
Yes, organic farming will kill us all - psiops
https://shift.newco.co/yes-organic-farming-will-kill-us-all-12d900979cf2#.gojjvvvs6
======
ThePhysicist
The thing with conventional farming is that a lot of the costs (in terms of
environmental damage which needs to be repaired) are currently externalized,
i.e. payed for by the society, which indeed makes industrial farming more
cost-effective than organic farming, at least for the farmer (though in many
countries you can charge a good premium for organic food, which will often
outweigh your additional cost). The same is true for the current
industrialized way of raising livestock.

The real problem is properly accounting for all costs incurred by a given
farming technique, which is difficult as the farming lobby seems to be one of
the most effective ones in the world (at least judging from a European
perspective).

In addition, the argument that industrial farming consistently produces higher
yields than any organic farming technique seems at least a bit dubious to me,
as there is a plethora of techniques that have been investigated over the
years, and again the outcome of any study depends heavily on the timescale
that you look at: Sure, heavy use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides will
increase yield in the short run, it might actually decrease yields in the long
term by degrading soil quality and triggering a biological arms race that
makes it impossible to do farming without the use of heavy pesticides in the
long run. Also, the external cost in terms of health effects on the population
is still poorly researched and not accounted for in most cost calculations.

~~~
kuschku
And there is a huge unspoken problem yet.

In many areas of northern Germany, even with the extremely strict limits on
fertilizer and pesticides that Germany has, the drinking water, rivers and
oceans are getting so massively polluted that we’re seeing massive algae
blooms and drinking water slowly becoming undrinkable.

It’s a massive problem, and there’s no way to solve these without massively
reducing fertilizer and pesticide use.

If the choice is between being able to feed less humans, and having no
drinking water, I’m sure which one I’ll pick.

EDIT: Because I’m getting downvoted, here are some sources:

> EU sues Germany over water tainted by nitrate fertilizer

> The European Commission has lost patience with Germany over the high
> concentration of nitrate fertilizer in its ground water. Taxpayers could now
> end up paying hundreds of millions of euros in fines.

[http://europa.eu/rapid/press-
release_IP-16-1453_en.htm](http://europa.eu/rapid/press-
release_IP-16-1453_en.htm)

[http://www.dw.com/en/eu-sues-germany-over-water-tainted-
by-n...](http://www.dw.com/en/eu-sues-germany-over-water-tainted-by-nitrate-
fertilizer/a-19225653)

[https://www.thelocal.de/20161107/eu-sues-germany-over-
water-...](https://www.thelocal.de/20161107/eu-sues-germany-over-water-
polluting-farming)

[https://www.euractiv.com/section/agriculture-food/news/eu-
ta...](https://www.euractiv.com/section/agriculture-food/news/eu-takes-
germany-to-court-over-high-nitrate-levels/)

~~~
avar
Start by picking GMOs instead of the woo-woo that is organic farming. See e.g.
a German-funded meta-analysis[1] that found that:

"[...] the adoption of herbicide-tolerant (HT) soybean, maize, and cotton, and
insect-resistant (IR) maize and cotton has resulted in a 22% increase in
average yields, a 37% overall decrease in pesticide use, and a 68% increase in
farmer profits.".

1\. [http://www.theskepticsguide.org/gm-impact-meta-
analysis](http://www.theskepticsguide.org/gm-impact-meta-analysis)

~~~
legulere
> insect-resistant (IR) [...] decrease in pesticide use

So the pesticides do not count if you let the plants produce them themselves?

Also I find it kind of hard to believe that making plants herbicide resistant
and spraying them with herbicides reduces the amount of pesticides used.

~~~
ptaipale
It's actually quite easy to believe because the mechanics makes sense: instead
of a number of different herbicides to attack a large number of different
weeds, herbicide resistant crop breeds allow you to use just one herbicide,
with a much smaller total amount.

------
thinkloop
> we should be TERRIFIED that fewer than 1 in 100 Americans actually knows how
> to grow enough food to feed a family or more

Am I the only one that found this to be high, and comforting?

I looked up how many software engineers there are in the US, it's also around
1% (3.6m) [1]

About 0.5% of us are lawyers [2]

Double-checking the farmers stat, it seems there are 2.1m _farms_ [3], each
must be manned by at least several people that know stuff. This does not count
casual horticulturists. I'd guess that at least over 10% of the population
would know how to grow food to feed a family.

