discourage population from the perspective of feeding everyone as we can do that already. We haven’t even started to tweak our agricultural system to bring out efficiencies. Hell, in the US and other countries, farms are paid NOT to grow food, and don’t grow as much as they can because of the effect on the markets. Food is dirt cheap ALREADY. China is currently having issues, but those are artificial issues brought on by a poorly thought out response to Trump’s idiotic trade war (the CCP is every bit as idiotic as Trump et al). Mostly, folks in the world who have issues with food fall into two camps. The biggest one is folks who’s governments are so shaky and who have warlords and gangsters/bandits who steal or burn the food specifically TOO keep the people down and starving. It’s a logistics issue, mainly. Hell, in many of those countries, even dirt farmers are targeted and killed and what land they have goes fallow because of the chaos. The second group are due to market forces for agricultural products. They are stable enough that they COULD buy all the food they need, but they aren’t able too for one reason or another.
We don’t need the population to drop radically or even stop it’s current trajectory to feed everyone. We could do it just with what we have today. The problem isn’t growing the food, sadly, it’s getting the food to the folks who need it. Just like everything else they need. 
:dubious: Did you not read my extensively quoted cite about the inadequacy of trying to equate sustainable agriculture with current narrowly defined “organic farming” criteria, and also the problems with exactly the sort of comparisons of productivity levels between organic and conventional agriculture that you’re referring to? I’ll repost a shortened excerpt:
Simply comparing conventional industrial agriculture with chemical pesticides and fertilizers to conventional industrial agriculture without chemical pesticides and fertilizers gives a misleading idea of the diversity and potential of sustainable agriculture methods. Sure, modern industrial organic farms get their “certified organic” status largely by just abstaining from certain chemicals and planting more acreage to make up yields, but that’s not the only possible approach.
I read your post, Kimstu, for what it’s worth; and also noted that it didn’t seem to be responded to. Let’s see what happens to this one (though look out – Long Post Warning!)
Yeah, the more I look at that it’s not a good cite. It’s wrong in other fashions also, such as that it’s comparing one specific protein in the GMO crop to total bulk of the organically permitted product, and in assuming that organic growers in general are using BT in a fashion in which few if any actually do (see response to Deeg, at the very end of this long post).
As far as the copper and sulfur goes, I’m just going to quote from earlier posts of mine on this board in a different thread, and also refer you to my post #46 in this thread, as well as to the very end of this one:
As far as the efficiency question goes, to come at this from more than one direction:
First, in order to properly talk about efficiency, it’s necessary to discuss what measure of efficiency is being used. Total salable yield per acre by weight? Total nutrient production per acre? Total yield, whether by weight or by nutrients, and whether or not including items eaten by the farmers, per amount of fossil fuel used? per amount of overall non-renewable resources used? per total calories required to produce a calorie of food? per impact on the topsoil, whether positive or negative? per impact on water quality? per impact on other species, including but not limited to those also edible for humans? per amount and cost of off-farm inputs required to raise the crop? per amount of human labor needed? Those are all different measures, and they’re not all going to give the same answer. (Higher costs for organic food in the USA and similar countries are affected, not only by marketing issues and the costs of organic certification, neither of which are inherent to the system itself; but also by the fact that currently in the USA the cost of running machinery and purchasing inputs – both of which draw on non-renewable resources – is generally less than the cost of human labor. This isn’t true everywhere, and may well not be true forever anywhere.)
Second, results vary pretty drastically among studies even just of relative yield per acre. And many studies are done using fields that have been in production [ETA: in organic production] only briefly, and/or involving farmers with limited experience in organic areas. The Rodale long-term studies, reviewed at Cornell, did indeed see a drop in organic production relative to conventional –for the first five years. After that organic yields came back up, to equal and in some years exceed conventional yields – in particular in dry years; organic systems tend to show greater resilience in shifting weather, which is likely to be very important.
And third, if what we’re after is the greatest possible yield of food per acre: while research is still limited, it seems likely that the way to get that is with polyculture systems, in which multiple crops are mixed together, not just on one farm, but in one field. These systems are likely to produce a lower yield of any one crop, but a total greater quantity of nutrients (and a wider variety of nutrients, very important for people in areas with poor food distribution systems, and for the farmers themselves in areas where little money is available.)
Polyculture systems are entirely unsuited for conventional farming, because they mix together crops of different families, planted at different times, not at the same growth stage at the same time, and generally harvested and eaten at different times; which means that they’re not suitable for the use of conventional (or often organic) pesticides, because herbicides that could be used on one may kill the others, insecticides that could be used on one will kill pollinators and other beneficials needed for the others, and days-to-harvest limits don’t work. They also don’t work at all with large scale machinery, and machinery that might work with such systems has for the most part not been developed. They require significant hand work – though the mix of crops does some of that work for the farmer; once well established and growing they’re generally not susceptible to damage from weeds, and weeds that appear early may be edible and considered more a part of the mix than a problem.
