I’ve read The Omnivore’s Dilemna, and I appreciate and understand the arguments against industrial agriculture, particularly as they concern fossil fuel inputs in the growth, shipment, and processing of commoditized food products. They make sense to me.
But I haven’t read or heard much about what seems to me to be the primary countervailing argument, to wit: can we sustain the population of Earth on organic, local and sustainable agriculture? I mean, the primary reason industrial agriculture arose is, simply put, it produces more food. Sure, it does so in large part because we keep adding nutrients to the soil, in the form of oil-based fertilizers, to make up for the damage industrial agriculture does, but the food does come out of the system in spades.
If, tomorrow, all the agricultural land in the world were switched over to intensive “beyond organic” treatment, like that of Polyface Farm described in Omnivore, would the Earth have the same population in a year it has now? What if we add the “local” requirement to the mix - would the United Kingdom be largely depopulated?
Considering how much forest land would likely have to be destroyed in order for many places to obtain enough land for “local and sustainable” agriculture, it makes little environmental sense. Our agriculture economy has evolved the way it has because it is less expensive to concentrate food growth in certain areas. Less expensive also means that it is a more efficient way to use resources. There is really no environmental reason to think that we’d be better off if all our food was grown close to our houses. The tremendous increase in the price of food that would inevitable follow indicates that we would be wasting a large amount of resources in the process.
Good questions. Humans are as intimately linked to the health of the planet as they are to their own health as a human being. Barbara Kingsolver’s book **Animal, Vegetable, Miracle ** develops the idea of being a Locavore - one who eats only things found within a certain radius of your home, say 150 miles. For me in Connecticut that would make getting things like Sugar and Coffee difficult.
However, the phrase “Think Globally, Act Locally” holds a decent amount of credence to an individuals role in living a green, sustainable life.
I work for a large Environemtnal Advocacy firm and we specialize in this very thing you are talking about. And without writing novel on it right now, I can say that it is up to the individual to gain support for a movement, and that is really what you are talking about. Creating a movement of change so people eat more organically and live more sustainably.
As to whether or not the population would decrease if we went all beyond organic like Michael Pollan decribes? I think to some extent it would - because large industrial farms would have a very difficult time sustaining thier crops over the plating cycles if they were trying to leave a s little dent in the ground as possible. Living beyond organic could mean supporting an organic farm but if you are going to use fossil fuels to power the machinery to harvest, or distribute the product you are not truly beyond organic. I could go on and on but the crux of the matter is appealing to the individual and helping people make the right choices over a culture of people, creating a society of change.
I don’t know about Great Britain, but Las Vegas would be a ghost town in a week.
The bulk of human civilization is close to the sea. Not because we eat the stuff you get out of the surf, but because it makes it easier to bring in stuff from far away. Undoing three thousand years of logistical consequences is going to involve more than “Super Victory Gardens.”
Well, here’s the problem. Why are we advocating a “society of change” when the change being advocated is to one whereby we cannot feed the planet? Is “beyond organic” (or even Industrial Organic) doomed to a minority niche, a status symbol for the elites?
I think it is, because Pollin, in Omnivore, explicitly urges that the movement towards organic should not be limited to the elites, but should be a mass movement. But if organic cannot feed the planet, it is, by definition a limited movement, which can only benefit those who can pay for it - the elites.
Why not ask the same question of other resources? Should we only drive cars that are made locally? Use computers that are built locally? In other words, should we abandon specialization, trade, economies of scale, and modern scientific manufacturing processes?
The very reason why the earth is abundant with food is because we got away from those practices and allowed food production to be industrialized and for specialization and comparative advantage to bring efficiency to food manufacture.
Do you understand the ramifications of ‘local only’ food? For one thing, cancer deaths would skyrocket as fruits and certain green vegetables would no longer be available to large portions of the population. And if you want to limit food production to ‘organic only’ foods (which I assume means no fertilization or other chemical means of increasing yields), you’ll not only make food much more expensive and reduce supply of it, but you’ll make it more dangerous and probably less sustainable as well. Modern pesticides do a great job of making sure the land we use gets used in the most efficient way possible. As you mentioned, modern fertilizers put nutrients back into the soil.
