What problems does organic agriculture solve?

[studiot]

Good morning, John.

 

Why am I and the public at large not reassured by your responses?

 

Perhaps because the public is reeling from example after example of scandal after scandal promulgated by some form of big business. This is not confined to farming but extends across the whole gamut of business activity.

 

Asbestos, Tobacco, Three Mile Island, Bopal, BP Oil, Achill Lauro, financial scandals the list goes on and on.

 

So perhaps I should add another benefit to organic farming.

 

It highlights malpractice and offers alternatives.

 

Incidentally for those wedded to calling organic farming medieval I would observe that the first successful modern (=western) system of intensive farming was the introduction of crop rotation - a thoroughly organic practice.

[insane_alien]

Good morning, John.

 

Why am I and the public at large not reassured by your responses?

 

Perhaps because the public is reeling from example after example of scandal after scandal promulgated by some form of big business. This is not confined to farming but extends across the whole gamut of business activity.

 

Asbestos, Tobacco, Three Mile Island, Bopal, BP Oil, Achill Lauro, financial scandals the list goes on and on.

 

corporate malpractice does not have any impact on the usefulness of a technique. There are all sorts of skulduggery in the medical sector. Should we all go back to praying for a cure rather than taking a medicine?

 

It highlights malpractice and offers alternatives.

 

The major benefit of farming is that it produces food. various alternatives can be judged on the desired qualities of said food. So lets compare:

 

quantity/land efficiency: modern farming can produce far more per acre than 'organic' farming

consistent production: modern farming is less susceptible to disease, drought, weather and a plethora of other conditions that ruin whole crops for organic farms.

crop health: crops from modern farms tend to be healthier than those from 'organic' farms due to better pest control and plant nutrition.

etc.

 

Incidentally for those wedded to calling organic farming medieval I would observe that the first successful modern (=western) system of intensive farming was the introduction of crop rotation - a thoroughly organic practice.

 

and your point is? modern farming uses ideas that work. we still plough fields are you going to argue that was organic farming too? we also plant seeds so crops can grow, will you argue that organic farming is better because of this?

 

I thought you wanted unbiased discussion but you seem to be going all anti-corporation on us despite none of us actually bringing up corporations. I smell an agenda.

[John Cuthber]

Studentiot,

Just out of curiosity, why do you think farmers stopped using "organic" methods.

I think it was because the new techniques offered better yields and better quality. Why else would they have abandoned the old ways?

[studiot]

I don't recall advocating anywhere a return to universal organic farming any more than (I hope) you would advocate a return to widespread asbestos use.

 

I have a friend who farms in Pembrokeshire. In my area pembroke potatoes are sufficiently well thought of to command a premium price over local potatoes although I also live in a farming area.

My friend produces non organic potatoes and I bring back a sackful whenever I visit because they are so nice. I really don't care whether they are organic or not.

He produces non organic, although he would like to grow organic, because he contracts his field to a supply chain. He is told when and what to plant.

The sad thing is that in some years he is told to plough those potatoes straight back in, in order to keep the price up.

 

Do you condone this practice when there are people starving in the world?

 

Within the EU we have something known as 'Intervention Stores' which serve the same purpose. Food is removed from the market and in this case stored at the taxpayers expense in order to maintain the price.

Eventually a fair proportion of this food becomes unfit for human consumption and is destroyed. Some is sold off at a loss to the taxpayer just before it becomes unfit.

 

Do you condone this practice when there are people starving in the world?

Edited May 7, 2012 by studiot

[insane_alien]

Do you condone this practice when there are people starving in the world?

 

No I don't condone this, I thin kit's wasteful and inefficient. However, this is not an issue of 'organic' and 'non-organic' farming. That is an issue of business practices. I'm quite sure that even if all farming was organic we would see the exact same behaviours. It is rife amongst all business sectors. Limit the supply so that the price remains high. I personally don't like it.

 

Within the EU we have something known as 'Intervention Stores' which serve the same purpose. Food is removed from the market and in this case stored at the taxpayers expense in order to maintain the price.

Eventually a fair proportion of this food becomes unfit for human consumption and is destroyed. Some is sold off at a loss to the taxpayer just before it becomes unfit.