But if you want the most possible nutrition per area, in the form most resilient to changing weather, and especially if you want it in a form accessible to people without a lot of money, polyculture’s the way to go.
(Note: this was very small scale plots.)
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=17&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwit2ca4jNbkAhUzIjQIHTzKBX04ChAWMAZ6BAgJEAI&url=https%3A%2F%2Fojs.ethnobiology.org%2Findex.php%2Febl%2Farticle%2Fdownload%2F721%2F411&usg=AOvVaw3BCpmhGW4ZABPQsgB_CkS3
(Seems to be downloadable pdf only)
How about a couple of cites from India?
a field experiment was conducted at the research farm of Indian Agricultural Research Institute, New Delhi, India during 2003-06 in rice-wheat-green gram cropping system [ . . . ] The rice grain yield (4.0 t ha-1) obtained under combined application of four organic amendments was at par with the yield recorded under recommended dose of chemical fertilizer application. An interesting observation recorded was that there was no serious attack of any insect pest or dis-ease in organically grown crop. Soil microbial population (Actinomycetes, Bacteria, Fungi and BGA) enhanced due to the application of organic amendments in compari-son to absolute control as well as recommended fertilizer application that in turn re-sulted in a notable enhancement in soil dehydrogenase and phosphatase enzyme activity. Soil organic carbon and available phosphorus contents were also found to be significantly increased due to organic farming practice over control as well as chemical fertilizer application.
https://crops.confex.com/crops/wc2006/techprogram/P11639.HTM
A field experiment to know the effect of application of organics on the productivity of groundnut (cv. JL-24) was conducted in organic deficient Vertisols (Medium black soil) under rainfed farming situations at the Main Agricultural Research Station, University of Agricultural Sciences, Dharwad, Karnataka (India) during rainy season of 2004. [. . . ]
The results indicated that organic farming in groundnut produced 18.18 and 22.09 % higher dry pod yield and higher kernel yield over inorganic farming (2970 and 2345 kg dry pod and kernel yield/ha, respectively). Further, use of organics in groundnut production also resulted in higher pod number/plant (23.04 %), dry pod weight/plant (13.08 %), double seeded pods (6.62 %), shelling percent (3.34 %), sound mature kernels (3.94%), 100-kernel weight (0.14%) and harvest index (3.16 %) as compared to inorganic farming (20.4, 28.912 g, 136, 78.94 %, 88.42 % 50.76 g and 0.411, respectively). Groundnut crop in organically amended plot did not show moisture stress during the period of dry spell of 38 days due to greater moisture conservation. On the contrary, groundnut in inorganic farming showed moderate to severe moisture stress during same initial dry spell period.
Theoretically, quite possibly. Though I, at least, and a number of other organic growers, would want a different and more open attitude to testing and research first. Access to GMO seed for research purposes was heavily restricted for years
; and while a number of universities are now allowed to do such research without individual permission for each study, there’s still not an entirely open situation
. A living organism can’t be withdrawn once it’s released, and so requires extra caution. We’re having enough trouble with chlorofluorocarbons, which came into common use because they were genuinely considered less toxic than their predecessors – and genuinely were, except that we had no idea they’d have effects in an area it hadn’t even occurred to us to test; but at least those don’t manufacture and release more of themselves.
In practice, what’s currently available in GMO’s is things we wouldn’t want in the toolbox. We don’t want to use dicamba or glyphosphate; and we don’t want to use BT in the fashion in which GMO crops use it. Organic growers who do use BT apply it only when and if the target pest is present or can reasonably be expected (based on previous area specific history, current year appearance of the pest in nearby locations, scouting for adults, and relevant weather reports, not on just looking at the date) to be imminently present in the field at the growth stage at which it’s vulnerable to BT, and the crop is simultaneously at a growth stage at which it’s susceptible to the pest. We don’t use even biologicals by applying them continuously from seeding until and after harvest, whether or not the pest even shows up that year.
Oh please. That is grotesque. The “organic” (or you could say, wholistic, or sustainable, but organic is what has caught on) farming movement is huge, very complex, and highly regulated. It is the very opposite of your utterly ignorant remark. Trying to produce food in such a way as to sustain biodiversity, ecological balances, the health of the soil, of the farm workers, as well as that of the consumers of it, is hardly anti-science or primitive in any way whatsoever. In reality it is far more complex and delicate than what it is trying to supplant – using soil as a mere industrial growing medium for mono-cropping.