1\. [http://www.computerworld.com/article/2483690/it-
careers/indi...](http://www.computerworld.com/article/2483690/it-
careers/india-to-overtake-u-s--on-number-of-developers-by-2017.html)

2\. [https://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2014/05/09/the-lawyer-
bu...](https://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2014/05/09/the-lawyer-bubble-pops-
not-moment-too-soon/qAYzQ823qpfi4GQl2OiPZM/story.html)

3\.
[https://www.agcensus.usda.gov/Publications/2012/Preliminary_...](https://www.agcensus.usda.gov/Publications/2012/Preliminary_Report/Highlights.pdf)

~~~
XorNot
Also that's a stupid metric: subsistence farming is wildly inefficient and
cannot sustain the population of any country today.

~~~
swegg
Not knowing where your food comes from makes you unable to make an informed
choice about what you consume. It is a tragedy.

~~~
Ensorceled
Being a farmer doesn't mean you understand global food markets. Not knowing
how to properly hill potatoes doesn't mean you can't understand global food
markets.

------
avar
Organic isn't the answer, it's trying to address some legitimate concerns, but
it's a movement full of scientific woo-woo that's been legislated.

For instance, organic farming thinks GMO's are bad, but is just fine with
irradiating large fields full of plants to accomplish random mutations through
radiation breeding.

This article is one example of this, the author decries traditional corn
fields, and as a counterexample wants us to believe that some hilly
permaculture farm in Austria which just from the looks of it obviously has to
be harvested & maintained by hand would be a viable replacement.

Organic is largely just a western luxury product supported by people with no
concern about producing food at true scale, and how we can satisfy the global
food supply without impoverishing a large part of the population by doing
manual labor on farms.

There's no panacea when it comes to farming, but GMOs seem to be the best shot
we have.

~~~
loup-vaillant
The reason why GMO is bad is probably not because of the "Modified" part. It's
because they're optimised to withstand heavy pesticide use. _Pesticides_ are
bad.

Also, that freedom thing: GMO are generally sterile, so you have to buy seeds
every year from Monsanto. Great business model for Monsanto, not so much for
the farmer.

~~~
7sigma
"It's because they're optimised to withstand heavy pesticide use"

Actually, GMOs need less pesticides than non GMO crop. Some of them produce
their own pesticide (BT corn and BT cotton).

"Pesticides are bad."

Thats kind of the point, they are bad to pests that try to eat the crop

"GMO are generally sterile"

You are confusing GMO with hybrids and no they are not sterile, the just lose
vigour after a few generations, see
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F1_hybrid](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F1_hybrid)

", so you have to buy seeds every year from Monsanto. Great business model for
Monsanto, not so much for the farmer."

Most farmers in the developed world buy new seed every year because of the
hybrid thing, and do so because its convenient. At the end of the day its a
choice the farmer makes: they could re use their own seeds and hybridise them,
but for most its not worth the hassle.

~~~
ansible
_Thats kind of the point, they are bad to pests that try to eat the crop_

And pesticides are also bad for other insects that don't eat the crops, and
are necessary for our ecosystem to function.

And pesticides are bad for people and animals in the longer term too.

~~~
7sigma
Well in the case of BT (bacillus thurigensis) cotton and corn, for example,
the GM plant produces the Cry toxin which is bad for the insects that eat the
crop, so better than spraying it (Also BT is used in organic agriculture via
spraying btw).

Herbicides like roundup affect a certain pathway in plants, not humans in
animals.

"And pesticides are bad for people and animals in the longer term too."

Not at the concentrations that are used. The amount of residue is minuscule
and modern pesticides have far less toxicity than older ones that have been
phased out.

IIRC, the BT toxin only affects insects that have an alkaline digestive
system. Animals and humans are unaffected as its acidic.

~~~
ansible
_Not at the concentrations that are used. The amount of residue is minuscule
and modern pesticides have far less toxicity than older ones that have been
phased out._

So now you give some qualifications to your earlier statement.

Do note that modern pesticides are not in widespread use all over the world
(cost). Modern pesticides applied by a well educated professional can have a
relatively low impact on the environment. But there are a lot of poorly
educated farmers out there (most of them, really), and that doesn't begin to
address the abuse of pesticides by lawn care companies and homeowners.

------
KaiserPro
I spent most of my early childhood (0-7) on an "allotment" it measured 90 rods
by 10 feet, or some other useless unit of measurement.

Next to the allotment is a standard farmers field. It was earmarked for
housing about 10 years ago, and it was abandoned as an crop growing device
there and then.

There are two obvious features of this field:

1) its much lower than the allotment 2) it only grows algae.

The soil in the field is now basically sand. Most of the organic matter having
dried out and blow away.