 

Do you condone this practice when there are people starving in the world?

 

same as above. nothing at all to do with the method of farming. nothing to with the farmers themselves even. everything to do with the people who pay the farmers though.

 

This is very far off topic and is no longer about the merits or lack there-of of 'organic' farming. thread split?

[jeskill]

And now for something completely different.....

1. what problems organic agriculture is supposed to solve (too much, too strong pesticides/fertilizer? lower nutrition in food?)

 

The concept "organic agriculture" can mean many many different things. I'm going to assume that here, it means "ag relying on crop rotation, green manure, compost and biological pest control." Personally, I like the "ecologically sustainable agriculture" concept a bit more for a variety of reasons, but will not discuss that here.

My take:

The main problem that organic agriculture solves is the issue of the pesticide treadmill. Basically, farmers (for example, Nicauraguan cotton farmers in the 70s; all farmers growing RoundUp Ready corn and wheat) that grow monocultures have to use stronger pesticides and more pesticides every year because over time (and this time can be as short as a few months) insects evolve resistance to the pesticides being used. Edit to add: This creates an economic cost for the farmers, an ecological cost for the surrounding ecosystem, and a health cost to the farm workers (farm workers are more likely to be poisoned by pesticides and herbicides than the people eating the food.)

 

The second main problem that organic ag solves is malnutrition in developing countries. Most impoverished peasants can't afford the capital inputs that go into conventional agriculture (e.g. pesticides, hybrid or GM seeds, fertilizers) and so low-tech alternatives such as polycultures that integrate N-fixing legumes; seed-saving; and locally-known drought-tolerant crops (as opposed to corn), tend to improve the health of said peasants. I've discussed examples of this ad nauseum on this site already, but you can look up the research group Soils, Foods and Healthy Communities as one if you like.

 

With that in mind, I completely disagree with mississippichem and insane alien: organic ag does not always have lower yields per acres compared to intensive farming. In many developing countries, organic ag completely outstrips conventional in yield due to the issues mentioned above (See Bagely et al.'s seminal paper discussed here). Also, given the lack of scientific research into organic cultivars, some researchers are arguing that organic cultivars have the potential to have better yields than conventionals if we start focusing on breeding them. Finally, it's been long understood that you can grow more food (pound per acre) with a well-constructed polyculture than a monoculture. (EDITED to make more clear)

 

2. whether these solutions really work, and if they have any drawbacks.

 

The drawbacks are that: organic ag requires more manual labour, and large seed corporations cannot make as much money off of it.

 

For instance, some organic farmers refer to BS like homeopathy or biodynamics

 

Some organic farmers grow "biodynamically" because they get a higher economic rate of return. I personally think it's bunk -- the biodynamic protocols are totally giggle-worthy, if you ever get a chance to read them. There was a peer-reviewed paper (I can't find it right now) that compared biodynamic and organic ag and found no difference.

 

Can you recommend good books and online articles that I should read before I go?

 

The Ecology of Agroecosystems. (I may be biased as this was written by my advisor.)

Edited May 7, 2012 by jeskill

[John Cuthber]

I don't recall advocating anywhere a return to universal organic farming any more than (I hope) you would advocate a return to widespread asbestos use.

 

I have a friend who farms in Pembrokeshire. In my area pembroke potatoes are sufficiently well thought of to command a premium price over local potatoes although I also live in a farming area.

My friend produces non organic potatoes and I bring back a sackful whenever I visit because they are so nice. I really don't care whether they are organic or not.

He produces non organic, although he would like to grow organic, because he contracts his field to a supply chain. He is told when and what to plant.

The sad thing is that in some years he is told to plough those potatoes straight back in, in order to keep the price up.

 

Do you condone this practice when there are people starving in the world?

 

Within the EU we have something known as 'Intervention Stores' which serve the same purpose. Food is removed from the market and in this case stored at the taxpayers expense in order to maintain the price.

Eventually a fair proportion of this food becomes unfit for human consumption and is destroyed. Some is sold off at a loss to the taxpayer just before it becomes unfit.

 

Do you condone this practice when there are people starving in the world?

 

Hello!

Is anyone there?

