A thought struck me: Until Fritz Haber’s discovery, and the discovery of chemical pesticides, all farming was organic. Non-organic farming is only about a hundred to a hundred fifty years old. In that time, the world’s population has increased from 1.6 billion in 1903 to 5.8 billion in 1996
I used to attend an institution where the assumption was always organic= good, non-organic = bad. There are actually a number of researchers working on organic farming research, some of whom I studied with. But listening to the Haber piece caused me to think about that assumption a little more.
Much of the debate in the organic farming movement in the last few years seems to be about who’s “really” organic. Definitional issues like: using fish meal is organic, but sewerage sludge is not.
I’m beginning to think this is missing the point entirely. The real discussion should be: how do preserve the increased crop yields of modern agriculture while mitigating the harmful side effects?
So the debate question is this:
Is the organic farming movement a realistic way to save the environment, or just a way for mostly upper-income Westerners to feel like they are doing some good by buying at Bread & Circus?
Organic farming surely does it’s part in soothing the troubled yuppie soul.
Can it save the world? I don’t know. It is a valid question to try to figure out how we can feed everyone without poisoning the environment or losing our topsoil. I honestly don’t know if strict organic farming can achieve this. I agree that organic farmers/consumers in the US largely aren’t concerned about that.
I would guess that this has to do with the abundance of food and arable land here. We could produce substantially less on more land and still feed everyone. Therefore it’s a back burner sort of issue.
Another problem is marketability: “sort of organic”, would probably still cost a little more and not have all the warm fuzzy feelings that organic does.
I think it would either take a signifigant PR campaign to overcome these obstacles or perhaps legislation that required stricter control of erosion, fertilizers, and pesticides. To sum it up, even if the research was being done, it’s hard for me to imagine who would implement it at present.
Organic gardening (at least in part) can often work quite well for the smallholder; using manure from your chickens and goats on your vegetable plots makes economic sense and is probably better for the soil natural fertilisers, because they are usually combined with rotted bulky organic material, improve soil texture and maintain it’s ability to prevent nutrients from being washed away [Anecdote]I’ve consistently had measurably better results with my vegetables when I use natural compost and manure[/anecdote]
Likewise, it’s hardly any more bother to pick sawfly larvae off your gooseberry bushes by hand (and feed them to the chickens), or wash blackfly off your broad(fava) beans with a strong jet of water as you are watering them anyway. Chemicals are often fiddly and hard to mix properly in small quantites and disposal of unused residue is a problem.
It doesn’t always scale up very well though; the quality of natural fertilisers is inconsistent and transporting and applying them to a large area is not always as easy. Perhaps some of this is due to the idea of ‘converting’ to organic, rather than building procedures from scratch.
Oh and before this discussion goes any further, can we just say for the benefit of any pedantic chemists that ‘organic’ just has more than one meaning nowadays; deal with it.
For those who don’t know I’d like to point out that they don’t dump raw sewage on crops. The sewage sludge is treated first and I don’t see how anyone could say it wasn’t organic.
Organic farming is not a realistic way to save the environment. I’m not even convinced that it is healthier or taste better then what you find on other farms. Farming organically ends up costing the farmer more which of course is passed on to the consumer. We’d be much better off with GMO foods that produce more nutritious foods, lower the need for pesticides, produce more robust crops, and to come up with better forms of fertlizer.
It doesn’t scale up well at all. These days farmers try to do almost everything by machine. A lot of people just don’t think of everything being picked by machine rather then hand. Rice, potatos, soybeans, corn, tomatos, cotton, and plenty of other crops I can’t even think of are machine picked because it is more cost effective. Can you imagine how labor intensive it would be to send hired hands out to 40 acres of corn to search for pests by hand? The cost of corn would skyrocket.
I know many don’t like it but the future of large scale farming belongs to genetically modified food products. Organic farming will only fullfill a niche market.
Generally speaking it isn’t used for food crops for that very reason ( well among others ). When I was involved in processing the stuff it mostly went to cotton fields and the like.
Argh…must resist…GMO debate… can’t hold out…much longer…
In theory perhaps. What we get though are products like “Roundup Ready” soybeans that increase the use of pesticides/herbicides. Also it does nothing to address soil erosion. I’d like to see the more nutritious part supported. I’ve never heard that before, even from GMO proponents.