There are no worms, because there is nothing for them to eat. Even if there
were, they would have been killed by the pesticides long ago.

Basically modern farming techniques sacrifice soil quality for current yield.

Decent soil is needed to retain moisture. Decent soil requires much less in
organic fertilisers, which greatly reduces phosphate run-offs.

Now, this is where my thoughts get controversial:

modern farming requires empty soils. Empty, poor quality soil does not retain
water. This leads to run off, flooding and droughts. I would also suggest that
it contributes directly to global warming, as bare soil retains its heat much
better than dense vegetation.

For the water retention, thats easy to prove, for temperatures, much harder

~~~
roel_v
"Now, this is where my thoughts get controversial:"

This is not controversial. It's widely recognized (even by conventional
farming bodies) that soil degradation is a major environmental threat. At the
EU level, while the Soil Directive proposal was withdrawn a few years ago,
much other environmental work and legislation is about mitigation and
monitoring of soil degradation / threats. There are different schools of
thought on how to deal with it though; the 'let's go back to subsistence
farming' idea isn't the only way.

~~~
KaiserPro
oh, I'm not suggesting subsitance farming, that just sucks balls. Have you
ever tried to plough furrows with horses? that shits hard.

we need to be dumping literal mountains of shit on the fields again. we also
need to stop killing the soil ecosystem, so that fungus, worms and all manner
of other things can grown and break the soil up

~~~
roel_v
Actually the _reason_ we're in the soil predicament we're in (in Europe, at
least) is that we've been dumping literal mountains of shit on the fields for
years, leading to massive nitrate pollution. To the point that one of the
limiting factors for keeping cows is the amount of land you have (or can rent)
to spread the manure they produce over.

But that's just nitpicking of me - I take it that what you meant is that we
need less annual crops, more polyculture food growing, less tilling, and other
such methods that increase soil organic matter and soil life. The problem is
though that all alternatives, right now, are only a little bit less labor
intensive than subsistence farming; especially if we add in the extra
constraint of 'minimizing food kilometers'. Whereas the high-tech route
(vertical hydroponics-style) doesn't need soil at all...

I'm not sure where I'm going with this; all my replies in this thread have
been pretty negative I'm afraid. The thing is that we don't have a good way
forward; right now there is no 'sustainable agriculture' that is also scalable
and cheap enough to feed everybody. If everybody who claimed 'their method' as
the answer would start by admitting that, we could at least start from a
position of mutual vulnerability, instead of the ideological entrenchment we
see now.

~~~
KaiserPro
Ahh, slurry. yes, that lovely problem. I should have been more specific,
instead of litrally spraying raw shit everywhere, we need to create proper
compost/soil products.

The aztecs managed it, I'm sure we can re-do Terra preta at scale

I agree, what we really need is the application of science, and some
imagination to try many different things.

There is no one size fits all here.

------
grive
The general gist is interesting in order to captive the intended audience of
sceptics, and the clickbait title is effective in that way.

Still, though, a clickbait title.

Furthermore, the usual consensus I hear is that we will need to change our
practices drastically, we cannot let the "conventional" farming on life
support indefinitely and we cannot let it destroy our sustenance. Organic
farming is however still far from being enough to make us live.

The road is probably a reasonable mix of the two, which is actively
researched.

~~~
loup-vaillant
> _Organic farming is however still far from being enough to make us live._

What I have seen says otherwise. There's a thing about chemical agriculture:
when you first implement it, you get _incredible_ yields. Then the soil starts
dying (no more acari, no more fungi, compressed soil…), and the yields slowly
go back to roughly the previous levels, only this time you need all the
chemicals to sustain it.

If you suddenly say "let's go organic", you're in for a disappointment: the
soil is _dead_ , the yields you get will be _terrible_. Indeed not enough to
feed the world. Fortunately, soils can be resuscitated. One component is
rotting pieces of wood, that bring back fungi. You need other things I'm not
aware of, but the idea is, in 3 years, your soil is good as new. Mostly. While
you now can go organic with good yields, you still have the old chemicals
dwelling in that soil. It will take 15 years before you're really free from
them.

With a good (or properly resuscitated) soil, it appears organic agriculture
have _higher_ yields per unit of surface than chemical agriculture. _However_
, it requires more labour. It would seem the yield _per man-month_ may
actually be lower.

We don't need more farming surface. We need more _farmers_.