To address one part of thorny locust’s lengthy gallop (the comment suggesting all is well with use of copper (fungicides) by organic farmers since they’re supposed to “minimize” its application):
Wise “minimal” use of a pesticide sounds great, but as a practical matter applications can be excessive in all types of agriculture, and harm ranging from toxicity to pest resistance can ensue.* In the case of copper sulphate (approved for organic farming) long-term toxicity seems to be the major problem.
"Vineyard sprayers have experienced liver disease from exposure to it. It is corrosive to the skin and eyes and is absorbed through the skin. It causes reproductive problems in birds, hamsters and rats. It has been shown to induce heart disease in the offspring of pregnant hamsters that were exposed to it. It has caused endocrine tumors in chickens. Copper sulfate and similar fungicides have been poisonous to sheep and chickens on farms at normal application rates. … They are very toxic to fish and aquatic invertebrates, such as crab, shrimp and oysters. There are cases where most animal life in soil, including large earthworms, have been eliminated by the extensive use of copper-containing fungicides in orchards. It is strongly bioaccumulated and is very persistent. Once a soil is contaminated with copper, there is no practical way to remove it.”
Note: I occasionally use two of what are somewhat hyperbolically called the “dirty dozen” organic pesticides (Neem oil and pyrethrins), mostly indoors on ornamental plants. This is of course far different than raising grain/vegetables for a living and relying on pesticides to bring in a saleable crop.
*I’m unaware of the U.S.D.A. sending reps out to organic farms on a continuing basis to test soil and water accumulation of metal-based pesticides, any more than the agency does comprehensive reviews of non-organic farmers’ potential overuse of pesticides.
:dubious: “Gallop” seems to be insinuating the expression “Gish gallop”, where somebody makes a large variety of false statements in rapid succession so that it’s difficult to rebut them effectively. AFAICT that’s not what thorny locust’s long post was doing, and I think you should retract your use of the term.
ISTM that that’s exactly what thorny locust herself was saying about the need for caution in using it:
It kind of IS a Gallop though. Her (I’m using your pronoun her, so if thorny isn’t a woman, my apologies) response to me, for instance, has nothing to do with my own point. Thorny’s cites seem to be about organic farming in India, which I never denied…or really mentioned…in my own post, which was about who eats the organically grown food there. Now, had she posted a link and some text saying that 70%, say, of India’s poor eat organically grown food, THAT would have been a reasonable rebuttal to my off the cuff anecdote…and I’d have learned something.
As it is, I’m unsure what we are even arguing about in this tangent to the original thread. Are thorny and you making a comment about how organic is safer to eat than GMO? Or that GMO’s aren’t safe? Or is it that organic is better for the environment? I really am not sure exactly what is being argued and have, essentially, lost interest in the tangent. I saw your post and thorny’s comment about no one coming back to rebut you or her and figured I’d just do a drive by.
If the thread is now about how viable organic is, or how much better for the environment or something, that’s a whole 'nother subject. I think that sweeping, across the board statements about organic or non-organic are going to be hard to make, as there are examples of each that can demonstrate whatever the person spinning the data wants to show. From what I have read, organic is generally more expensive. It generally takes more resources to produce with lower yields. And the vast majority of actual agricultural produce is done using non-organic methods, world wide. While organic SALES are about about 9-10% in the US, the actual amount of food is more like 6% of the total (which is telling right there). I can’t seem to get a quick Google search on how much of the worlds annual food production is organic, as the US produces something like 35% of that total and as our own organic production is less than 10%, I’m going to assume my assumption is correct that it’s a small percentage of the overall amount produced each year. I’ll make a WAG that it’s less than 20% of the total, world wide. Now, if someone wants to look THAT up and show me it’s really 40%, or 60% of 99% I’ll definitely be interested.
But, wrt GMOs which is what the OP is asking about, I haven’t seen any evidence that they are not safe to eat simply because they are genetically modified. What I have seen on this subject is that a lot of things that humans have genetically modified over the 10,000 or so years we’ve been tinkering don’t make it on the GMO list, and folks are perfectly happy growing them ‘organically’ while claiming they are non-GMO (I always get a kick out of seeing the non-GMO thing on stuff made of corn, for instance :p).
As far as India and organic, I found this cite that discusses it:
The article is from 2018, so maybe there has been a dramatic shift, though other cites I glanced at seem to indicate that’s not the case. But it’s telling that India has 30% of the worlds total organic farmers/farms yet produces so little from them, and has so many issues. It seems to indicate that we can’t shift our global food production to all organic any time soon.