 

Studiot,

 

When you answer the question I asked it will be your turn to ask.

Got that?

OK, now why do you think farmers originally adopted modern farming practice?

[studiot]

@JC

 

Yes Sir! AT Once Sir! Sorry to be So Slow Sir!

 

Unfortunately, Sir, your question is based upon a false premise so cannot be answered.

 

I can tell you why UK farmers adopted the modern milk production regime.

 

Because they were forced to by the bulk purchaser ( the then Milk Marketing Board).

This applied to non organic diary herds since it predated the modern organic movement.

There was much disquiet amongst farmers at the time (dismissed as farmers' perenniel grumbling by the MMB) but they had no choice if they wanted to sell their milk.

Edited May 7, 2012 by studiot

[StrontiDog]

Hello

1. what problems organic agriculture is supposed to solve (too much, too strong pesticides/fertilizer? lower nutrition in food?)

 

In partial answer to the first question, I found an interesting TIME article with the following:

 

1. 
    
   
2. Up to 10 million tons of chemical fertilizer per year are poured onto fields to cultivate corn alone, for example, which has increased yields 23% from 1990 to 2009 but has led to toxic runoffs that are poisoning the beleaguered Gulf of Mexico.
    
   
3. Beef raised in industrial conditions are dosed with antibiotics and growth-boosting hormones, leaving chemical residues in meat and milk.
    
   
4. A multicenter study released just two days after the obesity report showed that American girls as young as 7 are entering puberty at double the rate they were in the late 1990s, perhaps as a result of the obesity epidemic but perhaps too as a result of the hormones in their environment — including their food.
    
   
5. And for out-of-season foods to be available in all seasons as they now are, crops must be grown in one place and flown or trucked thousands of miles to market. That leaves an awfully big carbon footprint for the privilege of eating a plum in December.
    
   
6. Farm-raised animals are also higher in conjugated lineoleic acids, fatty acids that, according to studies of lab animals, may help reduce the risk of various cancers.
    
   
7. Cattle that eat more grass have higher ratios of omega-3 fatty acids to omega-6s, a balance that's widely believed to reduce the risk of cancer, heart disease and arthritis and to improve cognitive function. Take the cows out of the pasture, put them in a feedlot and stuff them with corn-based feed, and the omega-3s plummet.
    
   
8. Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), for example, an often deadly pathogen associated mostly with hospital-acquired infections, has been increasingly turning up in hog farmers, who contract it from their animals. In one study last year, a University of Iowa epidemiologist found that 49% of the hogs she tested were positive for MRSA, as were 45% of the humans who handled them.
    
   
9. Salmonella is hardly unheard of even among chickens raised in comfortable, free-range conditions. But when you confine half a dozen birds at a time in cages no larger than an opened broadsheet newspaper, and stack hundreds or thousands of those so-called battery cages together, you're going to spread the bacterium a lot faster.
    
   
10. In a meta-analysis conducted by the Organic Center, a nonprofit group in Boulder, Colo., organic produce was found to be 25% higher in phenolic acids and antioxidants. "It's these components that are deficient in American diets,
    

 

These would seem to be nine answers to what problems organic methods might be attempting to solve. They are somewhat edited for brevity and clarity, but no salient points were changed.

 

I hope this helps.

[Winfried]

Thanks everyone for the feedback. That should provide me with enough questions for a week-end to ask those farmers who turned to organic

[questionposter]

There does seem to be many unconfirmed benefits of natural and organic products, but those products have a harder time being produced on a larger scale to feed the amount of people there are, so instead plants are genetically modified to grow faster and in harsher environments and sprayed with chemicals to stop bugs from eating them before harvest, which isn't really bad for you at all, your stomach acid will destroy the genes either way or they will remain inside the indigestible cell walls if your that concerned, and the effects of pesticides I don't think have been confirmed to be carcinogenic, more research I suppose should be done on it.

Edited May 8, 2012 by questionposter

[studiot]

and the effects of pesticides I don't think have been confirmed to be carcinogenic

 

Maybe not carcinogenic but how about this?

 

http://berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2006/07/05_ddt.shtml

[questionposter]

Maybe not carcinogenic but how about this?