~~~
throwaway1892
The problem (here in France) is that the number of farmers is going down hard
(with suicides every day). They are currently crushed by regulations, labor
costs, undercuts by products from other countries with different labor costs
and regulations and the supermarkets that make big margin on their back. So
your solution is good, but it is not currently applicable here in France.

~~~
loup-vaillant
> _but it is not currently applicable here in France._

You point out a serious policy problem. Couldn't we apply that solution if we
changed that policy?

~~~
throwaway1892
I hope that the solution is applicable, as I hope that the policy can be
changed. But that's something on the long term.

------
m_eiman
IMHO it's simple: current farming depends on oil. Oil will, sooner or later,
be very expensive. If nothing changes, food will by extension become very
expensive too: sooner or later we will need to grow food without the use of
oil.

Now the question is:

* should we learn how to do this now, at a comfortable pace while we still have oil-based food as a backup, where wealthy individuals can opt to support this essential research by buying organic food,

* or should we wait until the oil's all but gone and there's a Malthusian event looming?

To me the choice is easy. At worst I'm paying more than "needed" to eat, at
best we're able to phase out another reliance on oil in an orderly manner.

~~~
jeromenerf
> IMHO it's simple: current farming depends on oil

Valid point, though everything depends on energy, oil being one of the main
sources.

Not the only matter at hand though soil degradation, pesticide resistant
pests, water pollution, ...

We actually have no quantitative problems for now: we waste over 30% of the
food production, part of it being expensive food (meat, bananas, etc). See
[http://www.fao.org/save-food/en/](http://www.fao.org/save-food/en/)

So yeah, we can afford some optimizations while researching for sustainable
solutions.

------
justin_vanw
I think this is just an example of 'elitism' on the part of the author. It is
ludicrous to think that there is a chance that the 'local/organic' movement
will ever capture more than 1%-2% of food production. Most people don't care,
and some fraction of people that do care are intelligent enough to decide that
additional cost for no increase in quality is not worth it.

So this is 'elitism' because people think that a very high-cost, niche,
atypical behavior is in some way a 'threat' because 'everyone will do it'.
Maybe everyone the author knows, but only a tiny percentage of people overall.

~~~
rini17
It's only your preconceptions that are ludicrous. In 1990s agriculture in
Russia partially collapsed, so people turned to their small plots of land and
"captured the food production". They were lucky they knew how - the communist
government-managed centralized distribution was unreliable so the skill was
handy. Of course, there's no hard data from this chaotic period, but being
from eastern european country myself, it is fully conceivable. There's
widespread home food gardening culture (only we don't call it "organic", just
"how it was always done").

~~~
roel_v
Those home food gardening systems aren't sustainable, if you're implying that.
They very often use artificial fertilizers (and in wrong dosages ,too - hey if
one gram is great, 2 grams must be better, right?) They are often based on
tilling and/or small monocultures with maybe a basic crop rotation system,
etc. Sure, they have beneficial aspects that traditional farms don't have, but
home-scale subsistence farming is just bad in different ways from conventional
industrial scale farming.

~~~
rini17
I can't even. Of course they are sustainable without artificial fertilizers,
if compost and animal manure (nothing big necessary, just chicken and rabbits)
is used. Of course, you can use fertilizers and stuff in unsustainable way,
too, but what does that prove or disprove?

~~~
roel_v
Well it depends on what you call 'sustainable'. I use a pretty common
definition, roughly 'can in this way, without using non-renewable, external
energy sources, a population be fed'. If I'm reading you correctly, you're
using a definition of 'can this particular plot be sustained as a home garden
without external inputs'; well yes, it probably (maybe) can. What my
definition adds is 'can the whole population be fed this way'; and no, home-
scale agriculture can't do that, in the aggregate (maybe in one village, or a
rural(ish) part of a developing country somewhere; I don't care for specific
case studies, I'm talking about the aggregate).

If some people can feed themselves off their own land, while relying on (many)
others in the rest of society to produce stuff and infrastructure etc. who
need large-scale agriculture to sustain themselves, I argue that those few
aren't being 'sustainable' \- just ignorant of their reliance on
infrastructure provided by others who produce more efficiently.

~~~
rini17
Let me provide example of what I think is sustainable. This system uses
electrical energy from grid(still much less energy than fossil eqivalent used
by mainstream farming machinery) and occassional local as-needed application
of pesticides. I know the man who developed it, he was able to repay all loans
without subsidies and he is able to provide food for 50 people iirc.
[http://www.slideshare.net/inmediaslovakia/farmlandia](http://www.slideshare.net/inmediaslovakia/farmlandia)

------
jaimebuelta
We first should get a good definition of what "organic food" is, as currently
(at least in Europe) is, more or less, equivalent to "crops grow using
tradicional methods". The "tradicional methods" is very vague, but gets
described in some laws. That's the main reason why is less efficient, is not
using the latest improvements. "Organic food" is also an incredibly silly
name, as there are no "inorganic food", but whatever.

