Yes, organic farming will kill us all | Hacker News Reader

Yes, organic farming will kill us all

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231 pointspsiops252 comments

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.

The criticisms of conventional farming are valid, but that doesn't mean that organic farming is any better.

I believe that organic farming is much more likely to cause soil degradation and environmental harm than conventional farming for several different reasons:

- organic farming's main tool to combat weeds and regrowth is tillage, which causes immense amounts of damage to the soil directly and allowing the soil to blow away or wash away. Conventional farmers know how damaging tillage is and are increasingly moving away from it as pesticide alternatives become available. It was tillage that turned the fertile crescent of Mesopotamia into the deserts of Iraq.

- Organic farmers still use pesticides and herbicides, but they are limited to those that are certified organic. Organic pesticides and herbicides aren't necessarily any safer for human consumption or for the environment, they're just "organic". For example, some organic farmers literally salt their soil. When the only thing you have in your toolbox is a hammer, that's what you use, even when the situation calls for a scalpel.

- Conventional farmers care far more about the value of their land than organic farmers do. Farmers don't have retirement funds, they've just got land on which they've spent the last 40 years paying off the mortgage. A conventional farmer with healthy soil can sell his land for a lot more than one with unhealthy soil. An farmer with land that's "certified organic" doesn't care, it's that "certified organic" stamp that he's getting paid for.

- Organic herbicides and pesticides are much less efficient than conventional ones. So they have to use much larger quantities. Which means more runoff. For instance, they sometimes spread massive amounts of manure on their fields, cause massive algal blooms in the waterways and destroying them.

- Conventional farmers are constrained by economics. They're selling a commodity, where price == marginal cost. So the only way to make a profit is to have lower costs per unit of output than your competitors. Their major costs are diesel, herbicides & pesticides -- minimizing those is both good for the farmer's pocketbook and the environment. An organic farmer's price is not set at the marginal cost, so it's often better for them to increase inputs to increase yields, even when it's not as efficient.

P.S. I gave 5 arguments. They are not equal. The first one (tillage) is orders of magnitude more significant than the other 4. Tillage destroys the soil, and is far more "unnatural" than any sort of herbicide or pesticide organic or conventional.

Can you give sources? These seem to all be backwards from some of my reading and experience.

- Rodale Farm is all about no till - http://rodaleinstitute.org/our-work/organic-no-till/

- Not sure about adding salt, unless you mean adding seaweed or ash? Salt is bad for the soil, and so it's known that those substances should be used prudently

- As far as caring about the value of their land, it's valuable to have an organic farm since "organic" cows have to be raised on organic soil. Organic milk has higher retail value, which can be seen as adding value. You can also work with other farmers that want to produce organic milk, by helping them transition by using your own land [edit] for a fee...

- "organic herbicides are less efficient, so organic farmers use more". Not sure this is true, my work with Rodale has mostly been towards trying to rid the farm of pesticides and finding natural ways around them. Not sure about big ag though.

- I should have used the word "salts" rather than "salt". They're definitely not adding NaCl. If I get time I'll try and dig up exactly what it was. If you're adding ash you'd be horrified at the thought of adding salt, since ash is often used to combat salinity. But some crops grow well in saltier soil (or acidic soil or alkaline soil or ...), or at least better than the weeds that would otherwise grow there.

[edit: other commenters have linked to the use of copper salts in organic farming]

- From a quick glance, Rodale is a non-profit. That definitely allows them to do things that farmers who have to make a profit to feed their family can't do.

- It's awesome that Rodale is studying organic no-till. Herbicides are a crappy way of controlling weeds, it's just that tillage is worse.

Rodale is a non-profit.

Many conventional farms live off subsidies. They're not necessarily any more sustainable.

(I'm not from the US so can only speak of local farms. I believe its the same in the US, based on stuff I've heard and read, but don't believe random internet comments)

I don't know anything about Rodale or their sustainability but in this case a non-profit, in the U.S., is a tax code distinction. It doesn't mean they don't generate a profit, it just sets rules on what they're allowed to do with it, among other things.

I don't have any 1st hand experience with this, but my friend is in finance, and he is doing pro bono work for a non profit. One thing he mentioned to me that struck him was that this company invested money in areas with high risk. He said it wasn't so much about money in some cases, but the mission of the company. So I can see how being a non profit can change some things.

> organic farming's main tool to combat weeds and regrowth is tillage

No - mulching, no and no til are very common

> For example, some organic farmers literally salt their soil

Certainly in the UK you wouldn't get organic certification for doing that. The certified pesticides over here are genderally safer for the environment, if more labour intensive.

> Conventional farmers care far more about the value of their land than organic farmers do

Really no. Conventional farmers can quickly boost the fertility of their soil by adding some quick-fix nutrients.