 

http://berkeley.edu/...07/05_ddt.shtml

 

There's an easy solution to this: Thoroughly wash and/or peel non-organic fruits and vegetables.

[John Cuthber]

@JC

 

Yes Sir! AT Once Sir! Sorry to be So Slow Sir!

 

Unfortunately, Sir, your question is based upon a false premise so cannot be answered.

 

I can tell you why UK farmers adopted the modern milk production regime.

 

Because they were forced to by the bulk purchaser ( the then Milk Marketing Board).

This applied to non organic diary herds since it predated the modern organic movement.

There was much disquiet amongst farmers at the time (dismissed as farmers' perenniel grumbling by the MMB) but they had no choice if they wanted to sell their milk.

What false premise.

Also, since the MMb predates the idea of "organic" farming, it has nothing to do with the issue.

[CharonY]

One problem with organic agriculture is the precise definition of what is allowed under this label and what not. For instance, pesticide use is allowed although many (but apparently not all) synthetic ones are banned.

 

Health effects are incredibly hard to assess and it is usually not possible to de-convolute effects of food and exposure from other parameters that affect health.There are (contested studies) that look at the effect of certain types of organic agriculture on biodiversity and sustainability, for instance (e.g. Maeder et al 2002, Science). However it appears that more data is needed to draw conclusions. The results vary quite a bit depending on landscapes (see Wingqist 2011 J Appl Ecol), the scale used for assessment (see e.g. Gabriel et al 2010 Ecological Lett, IIRC) and environmental conditions (e.g. droughts).

 

Then some proposed to re-introduce certain principles to modern agriculture in order to increase efficiency. In short, again a case of complex problem and no simple answers, confounded by the way the "organic" is actually implemented.

[Ringer]

Maybe not carcinogenic but how about this?

 

http://berkeley.edu/...07/05_ddt.shtml

 

And I'm pretty sure ddt is banned world wide.

 

[edit] For agricultural use that is [/edit]

Edited May 9, 2012 by Ringer

[jeskill]

There does seem to be many unconfirmed benefits of natural and organic products, but those products have a harder time being produced on a larger scale to feed the amount of people there are, so instead plants are genetically modified to grow faster and in harsher environments and sprayed with chemicals to stop bugs from eating them before harvest, which isn't really bad for you at all, your stomach acid will destroy the genes either way or they will remain inside the indigestible cell walls if your that concerned, and the effects of pesticides I don't think have been confirmed to be carcinogenic, more research I suppose should be done on it.

 

I don't mean to be supercilious, but it's quite frustrating to read these types of comments -- your opinions seem to be born out of ignorance.

 

Specifically, organic agriculture is not just about 'growing natural and organic products", it's about growing food in an ecologically sustainable manner and not using health-harmful products to grow foods.

 

Lest you not understand my assertions, let me be clear:

 

1) Industrial agriculture is NOT ecologically sustainable. Evidence

More Evidence: superweeds; superbugs; eutrophication

 

2) Contrary to your assumption, many of the pesticides and herbicides used ARE harmful to human health.

 

Evidence

"Late in the afternoon of April 1, 1990, a three-year-old girl playing in front of her trailer home in California's San Joaquin Valley suddenly lost control of her body and began foaming at the mouth. By the time the girl arrived at the local emergency room, she was near death. She recovered eventually. A report filed with the California Department of Pesticide Regulation concluded the child had been poisoned by aldicarb, a highly toxic insecticide that works the same way on people as it does on bugs -- like nerve gas. ‘Somebody had parked a tractor with pesticide material on it right in front of the play area,' said Michael O'Malley, the author of the report and a physician at the University of California, Davis."<br style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; text-align: left; font-size: small; ">

-- Matt Crenson, Associated Press, December 9, 1997

 

3) Industrial agriculture IS NOT currently feeding the world even though we currently grow enough food for everyone. The assumption that we need to grow more intensively is a WRONG assumption because hunger is not caused by a lack of production, it's caused by a lack of distribution.

 

Evidence

"Hunger is caused by poverty and inequality, not scarcity. For the past two decades, the rate of global food production has increased faster than the rate of global population growth. The world already produces more than 1 ½ times enough food to feed everyone on the planet. That's enough to feed 10 billion people, the population peak

we expect by 2050. But the people making less than $2 a day -- most of whom are resource-poor farmers cultivating unviably small plots of land -- can't afford to buy this food.