What is NOT guaranteed by those laws is that the food is:

\- More ecologically friendly (some tradicional pesticides or fertiliser are
quite nasty, and you may need to use much more)

\- Better (either as more nutrients or tastier)

\- Locally produced (and Co2 emissions can be high when you purchase an
organic crop produced in Australia)

\- Produced in small farms (there are big corporations as well)

\- Rigorously following the rules, as inspections are small

Again, the key word here is GUARANTEED. Some organic farms may be doing things
is a good way, but most are not improving anything, and there's nothing in the
"organic food" industry as a whole that promotes a good analysis.

Given that they are "tradicional methods", I find difficult to change into a
more "let's try to improve farming into a more sustainable and less aggressive
endeavour". Which I think is what we all want. And I think the "conventional
farming" is, at least, in a better position to approach this problem.

~~~
jeromenerf
There are very little guarantees in the "conventional farming" either and I
find it more disturbing.

"Organic farming" doesn't mean a lot since there is no clear agreement on the
definition. However, considering it should use less and safer inputs, why
should it provide more guarantees than "conventional farming"?

------
joakleaf
... but will unsustainable farming not kill us all by definition too?

I realize sustainable and organic are not the same. I am actually, not sure if
organic is sustainable or indeed what is required across the world for a farm
to be deemed organic.

However, I have always been under the impression, that conventional (non
organic) farming is unsustainable in the long term due to the environmental
impact, which we'll have to pay for at a later time.

Are we already seeing some of the impact from both European and US farms
(pollution of oceans and e.g. Colorado river drying up)?

To me it seems like we are in trouble either way, if we wish to continue with
our current consumption of meat.

------
TeMPOraL
> _global soil deterioration_

I learned something new and important today. For some reason, I thought this
was a _solved problem_ since Haber–Bosch process was invented. Apparently it
isn't so.

~~~
jeromenerf
The "soil" is more complex than its mineral characterization. Depth, texture,
organic components, life, elasticity ... The more we study it, the more
amazing it gets.

------
SeanDav
There is a lot of discussion in generalities in this article and precious few
hard facts. I would love to see a less chemical approach to farming but
articles like this are not going to convince very many people that organic is
a viable method of feeding the masses.

~~~
loup-vaillant
It's not a simple issue. A proper argument would require a few hours.

~~~
TeMPOraL
I for one would happily read it. Do you know of any?

~~~
Noseshine
I just posted this above, try

[https://www.edx.org/course/sustainable-soil-management-
soil-...](https://www.edx.org/course/sustainable-soil-management-soil-life-
wageningenx-soilx-0)

------
ailideex
> we should be TERRIFIED that fewer than 1 in 100 Americans actually knows how
> to grow enough food to feed a family or more.

This seems rather besides the point. If we all had to live in economically and
technologically isolated families the amount of people that can be sustained
by the earth would be allot lower ... and the quality of life of each of those
families will likely be worse than any person living today.

------
msimpson
"It pretends that vanishing institutional knowledge of growing food isn’t a
problem; we should be TERRIFIED that fewer than 1 in 100 Americans actually
knows how to grow enough food to feed a family or more."

Why? There are many other vital survival tasks that the overwhelming majority
of the world's population cannot perform. This is merely the consequence of
living in modern society; such efforts are abstracted away from the consumer.
People will educate themselves when such information becomes necessary.

Also, fabricating dramatic statistics doesn't help anyone. I can quote a Farm
and Dairy article from three years ago which stated, "One in 3 households are
now growing food — the highest overall participation and spending levels seen
in a decade." And that, "Households with incomes under $35,000 participating
in food gardening grew to 11 million — up 38 percent from 2008."

Should I be less "TERRIFIED" now?

~~~
CuriouslyC
> Why? There are many other vital survival tasks that the overwhelming
> majority of the world's population cannot perform. This is merely the
> consequence of living in modern society; such efforts are abstracted away
> from the consumer. People will educate themselves when such information
> becomes necessary.

Depending on your climate, food is one of the most pressing thing to acquire
if you don't have it. Our human system right now is becoming fragile, because
having such a large apparatus around food production and such a small number
of people who practice it, a disruption could cause massive starvation. I
personally would prefer not to see our species decimated as a result of
insufficient latent food production ability not dependent on a massive
industrialized base. It is not sufficient for people to learn how to grow in
the event of an emergency; you need practice, growing food is not as easy as
it seems.

