Organic Farming Examined

Yokai writes "An article to be released in Science shows that organic farming makes sense. The 21 year study by a Swiss team shows that even though the organic patch had 20% less yield than conventional farming, the input of fertilizer and energy was reduced by between 34% and 53%, and pesticide use by 97%, leading them to believe that organic farming makes sense. Also, the soil from the organic plot was healthier and held more organisms- including those that kill pests."

Comments

Re:Pesticide math?

[caca_phony]

It is not pesticides that cannot be used in organic farming, but rather non-biological ones (you can use all the ladybugs or BT you want- both are technicly pesticides, though they are organisms).

The same goes for your lawn

[bihoy]

Today many homeowners use chemicals on their lawns. The use of products such as Scotts "4 step" actually give your lawn a chemical dependency. They don't allow them to function in a natural organic fashion. In addition they contribute to the pollution of water tables and watersheds. You would be amazed at how far away from a lake, river, or stream that a watershed extends. Basically the use of these chemicals is simply the easy no hassle way to have green lawn. It not necessarily a healthy lawn or healthy for the environment but people don't think about that.

Somebody wants to do this for a living:

[Pulchellissima]

Me.

I do this for a living. I really enjoy it too. I also code for a living. The two nicely complement each other, and allow me an enormous amount of freedom.

There are probably quite a few other people who would be willing to do farmwork if our society valued the work. We don't, so they don't. Hard to fault them such as it is.

Re:Somebody wants to do this for a living:

[Cmdr Taco (luser)]

I think you may have missed the main thrust of the poster to whom you replied. Restated, can organic farming be scaled to commercial operations? Not small-time stuff like selling your organically grown tomatoes at the roadside, I mean single operations that grown *tons* of produce. A Kansas or Oklahoma wheat farmer may work anywhere from a few hundred to a few thousand acres of land. In 1997, Kansas produced a record 492.2 million bushels of wheat. Thats a lot of bread. That wheat really does feed the world.

That's all well and good, but the economy of wheat production is an unstable affair. Many smaller farm operations (ummm, less than 1000 acres) literally "bet the farm" every year. Usually, it's a fairly safe bet. The costs and cashflow are unlike those of other businesses. A new 4WD tractor from John Deere or Case can pull an unbelievable number/size of ploughs or drills and allow 1 or 2 people to work all that land, but they cost more than the farmer's house. During the planting and growing seasons, there is *no income*. You borrow from the bank.

When June/July rolls around, the yield must be just right. If the yield is too low, you may find it difficult to finance the next crop. If the yield is very high on average (not just your farm), the selling price will nosedive and you may find it difficult to finance the next crop.

The costs associated with planting, growing and harvesting are fairly well understood. An infestation of pests is guaranteed to reduce your income. Let alone, your yield will be too low. Hiring a cropduster and paying for the chemicals is money right out of the bank.

Organic gardening methods, which I practice in my 0.125 acre vegatable garden, just don't scale to "feed the world" proportions.

Pesticide free works for myself

[BetaJim]

In my garden the Colorado Potato Beetle is my summer nemesis. Growing up, Dad would always use pesticides to control them. It didn't work very well. We still had to pick the larva off the plants by hand.

Now, for my garden, I've ditched the pesticides. After doing some research on the potato beetle, I found out that they quickly become resistant to one pesticide, unless you continuously use different type of pesticides (this explains my father failing to control them.)

My solution? I control the bug by hand. Once a week I examine the plants and squish and kill all the egg clusters, larva, and adults that I find. This keeps the population managable to the point that predators of the potato beetle keep things under control. This method works very well.

I don't expect that large farms can invest in this much labor, but for my home garden this is a good solution. Oh, large farms also use other pesticide-free methods to control the beetle, such as plastic lined trenchs that catch and trap the bug.

Devils Advocate

[4of12]

pesticide use by 97%,

For the record, I

• like organic farming,
• prefer to buy organic produce when I can,
• dislike GM foods or GM anything else (there's too much unknown about biochemical interaction in our ecosystem),
• dislike livestock loaded with hormones and antibiotics, etc.

But.

I have to wonder about how sustainable the non-use of pesticides can be.

Think about human vaccinations against childhood diseases. Overall, it's a great idea. On an individual basis, if everyone else's child has been vaccinated, then you can forego the risks of vaccination, secure in knowing that your child will probably play only with other vaccinated children that will not subject your child to those diseases. Also, by not vaccinating your child, you don't suffer the one in several hundred thousand risk that your child will actually get sick. Great.

Great, until more and more other parents also decide that they don't like the risks of vaccination on their children, either. Then you end up with a sufficient pool of unvaccinated children, where there is increased risk that the diseases will take hold and be communicated in that group.

Is it not similar to an organic farmer sitting in the middle of California's Central Valley, with all his neighbors using all manner of ugly pesticides to effectively sterilize their fields? The small organic farmer has little to worry about: he's not going to catch any pests from his neighbors.

You see my point. At some critical level of non-use of pesticides, the pests will start to propagate much more than they do now.

Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics

[Anonymous Coward]

[Organic Farming has] 20% less yield,[but] fertilizer and energy was reduced by between 34% and 53%, and pesticide use by 97%.

Initial response: Wow! 97, 34, and 53 are big numbers, and 20 is a smaller number.

Reasoned Response: Time for a little algebra. Say 'g' is the gross income from crop sales (yield * price per bushel), and 'p' is the total cost of pesticides, fertilizers, energy, etc. in a conventional farm. so:
(1*g - 1*p) is the amount of money left over after paying for pesticides, etc. in conventional farming
Let's say that organic farming results in a 60% decrease in total costs of energy, fertilizer, pesticides etc. (60% is a round number near the average [61.3] of 34, 53 and 97 %) so:
(0.8*g - 0.6*p) is the amount of money left over after paying for pesticides, etc. in organic farming.

Let's compute the "break even" point for the percentage of pesticide costs as a fraction of gross profits.
1*g - 1*p = 0.8*g - 0.6*p
0.2*g = 0.4*p
p = 0.5*g

So in order to make a switch to organic farming economical for a farmer, the cost of pesticides, fertilizer and energy has to account for at least 50% of the *GROSS* income, leaving less than half to take care of the morgage payments on the land, the cost of seed, morgage on the machinery, machine maintainence, cost of hired help, taxes, living expenses for the farmer's family, etc.

The savings would be nice, but I doubt farmers spend the majority of their income on fetilizer, pesticides and energy.