 

 

In reality, the bulk of industrially-produced grain crops goes to biofuels and confined animal feedlots rather than food for the 1 billion hungry. The call to double food production by 2050 only applies if we continue to prioritize the growing population of livestock and automobiles over hungry people."

 

 

 

4) Therefore, ecologically sustainable agriculture is more likely to decrease world hunger than an increase in industrial agricultural production.

 

This opinion article sums it up pretty nicely.

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/03/08/sustainable-farming/

 

[John Cuthber]

OK, so what idiot let a 3 year old get hold of aldicarb?

It's only licensed for professional use.

The fact that some twit can't follow the rules is down to him, not the chemical.

Incidentally does anyone else have a problem with "By the time the girl arrived at the local emergency room, she was near death. She recovered eventually"

I mean, just how near death is it when you recover.

 

"Industrial agriculture IS NOT currently feeding the world "

Nope, but at least its feeding some bits of it. BTW, have you noticed that the bits with more than enough food are the bits that use highly mechanised / industrialised farming?

the point remains that organic farming generally has lower yields so adopting it wouldn't help anywhere and it would probably make things even worse.

 

And I'm still waiting for someone to answer my question.

Why did farmers change their production methods?

 

The issue of DDT is interesting. It was brought in to use instead of arsenic based poisons. It's not great but I will challenge anyone to a competition- for as much arsenic oxide as they can eat, I will eat that much DDT.

 

DDT was actually a relatively "green" product compared to the ones it replaced. Sure, we now do better. That's progress. We no longer let any Tom, Dick or Harry use Aldicarb. That's progress too.

But remember- the only reason we can replace these toxic chemicals is because we have better ones.

Nobody could seriously suggest that we abandoned the use of pesticides altogether.

 

That leaves the "organic" pesticides like nicotine- which is rather more toxic to people than to insects (on a weight for weight basis).

 

You might wonder what it is about nicotine that poisons you- the mode of action is actually rather similar (in the effect, if not the direct cause) to another well known group.

In the case of nicotine poisoning you die from over stimulation of the cholinergic nervous system

Oddly enough, that's what kills you if you get from nerve gases.

 

So, the organic movement advocates replacing the "nerve gas like" OPs with also "nerve gas like" nicotine.

EDIT (I forgot to ask.)

And I'm still wondering what part of my premise was false. I assumed that

long ago there were no synthetic fertilisers or pesticides so all farming was organic.

Now most farms use synthetic fertilisers and pesticides and so they are not organic.

At some point they changed.

There was a reason for that change.

 

But, when I asked what the reason for that change was I was told my question was based on a false premise.

Edited May 9, 2012 by John Cuthber

[jeskill]

OK, so what idiot let a 3 year old get hold of aldicarb? It's only licensed for professional use. The fact that some twit can't follow the rules is down to him, not the chemical.

The problem with your last sentence there is that pesticides and herbicides are often mishandled, even if many are only licensed for professional use. For example, the coffee farm where I did research (which was organic, when I started, but is no longer do to ownership change) recently started to use fungicides and herbicides. They gave no safety training to the farm workers because, quite frankly, the new owner doesn't care about them. Some grad students from my research group actually ended up having a covert safety discussion with a few workers because they were obviously not following safety procedures. Kind of off topic, but I'd like to point out that the switch from organic to conventional caused a decrease in yields. The new owner made some bad business decisions and so had to get a loan. The loan stipulated that he had to cut down half the trees in the finca, because it was thought that would increase yield. Funny enough, this caused sun-loving weeds to start growing like fiends, which, as stated previously, reduced yields.

 

But I digress …. There are areas in Central America where planes cover fields with pesticides and herbicides --- and also coat the communities that live within or nearby. Chronic sickness, neurological disorders, mental development delays are the result.

 

http://www.panna.org/resources/cotton

Pesticide poisoning remains a daily reality among agricultural workers in developing countries, where up to 14% of all occupational injuries in the agricultural sector and 10% of all fatal injuries can be attributed to pesticides.