> they sometimes spread massive amounts of manure on their fields

Where do you think this manure goes otherwise?

> Their major costs are diesel, herbicides & pesticides -- minimizing those is both good for the farmer's pocketbook and the environment.

Unless of course, there's a really cheap pesticide that is appalling for the environment.

But you can put copper compounds on your organic crops under certain circumstances in the UK: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copper_pesticide

"Really no. Conventional farmers can quickly boost the fertility of their soil by adding some quick-fix nutrients."

Maybe in the UK, but definitely not here in Saskatchewan. Once soil has been destroyed through tillage, it takes a good decade of rehabilitation to make the soil viable again. Lost organic matter can't be replaced with a chemical fertilizer.

Can you please try to add sources? The majority of what you're arguing goes against everything I've learned. Also, saying tilling alone turned the Fertile Crescent into Iraqi deserts is absurd. There is myriad evidence of climate change playing a big part in that over the last few thousand years. I'm not saying it didn't perhaps contribute, but stating it's the direct cause is ridiculous. Also, not for nothing, but you're comparing soil recovery times in Saskatchewan (far from ideal growing conditions) to anywhere else as though the less than ideal growing conditions there are a representative sample of conditions worldwide, which is misleading at best.

Support for a lot of the statements can be found in the refs of this Science VS podcast episode [1] which, in its 3rd part, deals specifically with the environmental impact of organic farming.

[1] https://gimletmedia.com/episode/5-organic-food/

tilling is the worst thing you can do to soil. just tilling once would destroy the soil structure and it would take forever to rebuild it.

i cant speak for commodity farming, but for vegetable farms, fertility doesnt have to be lost. the problem is that farming ceased to be a closed loop system long ago when we started mechanising farm equipment. the environmental degradation is astounding. and unnecessary.

no till farming promotes carbon sequestration. the cascading good effects of no till is well documented. first, it helps with erosion issues...which protects our water from contamination. good soil holds water. irrigation needs are reduced. huge machinery compacts the soil and causes hard pan. we are losing thousands of inches of top soil every year.

imagine if we did this.trying to scrubbing off old tired skin every night and painting an artificial skin everyday in the morning. the only way to maintain good skin is to feed it from the inside...stay hydrated. the more you scrub, the thicker the paint. eventually, you'd have no skin of your own.

it is the same with soil. the eco system is self-correcting. there is tremendous value to this. all the inputs we use..from fertilizers to pesticides to herbicides...become necessary because we have pierced a self correcting, self balancing system. the soil web is so complicated and delicate. it is entirely capable of keeping itself healthy. inputs cost $. more labour. less productivity as more dependence on outside inputs. farms that grow corn or soy or sweet beets do this on 5000-6000 acres. (all of this doesnt equate to 'food' per se..we hardly grow enough grain to be self sustainable..we dont grow millet or 'small grains' which are drought tolerant and more disease resistant.) but our vegetables are grown in succession multiple times in one growing season. maybe this is why our diet is so messed up in america.

agriculture in america is about the care and feeding of businesses. not its population. the debt of farmers is astounding..farmer debt is crushing. the numbers are shrinking every year. eventually there will be no food soverignity here because food will have to come from outside.

>Conventional farmers care far more about the value of their land than organic farmers do. [...] //

You're going to need some pretty amazing sources to convince me that Organic farmers in general care less about sustainable farming than those practising more conventional techniques.

This sort of unsupported claim makes anything else you're saying lack credence IMO.

I didn't say they cared less about sustainable farming, I said they cared less about the value of their land. Value, as in number of dollars the land can be sold for.

Sure, but shouldn't sustainability of the land be the primary factor for the price? (Layman here)

From http://infohub.ifoam.bio/sites/default/files/page/files/misc...

Referring to pesticides: "Organic standards-setting bodies are responsive to new data on toxicity of natural substances and precautionary measured are applied while alternatives are being sought."

"most natural pesticides have a very small persistence in the environment and are, therefore, unlikely to be leave residues in food. Rotenone, for instance, breaks down when exposed to sunlight and has a short lifespan (a week or less) in the environment."

"Research is being undertaken to find alternatives to copper and, meanwhile, organic standards include restrictions on the quantity of copper salt applied to fields."

> It was tillage that turned the fertile crescent of Mesopotamia into the deserts of Iraq.

Any sources on that? Or on the bad effects of tillage, generally speaking. I'm just curious as my parents are traditional farmers and they use shoveling and the like instead of pesticides (which they couldn't afford, anyway).

Sorry to butt in but is your nickname by any chance a toponym? I'm thinking of a certain island in the Ionian Sea?