Let me see if I can try to steer this back without short shrifting the GMO argument. Is the food situation today such that we need GMO products to increase efficiency? Will we not be able to feed everyone with conventional agriculture? Or is it simply more profitable for some?
What about YieldGuard Corn Borer corn? This GMO corn is suppose to protect against corn borers year round which would require less pesticide to be used.
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The use of Roundup Ready single trait cotton and Roundup Ready single trait soybeans results in greater conservation tillage which does help with soil erosion.
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This is really more of a future probability then anything that will happen soon. The idea is that you might be able to have fruits or veggies with a higher vitamine content or perhaps rice or potatos with vitamines they never had before.
It seems to be more profitable for the majority of farmers who switch over to GMO crops. You use the word “simply” but let me tell you that farming can be a rough business and new technology that lower expenses are good for farmers and consumers. You’d be surprised how much corn out there is GMO. As I said GMO is the future of farming so I think people better get used to it.
Marc
YeildGaurd Corn is corn that creates it’s own pesticide: Bt. So it isn’t really clear to me whether less is being used.
If less erosion is achieved through dumping more pesticides, I question it’s usefulness. Also I wonder how this improvement measures up to typical organic farming practices.
I’m sure farming has become as competitive as any business. With the increase in factory farming, it has become especially hard for the small farmer. If anything though, organic foods have become a refuge for the small farmer, since its consumers want to buy local and aren’t as concerned with the bottom line.
With that logic I suppose you could say I should just get used to smog or corporate fraud. I’m sure that pesticides were once thought to be the future of farming, yet organic agriculture has reappeared despite it’s financial shortcomings.
If. According to the American Soybean Association conservative tillage saved 247 million tons of topsoil and 234 million gallons of fuel in 2000.
Also I would like to know why you think all GM foods will result in more presticides being dumped.
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I’m not against organic farming as I see that it fills a niche. I just find it laughable that people advocate it for the mass production of crops.
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May I ask why you equate GM crops with negatives like smog and fraud?
Pesticides were once the future of farming just like tractors, the steel plow, and crop rotation were. Farming is an industry that welcomes changes that results in better crops and a higher yield. I suppose if you want to go along with your analogy we could say that automobiles were once thought to be the future of transportation, yet there are still saddlemakers and ferriers around.
I was mistaken when I said that GM crops were the future. GM crops are the reality of today.
Roundup Ready Soybeans accounted for 54,000,000 acres in the United States in 2001.
Yieldguard corn accounted for 18,500,000 acres in the United States in 2001.
Roundup Ready canola accounted for 4,600,000 acres in North America in 2001.
I should have said that GM crops will play a more important role in the future of farming because clearly it is already here.
There’s another connotation of “organic”, which is that the farmer has avoided intentionally adding chemicals to his soil and plants.
In a way, this is the real focus of the OP. Has the food been adulterated, or not? Historically, farmers just duplicated the things their ancestors did. Non-organic often means trying wild things whose results no one can be sure about.
I didn’t say that. I was responding to your example of two Roundup Ready crops. Roundup Ready means that the plants have been designed to live through a higher dosage of Roundup herbicide.
Maybe, but how far off is it? Organic farming methods have improved over the last twenty years. It’s not like we have to farm like we’re in the 19th century. Organic farming techniques can continue to evolve and improve yeild without using chemicals or genetic modification.
What technologies would we have to use to make it feasible? Can you provide any solid numbers on this? Or do you just think that it’s laughable?
It was not an equation but more of a reductio ad absurdium. The current prevalence of or likelihood of it being adopted is not an argument for it.
Current farming practices lead to significant soil erosion, does that mean we have to accept it?
My main issue with GMO’s is cross-pollination. If it get’s out of hand it could take away the consumer’s choice. And furthermore, should we in the future decide that it isn’t safe (DDT was once thought to be harmless), we won’t have any recourse.
Is a crop that makes that poisons itself really better? Given a choice between spraying my corn with pesticide or injecting it, I would choose the former.
Also short term increases are not necessarily sustainable.
Actually, partly_warmer it’s not. The original focus of the OP was not about “adulteration”, because corn grown on a farm using nitrogen fertilizers is the same as corn grown on a farm using manure. It’s not adulterated in any way. Although your post brings up one of the points of my original question, the point that “organic” produce is inherently “purer” on some level. I think this is true only on an emotional or psychological level. And if by “wild things” you are referring to fertilizers or long-in-use pesticides, I think that we are sure of those results. If you mean new classes of pesticides, I might agree.