This is not to say that agriculture is perfect, or that we can’t improve the environmental aspects of modern farming. But I consider the whole “organic only” movement to be little better than new age and eco-luddite nonsense. You might as well insist that crops being planted using feng shui principles, with a prayer to mother gaia before each harvest.
I read his book. I didn’t get a sense that he was certain it could be implemented world-wide in order to feed all 6B+ people on the planet. But it’s been a few years, so maybe my memory is rusty. It would be interesting to see how the people in Moscow (to name one northerly and densely populated city) would get thru the winter…
With the spread of industrialized agriculture whole groups of people were getting nutrients formerly unknown to them. With industrialization comes crops infused with some chemical fertilizers, as well as exhaust from tractors and farm equipment. There are also a host of pesticides and herbisides that are pretty nasty for you as well.
One of the problems is that the populace at large wants to go into a grocery, and pick the best looking fruit or veggie they can find. They are not that good looking because they were picked the day before, they are that good looking because of the measures taken to transport them over long distances, and a certain amount of genetic engineering. People are perfectionists - it’s in our nature to look for symetry. Organic coop type places don’t tend to stock the best looking fruits and veggies, because they are less concerned with the way it looks and more concerned with what is in it - or isn’t in it as it were.
I think a hybrid system of large scale organic farming and new and improved transportation of these crops to outlying places is what we need to do. For instance, forget the Prius, we need John Deer and his counter parts to manufacture green Combines and farm equipment. Make all tractor trailers go green, make recycling trucks green, make utilitarian trucks, buses, cabs, trains, planes etc…etc… go green. Then we can talk about large scale organic farming.
Do you have any cites that show that exhaust from tractors contaminates food? Or that pesticides in food make it more dangerous than it was in the past? Or that there’s something magical about artificial pesticides that make them more dangerous than the natural pesticides already existing in many of the foods we eat? Or that organic farming is easier on the land than modern farming practices?
I assume you’re also against genetically engineered crops?
Much of what you are saying appears to be misdirected criticism. Sustainable, organic agriculture is not the stuff of prayers and fantasy. Nor does it require the abandonment of the efficiencies we have created using science and technology. Do not assume that organic means exclusively traditional agriculture. The example that Pollan lionizes, Polyface Farms, uses sophisticated and scientific methods to drive enormous productivity on his lands using thoroughly natural means. Many of his methods are not only nontraditional, they are downright heterodox.
This logic eats itself. If the demand for organic products increases, thanks to competitive markets, capital, and science, I feel confident to presume that cost-effective ways of delivering it will arise. They already have: the organics industry has grown faster than, pardon me, wildfire in the past decade. Production and distribution have become more sophisticated, and the cost has come down. Why do you assume that this would stop?
And they poison the soil and the water table perhaps in greater measures. We need to consider not only the price of the good, but the cost of its creation and all of its negative externalities. These are not well understood by most people, only to those crazy “eco-luddites”
For the record, I think the idea of the locavore is pretty nonsensical, myself. If the goal is to consume an organic product with a minimal carbon footprint, there is no good reason to believe that your local farm delivers this better than a farm halfway around the world. The carbon impact of distribution is only one link in the chain.
The last two are all too easy. For the record, humans have been genetically engineering crops since the dawn of agriculture. I do not have an inherent problem with this, and I certainly hope it continues. What constitutes permissible modification is a complicated question.
As for organic farming being easier on the land, that is all too easy.
Exhaust cite, Pesticide cite, [from Panna]. As for whether or not Orgnic Farming is better on the land…I don’t think so. I think it can be done efficiently on a large scale. Genetically engineered crops…no, I’m not really against them, though, I’m not really that for them either. I don’t really have a stance on them.
I try to live as organically as possible, I’m not, I repeat, I’m not the PETA of agricultural movements. I like living and promoting sustainable living because it helps the planet in a small way. If more people decide to lower their carbon footprint, then that’s great. If not, then let’s start building the dikes around Manhatten right now. Why wait.
Humans should be mindful of this planet from which we came, it’s not going to sustain us for ever.