This isn’t to say that soil conservation and better resource management (water, for instance) aren’t important…vital even. I think they are, and I think we need to focus on that, especially with climate change biting us on our collective asses and looking to ramp up. But I haven’t seen anything showing that all organic is more than a rich persons affectation. It’s not the way to feed 12 billion or so humans in the next century, at least not from what I’ve seen.
Which is all irrelevant to the question of whether GMO’s are safe to eat or not…
Firstly, thanks for writing up such an informative post. I personally am skeptical of the claims of many organic farming proponents, but from what I have read as well as from first-hand experience with gardening, there certainly seems to be some merit with polyculture farming. The thing I take issue with is the bolded statement - can you clarify what you mean by “in a form accessible to people without a lot of money”?
The natural conclusion that I drew from reading above - that these methods require “significant hand work” and “don’t work at all with large-scale machinery” implies exactly the opposite to me - that this style of farming would have to be very labour-intensive, and therefore will result in expensive food. Especially as more and more jurisdictions move towards better labour conditions, higher minimum wages, etc.
If you are suggesting that this style of farming may be more efficient from a land-use perspective, resource usage perspective, etc - I totally buy that. But I just can’t see how this could correspond to cost efficiency.
The other possible interpretation that I could see is that you meant that this style of farming is accessible to farmers without a lot of money - eg. not much capital investment is required for farmers to farm in this method. I can definitely see that being the case - but I don’t see that translating into cheaper food prices.
Which leads me to believe that organic food is basically a environmental luxury good - similar in a way to electric cars. I think it would be a great thing if both of those things were able to come down in cost such that they were competitive with conventional cars and food, but for now there is a distinct tradeoff between cost and environmental impact. And it seems to me like there is a fundamental conflict between valuing people’s labour, and having low-cost food - one of those has to give. Perhaps the future holds some technology that will enable automation of sustainable polyculture farms - can you envision what that might look like?
Well, I’m not insisting that you be interested in it, but ISTM pretty clearly indicated what the basic topic has been:
Yes, that’s kind of the point. Sustainability, environmental health, efficiency, and affordability in agriculture depend on the specifics of the agricultural practices used, not just whether they’re labeled “organic” or “non-organic”.
I don’t think anybody in this thread is claiming otherwise.
Given the variety of false information and poor-quality citations thorny locust has sullied this thread with, that’s an accurate term. Did you read that bogus Bt cite? It should have never been seen here, although at least they owned up to it being wrong. But then turned around and posted this as part of the “gallop”:
Why anyone would link to press releases instead of the actual study, I don’t know. But we see in “review at Cornell”[sic] (10.1641/0006-3568(2005)055[0573:EEAECO]2.0.CO;2) that while yields may be similar for a given year, they are not similar overall due to plow-down of rotated crops in the organic plots. It’s right there for anyone who bothered to read the actual study. Generally, that’s expected prior to posting in GD, but YMMV.
They do get to sell some of the side crops (the ones they don’t just plow) so it’s not a total wash. Although for whatever reason Pimentel doesn’t provide a standard data supplement so the exact numbers aren’t known. Sloppy. There are other issues with Pimentel’s paper wrt nitrogen efficiency, GHG emissions, cost estimates, but they didn’t come up here so I’ll leave those for now.
The Pimentel yield results (~30% worse total system yield for organic) are in line with other, large-scale studies. E.g. 10.1038/nature11069 (30% lower yields for organic), or USDA NASS and ERS data (25% lower for organic corn, wheat, soy.)
So anyone writing that organic yields are the same as conventional yields is either ignorant or, let’s leave it at that. If the aim is to discredit organic farming and organic farmers, keep it up with the bad cites and incorrect information. Although I’d rather people not, given that our farm is (not certified) organic and people pay stupid money for our honey and produce.
Of course yield isn’t be-all end-all. There are people working on GMO crops that make more root matter to help reverse our carbon soil debt. Or people working on making ammonia from air and water and electricity from wind/solar to decrease embedded agricultural GHG emissions. Big Organic may not like those, but we can’t feed the planet without synthetic nitrogen fertilizers. We knew that over a century ago.
Yes, too much copper is poisonous. I already said that.
This would not generally be done by the USDA, though they’re legally entitled to. It would be done by the agency certifying the particular farm. Organic growers report to the certifying agency everything that’s being applied to every field, on what dates, and at what rates; and apply in advance to use restricted materials. Frequent or heavy applications of copper would call for soil testing.
– considerably more to be said in response to this thread, but don’t know when I’ll have time to do it. Will try to get back to this later in the week, or maybe in bits and pieces on more than one day. It’s past midnight, it’s quit raining and weather report’s dry for the next several days, and I’ve got work to do.
– Ruken, if you mean that you’re selling your honey and produce as organic but you’re not certified, and you’re in the USA, you may be in violation of the law.