If you are talking about genetically-modified organisms, I’ll let MGibson and perspective handle that debate, as they are both more knowledgable on the subject than I.
Yes, thank you for clarifying that. I should have made clear that I was talking about the end result of the treatment process. And, yes, it is organic. It is, after all, the equivalent of human manure, if treated correctly.
Yes, and that’s the crux, isn’t it? I garden organically myself[sup]1[/sup]. But to try to feed the world is a difficult task. I don’t see the organic farming movement as any kind of real solution to issues like non-point-source water pollution, much less providing sustainable food supplies. I think that the organic farming research may be able to reduce the pesticide and fertilizer use, but many methods aren’t feasible for, say, the enormous wheatfields of Iowa.
I was trying to avoid saying that, but that’s was exactly what I was getting at. Fun game: count the number of late-model SUV’s in the parking lot of the next “whole foods” supermarket you drive past, and compare it to the number of Hondas or Toyotas.
[sup]1[/sup]Except for poison ivy. I’ve had life-threatening reactions to that weed, I immediately nuke any sprig of it I see.
If I told you that you could get all of nutrients from taking a multi-vitamin, would you forego a reasonable well balanced diet? I think the same goes for plants. Nitrogen will make plants grow faster and bigger, but I’m not sure that makes them more nutritious by itself.
I wonder why, since a signifigant portion of this is excess herbicides and pesticides.
If organic farming can’t support everyone’s needs, how much can it support? I think this answer is continually changing and will change even faster now that larger companies like Dole have gotten into the organic market. I’ve seen plenty of skepticism and some common sense appeals but no hard numbers here. My guess is that since this hasn’t been a priority to the organic food movement, the research hasn’t been done.
The best part of your point is that ideological purity will not necessarily meet our needs even though it’s marketable to those with disposable income. However, I still think the wisest approach is one that is based on long term sustainability. I think some pesticides can be used safely, but almost any can be overused. Concentration on net yield could result in the poor use of resources needed for the future such as topsoil. It is in our best interest to understand how we can make food without making poisons and adopt an agricultural policy that uses them only when necessary. Unfortunately, minimal pesticide use, is something people haven’t figured out how to market to consumers yet. “Sustainably farmed” might make it soon, although this is an even more nebulous concept than “organic.”
I’d like to see a cite showing that Roundup Ready crops have resulted in more herbicide being dropped. I wouldn’t doubt if it has resulted in more Roundup being used but I doubt more herbicide in general is being used on those crops.
The neat thing about Roundup, and the reason it is so popular, is that it kills a wide variety of unwanted plants. So a single spray of Roundup takes care of most of the weeds and unwanted grass that I have to deal with in my cotton field. Without Roundup I’d have to spray multiple types of herbicide to keep things under control. From personal experience I can tell you that we spray less because of Roundup Ready soybeans and cotton.
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It might be possible to completely switch over to organic farming today. However the quality, quantity, and price of our food will not be to the current standards we as a society enjoy. To get as much food we’d have to plant more of it. That means more tilling, more topsoil erosion, more fuel consumption, and more crops lost to insects and weeds.
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We’re working on it. Do you even know what conservative tillage is? Do you understand how GM crops help with conservative tillage?
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Cross pollination is a legitimate concern. Not enough of a concern to villify GM crops though.
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If that crop results in the need for less spraying (less pollution)and results in more crop per acre (saved topsoil), then yes.
Believe it or not but most farmers would love to eliminate the need for pesticides and herbicides. These things cost money and lower the margin of profit.
Probably less quantity, but I doubt less quality. Organic farming stresses creating healthy plants and preserving topsoil. A healthy plant is more resistant to pests and also more nutritional. Since organic farming is based on preserving and improving topsoil, I don’t know why it would increase erosion.
Also are current farming methods sustainable? It would be nice if gas was as cheap as it was in the 50’s but we can’t live in that world forever. If we can’t continue farming as we are today, we’ll have to face up to price raises at some point.
That’s a judgement call. The current market share of GM crops is probably increasing. If the trend continues so that organic farmers are surrounded by GMO’s, it may become difficult for them to maintain their crop’s non-GMO status. I personally would like to see crops with no chance of cross pollination. Then we would have some sort of control on these experiments we’re conducting on the environment.
So you’d rather eat the poison than release it in the wild? How noble.