In addition to making our species less fragile, it forces people to eat
better, encourages diversity of life, and done properly it makes the
environment more attractive.

Would you rather have more people trying to sell you shit?

~~~
msimpson
You can apply the same argument to fresh water access. Urbanization is not
conducive to individualized sustainability. You either come to terms with that
or move out to the sticks and adopt a DIY attitude toward survial.

~~~
CuriouslyC
This comes down to how our species survives, and there are really two issues:
global sustainability and the human race's fragility to catastrophe.

We to get globally sustainable as quickly as possible, there's absolutely no
argument against that. We definitely need to make our agriculture more
petrochemical efficient, at the very least.

In terms of urbanization and the human race's vulnerability to catastrophe, we
can mitigate a lot of the dangers by just limiting city density, and including
intensive food cultivation. That way, in case of a major emergency, you at
least have a buffer. Having a lot of people who know how to grow food also
allows you to spin up production quickly.

Ultimately, we're looking at a crisis of employment as computer programs take
over white collar work. We have millions of years of evolution as efficient
mixed source foragers, robots aren't going to take that job.

~~~
msimpson
How does one limit city density? Population growth creates cities. Not the
other way around.

------
knutin
The big issue with agriculture, both organic and conventional, is _what_ we
farm. According to who? The World Bank, the EU and the UN:
[http://www.fao.org/docrep/010/a0701e/a0701e00.HTM](http://www.fao.org/docrep/010/a0701e/a0701e00.HTM)

The livestock sector emerges as one of the top two or three most significant
contributors to the most serious environmental problems, at every scale from
local to global. The findings of this report suggest that it should be a major
policy focus when dealing with problems of land degradation, climate change
and air pollution, water shortage and water pollution and loss of
biodiversity.

------
jsudhams
Organic in my place(South of India) means no chemical and only used cattle
dung/ food waster / or plant itself as manure/Fertilizer. No other chemical
used but in my experience we made only 10 bags of paddy per acre while if we
use Urea / Potasium + pesticides we managed up to 30 to 35 bags of paddy. I am
not sure why in use organic farm still uses any chemical. There are good
techniques to deal with pest though not very effective.

------
Spooky23
Personally, I think organic is mostly bullshit. I believe a lot in local. I'd
prefer my money to work for smaller entities closer to home.

For example we buy 75lbs of onions in October and keep them in the basement.
The total cost is about $30 vs. $500 at retail and I'm doing business with a
guy 30 miles away instead of buying Chilean onions shipped by a Georgia grower
and passing through a half dozen middlemen.

Currently, right now 60% of the produce available in the US comes from a
single region -- the imperial valley in California. We're watering the desert,
which comes with some obvious long term risks.

We're lucky enough to live in an area in the Northeast that still has some
local vegetable agriculture. Business is picking up enough for them locally
that some local family farms are doing year round operations. The first crop
of high tunnel greens will be for sale February 1.

------
JoeAltmaier
'Soil degradation' \- is that a thing? See, with the advent of spray-on
fertilizers the state of the soil is nearly irrelevant to crop yield. The best
corn grows on eroded clay hillsides at present (because it doesn't saturate
and has better sun). Soil is just a medium for holding the roots at present.
Look at hydroponic farms -they grow plants in a gravel medium.

------
ebbv
This article is a reasonable rebuttal to the usual chicken little statements
by people pushing industrial farming of GMO crops as the only way to "feed the
world", but there are a couple of things this response misses.

1\. If we stop eating so much beef, we really, really don't need to grow so
much corn. Cattle feed accounts for an astronomical percentage of the need to
grow so much acreage. Dropping the ethanol boondoggle (it is not a real
solution to our problems with oil, it is not scalable or efficient) would make
a lesser but still significant impact in freeing up existing farm acreage for
edible crops.

2\. These people tend to compare farms that are making no real attempts at
maximizing for profitability against industrial farms that are totally
maximized for profitability (in both cases here profitability can be
considered a synonym for efficiency.) Making money is of course on the list of
priorities for local farms, but it's not their primary goal. Most of the
people I know who are running local farms in my area either inherited the farm
from their family or left lucrative careers in other areas to become farmers.
Money is not the primary driver of their actions as it is with an industrial
farm. So _of course they don 't compete on that level_. They are not trying
to.

3\. I don't buy local because I believe it is "more nutritious". I buy local
for a few reasons. First, the food tastes better. Garlic is a great example.
Store garlic that often comes from Mexico is very dry and the individual
cloves are usually very small. They grow varietals that are maximized for
number of cloves. My local garlic has larger bulbs and it is fresher because
it hasn't taken a long voyage from Mexico. Because it has fewer individual
bulbs, the volume of the head is more usable garlic and less paper. This
applies to most produce I get from local sources. Tomatoes are another prime
example. Mass produced tomatoes are picked before they are ripe and gassed to
give them their color. Local tomatoes are red all the way through and taste
way, way better.

4\. Animal welfare isn't even mentioned in the article that I saw. But it is a
big reason I try to buy my meat and dairy locally. I've seen what happens at
industrial farms, and I've visited my local farms. It's night and day. I am
comfortable with how the animals are cared for and live their lives at my
local farms. I think anyone with a heart has a hard time watching footage of
industrial farms and knowing we contribute to that horror.

5\. Lastly it presupposes an all or nothing world. This is the biggest piece
of bullshit that the "We have to pursue industrial farming at all costs!"
folks push. Their argument imagines only a world where we are 100% local
organic farms that care nothing for efficiency or only 100% industrial farms
that are super efficient (but care nothing for animal welfare and quality of
the end produce.) This of course is ridiculous. It's never going to be all or
nothing. The future will be some version of what we have now; a mixture.