No, he did not expressly advocate complete replacement of industrial agriculture. But he did say organic should not be limited to the elites. Where do you draw the line, however - Joe Six-Pack gets to eat organic, but Jane Six-Pack doesn’t?
Actually, the description of Polyface Farms is what led me to this question. At one point in the book, Pollan is rhapsodizing to the owner of the farm about the enormous productivity of Polyface Farm, and the farmer points out that the productivity was only possible because they kept (IIRC) 3/4 of the farmland in trees.
So, the farm really isn’t all that productive. In order to make Polyface Farms as productive as an industrial farm, the 1/4 of the land actually used for farming would have to be 4 times as productive as the equivalent amount of an industrial farm. And I don’t think Pollan asserted that it was.
I read the book a few years ago, so I do not recall that issue. I don’t even remember offhand why that would be. Was this made a necessity because of something peculiar about the land itself, or is having so much forest space a requirement of the Polyface heavy rotation model?
Maeglin: As an economist, let me ask you - if organic farming can be done as efficiently as other farming practices, why isn’t everyone doing organic farming? Do you think it’s all about externalities (an implicit subsidy on non-organic farming)?
I can’t read the whole paper, but the abstract says nothing of the sort. It starts with the assumption that exhaust gases are bad, but it appears that the paper itself is nothing more than a description of how to measure them.
Your second cite is from an advocacy group. It’s about as useful as a cite on the effect of guns pointing to a page at the NRA’s web site.
I’m fully aware that some people think pesticides are bad. And there’s no doubt that some are. You may even be able to show that, considering nothing else, an increase in pesticide concentration in some people has been linked to illness.
What I’d like to see is a study showing that A) these pesticides are worse for you than the natural pesticides that already exist in far greater numbers in many ‘organic’ foods, and B) that the negative effect of pesticides, if any, is greater than the positive effect on health from making fruits and vegetables cheaper and more available.
For example, there is a clear, well documented relationship between eating green vegetables and fruits and the reduction of certain kinds of cancers. If modern pesticides make these foodstuffs cheaper, and therefore more accessible to the poor, does any negative effect from the pesticides get trumped by the positive health effects of increased consumption of those foods?
Did you mean the opposite?
BTW, if we were going to go down the list of farming practices that are damaging to the land, I wouldn’t put modern fertilization at the top. Single-crop farming may be worse. When I farmed as a young person, we always rotated crops, and we left a certain percentage of fields fallow each year. My understanding is that this is much healthier for the land than single-crop farming.
Do you know what’s going to push single-crop farming even more? Bio-fuels. Especially the idiotic corn-based biofuels being heavily subsidized in the U.S.
You should look into them, if you want to reduce pesticide use. One of the most common goals of genetiically engineered crops is to produce crops that are naturally resistant to pests, reducing the need for pesticides.
See, I find this thinking to be somewhat incoherent. How does organic agriculture lower its carbon footprint? Why wouldn’t it increase it by requiring more land to be cultivated, and by eliminating the ability of some crops to be grown in areas closer to consumers?
I’m not even sure it’s more sustainable. Most farming in the 20’s was organic, and the experience of the 1930’s would suggest that it wasn’t all that sustainable. It seems to me that scientific management and control using modern chemicals and automation is likely to be far more sustainable.
There’s no doubt that some farming practices are creating externalities. For example, in New Zealand in the 1970’s, the government subsidized fertilizers heavily, which led to massive over-fertilization and the pollution of many streams. They also purchased veal from farmers by the pound, instead of letting the market set prices based on meat quality. Then they subsidized feed. The result was fat sheep that no one wanted to eat (the government was using them for tallow at one point). Elimination of subsidies and government interference in prices allowed the market to work, and over-fertilization stopped and farmers worked hard to produce sheep that had prized meat qualities, making the veal market more efficient.
Yeah, we’ve got that whole heat death of the universe thing to worry about. Short of that, a statement like yours above is rather lacking in specifics. I don’t see any evidence that the earth won’t sustain us for millions of years. Especially if we supplement it by going off-planet for materials we might run out of.
As I recall the book, it is a requirement of the model itself. And it makes sense; for example, if you aren’t going to irrigate all that grassland, you need a natural catchment to retain rainwater, which a forest provides.