 

Farmworkers are also threatened by hazardous pesticides in industrialized countries. In one study of pesticide illnesses in California, cotton ranked third among California crops for total number of worker illnesses caused by pesticides. In September 1996, approximately 250 farmworkers in California were accidentally sprayed with a mixture of highly toxic pesticides when a crop dusting plane applied the chemicals to a cotton field adjacent to a field where workers were harvesting grapes. Twenty-two workers were rushed to hospitals with symptoms of acute pesticide poisoning. According to the crop dusting company, the pilot was experienced and followed regulations. County officials stated that the chemicals are registered for use on cotton and that the duster was not required to notify workers in the grape field prior to spraying.

 

"Industrial agriculture IS NOT currently feeding the world " Nope, but at least its feeding some bits of it. BTW, have you noticed that the bits with more than enough food are the bits that use highly mechanised / industrialised farming?

Yes, because the areas with highly mechanized /industrialized farming can afford to subsidize the cost of fertilizers, biocides, and hybrid seeds. The places that lack industrialized farming can't afford to subsidize these capital inputs. Hence why many are now turning to agroecological farming techniques, which relyon ecological knowledge and labour moreso than expensive inputs.

 

the point remains that organic farming generally has lower yields so adopting it wouldn't help anywhere and it would probably make things even worse.

This really frustrates me. The pro-industrial ag people keep on saying this, but IT'S NOT TRUE. Did you read any of the links provided in my previous post? Or are you just focused on winning as opposed to learning? There are numerous examples of malnourished communities that are using ecologically sustainable techniques to grow enough healthy food to feed themselves RIGHT NOW. I linked to a number of them in the previous post and in various other discussions on this site. There are some interesting studies out there that strongly suggest organic agriculture can produce enough to feed the world.

 

There are also numerous examples of industrial agricultural failure – we have not stopped world hunger with industrial ag, we have increased sickness of disenfranchised farm workers, and are overusing resources. Putting more of our public research funding into low-impact sustainable agricultural techniques would benefit us, not make it worse.

 

And I'm still waiting for someone to answer my question. Why did farmers change their production methods?

I think the answer to that question is complicated. Farming all over the world didn't all of a sudden change from "organic" to non-organic, and the reasons for adopting certain techniques weren't identical. To take the long view, agricultural techniques have been evolving ever since humans started farming. Many farming techniques that were sustainable at one point in history are no longer used due to various factors such as climate change, economic change, or social change. For example, all corn in Mexico used to be grown in Mexico (many were traditional varieties on small plots) until Clinton's Free Trade agreement, when Mexico was flooded with US corn. The Irish had a diverse vegetable/barley/animal husbandry system until the English stole all their good farming land and introduced potatoes, which can grow in substandard soil. I'm sure you know the rest of that story. Neither of these changes occurred because the people couldn't feed themselves with current technology. In other words, they didn't change the technology because of increased yields. There were social and economic factors that changed farming economics. In Mexicos case, those farmers lost their jobs, and, well, you all know where they migrated to.

 

In general, you seem to make the assumption that industrial farming became the dominant farming paradigm because it is superior to other forms of agriculture. I disagree with that assumption. I mean, yes, we can grow more corn per acre in the Mid-West and other breadbaskets of rich countries due to industrial agriculture. But globally, industrial agriculture clearly has not improved malnutrition, clearly has had negative effects on the ecosystem, and clearly has had negative effects on communities in the Global South.

 

Soon, unless you believe that oil and phosphate rock magically appears from the ground, we will not be able to grow using industrial agricultural techniques anyways.

[Winfried]

Soon, unless you believe that oil and phosphate rock magically appears from the ground, we will not be able to grow using industrial agricultural techniques anyways.

 

That seems a good enough reason to look for alternative ways for fertilizers and pesticides.

 

 

 

[studiot]

Hello Winfried,

 

I did wonder what your interest was in this topic.

 

Was this for an essay or just passing through?

[John Cuthber]

" They gave no safety training to the farm workers because, quite frankly, the new owner doesn't care about them."

So why didn't you report then to the relevant legal authority?

" Kind of off topic,"

So why did you mention it?