~~~
akamaka
I think this is the best comment in the entire thread.

I'd like to add one more point, which is that some folks argue we would be
going back to a world of sustinence farming without GMOs, ignoring that much
of the improvements in agricultural output have come from developments that
can also benefit organic farming, such as land use reform, crop rotation,
improved equipment, better irrigation, etc.

See here:
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Agricultural_Revolut...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Agricultural_Revolution)

------
mmargerum
Robotics will revolutionize farming and make organic sustainable. Weed and
pest killing robots will obviate the need for chemical herbicides and
pesticides as well as Genetic alterations.

------
JulianMorrison
You want organic and efficient? How about hermetically sealed "vertical"
robot-operated farms in skyscrapers? No pests, so no pesticides.

~~~
D_Alex
You would not believe how hard the "no pests" thing is in real life. It only
takes a few insect eggs to start an infestation. It is hard enough to do that
on a "sack of grain" scale, let alone on industrial farm scale.

Only way AFAIK that pest infestation are successfully forestalled in large
food storages are through refrigeration or inert or even toxic atmospheres.
Both of these will not work if you are actually trying to produce food.

~~~
JulianMorrison
Well, the atmosphere only has to be non-toxic to plants, if you are actually
using robots to sow, tend, and harvest. CO2/Nitrogen mix perhaps?

Compartmentalization and lack of toing-and-froing by humans would help too.

~~~
ddebernardy
Plants need oxigen to breath, too.

------
Quarrelsome
so this entire article is based on the assumption that current farming
practice is wholly unsustainable. I'm not sure I buy into this. Surely it can
be adapted as opposed to rejected and completely changed, can't it?

~~~
loup-vaillant
This particular assumption is pretty safe: current farming practice depends
heavily on oil. For energy of course, but also for _chemicals_. Nothing that
depends that heavily on fossil fuels is sustainable in the long run. Whatever
change we devise, we need to weaken that dependency.

> _Surely it can be adapted as opposed to rejected and completely changed, can
> 't it?_

Personally, I see organic agriculture as a modernization: it's healthier (no
poisonous pesticide in my apple!), easier on the soil, but it's _not_ easier.
The knowledge required to grow food organically is quite precise, and research
is still ongoing.

~~~
dagw
_it 's healthier (no poisonous pesticide in my apple!)_

That is simply not true. Organic farming uses pesticides just as conventional
farming, and I'm not aware of any studies that find that organic pesticides
are consistently better for your health than non-organic. Rotanone for example
is popular with many organic farmers, and has been linked to causing
Parkinson's disease.

PS: This is not an argument against organic farming, and I buy organic as much
as possible, but there is no reason to believe that doing so has any effect on
my health.

~~~
loup-vaillant
Depends on how we define "organic". If it can include pesticides, that's a bit
depressing.

There's a way to avoid pesticides altogether: grow local apples that thrive in
the local environment. Some will get eaten by worms, some will rot… Select
them out. You don't always need those pesticides.

~~~
roel_v
Look, pesticides are a cost. If there was a way that was as easy as you make
it out to be, farmers would already do it, because the market would force them
to. This whole discussion is about the fact that it isn't as simple as saying
'just grow local'. People do that already and those apples cost 2-3 times what
they cost in the supermarket (apart from a few weeks in september when they
are 1/2 of supermarket prices because there's a glut of apples that will
otherwise spoil). The question is now: how do we scale this up, so that we can
feed everybody this way, including those people who can't afford such price
premiums?

