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

correct link

[Kraft]

here

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.

Re:The same goes for your lawn

[Cyno01]

sometimes these super green lawns look unhealthey anyway, in suburbia (shudder) there are subdivisions that seem like they have neighborhood regulations about the color of grass, every single lawn the exact same disgustingly unnaturally bright looking green

Is this labor-intensive?

[texchanchan]

The real question is, how labor-intensive is organic farming carried out on a large scale? For small plots that fit between Swiss mountains, I can imagine it working a lot better than on a Kansas wheat farm.

Who is going to be out there doing the labor? How many more field workers does it take? Where are they going to come from?

Re:Pesticide math?

[Pulchellissima]

Organic farming implies limited pesticide usage. All the pesticides have to be approved as organic; they are usually plant based (rotenone comes from marigolds for example) and have no to very few environmental side effects. You generally can eat produce sprayed with these things right after spraying. You can't use most chemical herbicides, you have to enrich the soil with compost (usually carefully composted manure). You can use high tech methods like row covers, spun bonded polyfiber frost blankets, micro irrigation...

Organic farming has now been defined by the FDA. There's a big list of what you can and cannot do as an organic farmer. If you wish to call your produce 'organic' you must submit to onsite inspections, follow all the FDA guidelines, and get certified every year at a minimum cost of several thousand dollars. In other words, organic is now Big Business.

I was an organic farmer. I now grow 'farm fresh', 'wholesome' and 'traditional' foods, as I have been shoved out of the organic field by the FDA's rulings. I can't afford the certification, so, I can't use the organic term which the FDA decided it owns.

Re:Somebody wants to do this for a living:

[texchanchan]

Most people, though, prefer even the most degraded urban life to peasant life. I don't know why because I haven't tried peasant life myself. However, look at the industrial revolution and the current Third World. They aren't all driven off the land. Millions of people go to the cities and live in slums because they prefer it to subsistence farming.

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.