No problem :) Nope, it's after the name of a Jules Verne character from this novel: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_Search_of_the_Castaways. The 1980s Soviet TV series which based on the book left a strong impression on me when I was a kid, so that was that (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088635/reference)

Oh, OK- pattern matching failure, on my part, then :)

That's a Verne book I haven't read, also.

> Farming lobby in Europe

For my perspective in France, here the farming lobby is inexistant/inefficient, since farmers had to big pretty big actions all over France just to raise the price of milk. So I think it's not the farming lobby, but the fertilizers and pesticides lobby.

It's a lot more complicated than that. There isn't one single 'farming lobby'. France, to take your example, has a highly inefficient agricultural system, heavily dependent on CAP subsidies. There has been massive pressure the last two decades to reduce that, but it hasn't happened yet and probably won't for years to come. This is a form of 'lobbying' (those farmers get benefits from those subsidies), even if those farmers didn't have the clout to set higher milk price floors (a weird concept in the first place, since this is a very basic supply/demand thing - the reason they don't make enough is because their per-liter cost is too high compared to the competition; sure you can say that that's because extra-EU farmers don't have to internalize environmental costs to the same degree the EU ones have to, but then it's a matter of setting import restrictions, not having an artificial price floor enforced. But I digress.)

Of course fertilizers and pesticide produces are an aspect of the abstract concept of 'the Ag lobby', but it's much more nuanced than that.

> a weird concept in the first place, since this is a very basic supply/demand thing (...) but then it's a matter of setting import restrictions, not having an artificial price floor enforced

I sometimes wonder if such concepts aren't simply the limits of human mind in action - price floor is simple, farmers can do some basic calculations and figure out that "if only milk costed at least €this, we could finally make a profit on it" (this is obviously ignoring all the clever ways markets can work around such increases, but that's complexity again). It's also a single thing to ask for. On the other hand, changing import tariffs is complicated, affects many things, and its effect on milk prices is indirect and therefore hard to predict.

It's like two different perspectives - from God's eye view on the country as a system, it's obvious you have to tweak some internals to get the desired effect. But from the perspective of people on the sides of the system asking someone to change something, those internals may be unavailable and instead of picking what's best, they have to pick what's available.

> sure you can say that that's because extra-EU farmers don't have to internalize environmental costs to the same degree the EU ones have to, but then it's a matter of setting import restrictions

A great argument against the current version of globalisation. Free trade is good, dumping isn't!

French farmers are the biggest group of farmers that is subsidized by EU. For me it is the source of everything what's wrong with farming in EU.

Because of subsidies they produce crops that are not developed in efficient way (because they will receive subsidy either way).

Because of them e.g. Polish farmers are forced to produce less milk than they have ability to - milk producers are given fines if they create to much milk, which is ridiculous.

Just to add to the other answer, which stresses that French farmers are just as productive, the reason EU farmers and their US farmer counterparts get subsidies is geostrategic: if for some reason you end up at war with your food partners, the last thing you want is a starving population. If, overnight, farmers need to start producing twice as much, you want to make sure that it's a possibility.

(And yes, it's also soft power when dealing with developing countries.)

> Polish farmers are forced to produce less milk than they have ability to - milk producers are given fines if they create to much milk, which is ridiculous.

It's the exact same thing in France. It's not uncommon for farmers to dump the milk they overproduced to not get fined.

French farmer aren't any less productive than other european farmers, they simply target another quality for the most part.

In exchange for this "problem" however the French get the French countryside, which is fucking awesome. When people discuss this issue without at least somewhat acknowledging that motivation it seems hard to take the argument seriously.

It's very serion, it's exactly the heart of the issue in France. The French countryside is huge (as compared to the urban area) and it's not a wild space, as, say, a big part of the US territory. It has always been cropped. You just can't stop. You have to find a way to keep people working and living in this area otherwise within a decade or two, France is a rainforest.

That means paying farmers with EU subsides.

> For my perspective in France, here the farming lobby is inexistant/inefficient

Tell that to the EU's Common Agricultural Policy. The kickbacks France gets compared to other countries is insane. Your lobbyists have been most effective!

According to the FAO, France agriculture is one of the world's most diverse, productive and qualitative.

To rephrase it: France exports A LOT of goods, produced at intensive yields and high costs, with a high dependency on subsidies and technology/pesticides.

Quality is great but, to say the least, far from sustainable.

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://www.dw.com/en/eu-sues-germany-over-water-tainted-by-n...

https://www.thelocal.de/20161107/eu-sues-germany-over-water-...

https://www.euractiv.com/section/agriculture-food/news/eu-ta...

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

To accurately assess the long-term cost/benefit of GMOs vs organic farming, one would need to understand the long-term externalized costs of each.