~~~
loup-vaillant
> _because the market would force them to._

The market here is heavily influenced by government policies. Both American
and European farmers have subsidies that apply if they grow their food in a
certain way. Organic food in particular tend to have less subsidies. I suggest
we manipulate the market differently. Or less. I don't know.

> _The question is now: how do we scale this up,_

That's the hard part. Going organic/permaculture/what have you needs a
transition period. Reviving a dead soil takes 3 years, during which you don't
do much —if at all. After that, you still need 12 years before the chemical
residues disperse enough for your food to really count as "organic". And
hardest of all, even if we manage to have the same or better yields _per unit
of surface_ (which I fully believe is possible), those new methods are likely
to require more labour. We need more farmers, and we need them soon.

------
snovv_crash
One thing I don't see him cover is how to deal with the "ecosystem" which will
form around, and eventually consume, a fully organic permaculture farm. One of
the big advantages of monoculture is that you usually only need to protect
against a single class of pests in a specific area.

~~~
kristopolous
A single point of failure is an advantage?

~~~
TeMPOraL
Yes?

As a king, what would you prefer - to defend against one big kingdom that
wants all of your land, or to defend against _three_ big kingdoms that each
want a third of your land?

When number of points of failure trade off against your attack surface, you
can't just say "more PoFs is better".

~~~
kristopolous
That analogy isn't correct. You've made it 1 thing against 1 versus 1 against
3.

If we were to use that analogy, a more accurate metric would be either having
1 large centralized kingdom or 100 small, autonomous, independent kingdoms
that each have fundamentally different weaknesses. If one fails, you still
have 99.

But even that fails to understand the dynamic of biological systems. There's
mutually beneficial, symbiotic relationships between crops and many creatures
(bees, worms, etc).

Presenting it as always in conflict is inaccurate.

The fundamentally different approach is to not look at pest solutions through
a genocidal chemical warfare lens but instead to figure out how to maintain a
sustainable relationship and have all of nature working for you instead of
setting most of it as against you.

~~~
TeMPOraL
My answer was to your "SPoF is an advantage" comment as a general question.
Maybe unnecessarily pedantic of me (I need my morning coffee ;)).

In context of sustainable ecosystems, I agree with your detailed explanation.
Controlling and maintaining a complex system of feedback loops (that we still
don't completely understand) is a very difficult task though, so I'm not
surprised that currently the most crude methods (genocidal chemical warfare)
are also the cheapest / most efficient.

I wonder if this isn't a good field to benefit from computational models
though - from tools to design, predict and manage natural feedback loops in
agriculture. I don't know, maybe it's already a thing in the industry?

~~~
kristopolous
Ecoinformatics and Computational Ecology is what you're looking for.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Thanks! Will add to my "reading/random" sublist :).

------
Mendenhall
What they will all admit one day is that there are too many people and not
enough resources. Till then they will create songs and dances that wont fix
the problem at all. It is a hard pill to swallow for humanity.

------
leecarraher
so what would this rube goldbergian harvester machine look like that could be
capable of efficiently farming such a dynamic landscape as a
multistory(already sounding like we got some marketing terms in the works
here) farm... my guess is about 5'10", over worked and from some economically
depressed country. yay organic

~~~
codingdave
As opposed to the 5'10" rube goldbergian harvester machine that selects your
products at the grocery store, moves them around in a cart for 20 minutes,
then stands in line to purchase them?

Somewhere along the line, you as a person will always walk around and pick up
your own food. (Unless you pay someone to do that for you, too.) Doing it
direct from a local food forest, or a farmers market, will always involve less
transportation and labor cost than a grocery store.

~~~
leecarraher
seriously your plan is for people to harvest their own food? your comparison
is grossly disproportionate, how does 20 minutes at the super market compare
to the months of labor required to grow, store, process and plant ones own
food. this is the kind of blind zealotry that makes organic farming seem like
a ridiculous prospect.

------
speedygrowth
Here's a nice thread with some debate on the subject:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/comments/1h9hye/i_beli...](https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/comments/1h9hye/i_believe_organic_food_production_is_a_dangerous/)

Worth reading for those looking for both sides of the story.

------
Stauche
Why does every article that bashes organic foods say they are not
nutritionally superior to conventional foods?

Who cares if they aren't!? I'm not eating them because of that. I'm eating
them because of less/safer pesticide use.