The fact is that it's not just off- topic. You said it in reply to a question I asked and it doesn't actually answer the question. Nicotine is used as a pesticide on some "organic" farms and it's enormously toxic. This isn't a difference between organic and non organic farming- it's just prejudice.

 

 

" I'd like to point out that the switch from organic to conventional caused a decrease in yields"

No, you have shown that a change to bad farming practice reduces yields.

 

"The loan stipulated that he had to cut down half the trees in the finca, because it was thought that would increase yield. "

So, he followed obvious bad advice.

That's nothing to do with it being non- organic.

If he had stuck with organic farming, but still needed a loan, would the stipulation have been different?

 

"But I digress …. There are areas in Central America where planes cover fields with pesticides and herbicides --- and also coat the communities that live within or nearby. Chronic sickness, neurological disorders, mental development delays are the result. "

OK, so now imagine that they go back to traditional pesticides based on arsenic, copper or nicotine.

Do you actually believe that the death toll would be lower?

 

"According to the crop dusting company, the pilot was experienced and followed regulations."

OK, so that wasn't in the UK, but here are the rules they didn't follow.

http://www.pesticides.gov.uk/Resources/CRD/Migrated-Resources/Documents/C/Code_of_Practice_for_using_Plant_Protection_Products_-_Complete20Code.pdf

 

If your country has bad regulations that's not because of conventional farming: it's because of bad government.

 

This

"Yes, because the areas with highly mechanized /industrialized farming can afford to subsidize the cost of fertilizers, biocides, and hybrid seeds. The places that lack industrialized farming can't afford to subsidize these capital inputs. Hence why many are now turning to agroecological farming techniques, which relyon ecological knowledge and labour moreso than expensive inputs."

may well be true, but unless you can assure me that their people are not hungry then it's not relevant.

 

"introduced potatoes, which can grow in substandard soil."

 

"In other words, they didn't change the technology because of increased yields. "

But that's exactly what you just said they did. They grew potatoes because, (given the poor soil left to them by a bunch of total shits) that gave them the best yield.

 

"For example, all corn in Mexico used to be grown in Mexico (many were traditional varieties on small plots) until Clinton's Free Trade agreement, when Mexico was flooded with US corn. "

OK, so what did the Mexican farmers actually do?

Would it have helped if they suddenly went strictly organic or strictly conventional?

No of course not- they were undercut anyway.

Why was the US able to do this?

Because their conventional non-organic farms enabled them to produce a hell of a lot of maize.

Their yields were better.

Whether that's due to spending money on fertilisers and pesticides isn't the point. Those were never going to be free of charge.

Non organic farming burns through cash, oil and chemicals but it does grow a hell of a lot of crops. If it didn't, then nobody would spend the money on the oil would they?

 

"In general, you seem to make the assumption that industrial farming became the dominant farming paradigm because it is superior to other forms of agriculture. I disagree with that assumption. I mean, yes, we can grow more corn per acre in the Mid-West and other breadbaskets of rich countries due to industrial agriculture. But globally, industrial agriculture clearly has not improved malnutrition, "

Perhaps not, but at least the Mexicans can now get cheap corn.

Since plenty of them are still poor it's hard to see them objecting to cheaper food. (though they may have preferred the farming jobs- but that's a matter of international politics not organic farming)

The (un)sustainability of conventional farming is a valid point, but organic farming couldn't cope with the demand.

 

The only way out of this is to eat less, and that means curb the population. That policy doesn't win many votes.

 

And Jeskil

re. "Soon, unless you believe that oil and phosphate rock magically appears from the ground, we will not be able to grow using industrial agricultural techniques anyways. "

Where do you think petroleum and phosphate rock do come from?

Edited May 15, 2012 by John Cuthber

[Winfried]

I did wonder what your interest was in this topic. Was this for an essay or just passing through?

 

I explained my goal in the top message:

As a city kid, I have zero knowledge about agriculture. To learn a bit about this, I will spend a few days on a farm at the end of the month to talk with farmers who went from "conventional" agriculture to organic.

 

 

[studiot]

So it was for personal interest.

Taking the trouble/making the effort to find out is excellent Science and to be applauded.

[Winfried]

Thanks. That should make for an interesting week-end