We understand the long-term impact of organic farming. We do not understand the long-term impact of many GMOs.

It is a meta study, but in this field I would take a hard look at the selected studies before I trust those results (I did not take a hard look, so I can't say). A 37% decrease of something that ruins drinking water is surely better than nothing, but only an incremental improvement. It can easily be offset by agriculture growth within the next decades.

> 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.

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.

> 37% overall decrease in pesticide use

What's "pesticide use"? If I use 1L of super-strong broad-spectrum pesticide instead of 10L of super-weak narrow-spectrum pesticide, is that really an improvement?

That's not how it works. Instead of 1L of strong broad-spectrum herbicide you use 1L of strong narrow herbicide for weed A, 1L of strong narrow herbicide for weeds B & C, etc. None of the narrow herbicides are weak, they are just more specific in their target because you need something that kills the weeds dead but does not kill the plant you want to stick around and grow.

How do these impact the insect world?

That’s a nice meta study, but not a single one of those crops is grown in Germany.

yes, but for those yields, you need to increase the use of herbicides.

Which has unintended consequences.

GMOs are currently faster horses.

When joining EU, Czech Republic had to raise 5x nitrate limits in drinking water. Mainly for pollution in germany. Now water for toddlers is not safe for some aquarium fish.

Sorry, but do you have a source for this? The EU only sets a maximum level (50 mg/l apparently [1]), but member states are free to set lower maximums.

[1] http://www.eea.europa.eu/data-and-maps/indicators/nitrate-in...

This is bottled water. EU dictates common limits for common market. No source, it is over 10 years ago.

IA(Definitely)NAL, but is this what you're referring to?

http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=OJ:L:1...

If so, it says under (19) that member states are free to set more stringent limits if they so please.

Honestly I do not know, that is just something I read in specialized forum very long time ago.

But some points:

- EU Shengen rules are pretty strictly enforced. EU even regulates "curvature of bananas". I can not imagine situation where Germany could not sell bottled water on Czech market.

- All formulation are talking about human health; "essential quality and health parameters" or "if human life is endangered". I do not think this applies to german bottled water. Czech springs (and bottled water) are pretty high quality, and our limits were very strict even compared to international standards.

- I mentioned it as a curiosity. Because communism caused lot of pollution in here. Back in 2000 it was a huge contrast to cross borders to Germany or Austria. It is surprising that we had stricter rules on water.

Article 5 paragraph 2 in your link more explicitely says this as well.

So it's hearsay then?

Many aquarium fish are delicate little creatures, far more so than pretty much any human.

Actually, no. While there is variability in ground- and surface water pollution across Europe, and safe levels are exceeded in some places, the overall trend is stable. See pretty much all reporting on this by e.g. the EEA, Eurostat, DG Agri/Env, etc.

First, one can say that these 'official' bodies are just in the pocket of 'big Ag' and can't be trusted etc. - it's a common trope, but there is no proof and also (although of course this doesn't count for anything in the larger context) contrary to by experience.

Secondly, just because things are 'stable', doesn't mean they're 'great' or even 'good'. There is obviously much work left, and despite many people's hate on the EU, things like the Nitrate Directive and others like it there are clear frameworks in place and things are looking up. Again, I'm not saying 'all OK, let's go home'; but factless scare mongering like 'massively polluted', 'need massively reducing fertilizer and pesticide use' etc. is counterproductive. I'm not even sure what you're implying - population restrictions? Rebirth of Malthusianism?

No?

http://www.kn-online.de/News/Aktuelle-Politik-Nachrichten/Na...

This is not happening?

The EU is suing Germany in front of the ECJ because Germany is far above the levels.

The EU Commission is literally suing Germany because our drinking water is exceeding the limits, and you say it’s not happening?

This http://www.dw.com/en/eu-sues-germany-over-water-tainted-by-n... isn’t happening?

> EU sues Germany over water tainted by nitrate fertilizer

This? https://www.euractiv.com/section/agriculture-food/news/eu-ta...

This? https://www.thelocal.de/20161107/eu-sues-germany-over-water-...

This? http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-16-1453_en.htm

Every news outlet is reporting on this, and you’re saying it isn’t happening? We truly live in postfactual times.

You're focusing on just one event (the Commission suing Germany), an event that in the grand scheme is pretty insignificant; what I'm talking about is the overall trend. I never denied this enforcement action is happening, it would be pretty silly to do so. The GP claimed that water quality levels are declining (rapidly) and that some sort of enormous change in agricultural practices is needed to stop, let alone revert that (at least, that seems to be his claim; it's a bit unclear, upon rereading, whether he meant it narrowly for just those parts of Germany and what would be required to get within the limits of the Directive). That claim is not true.

> The GP claimed that water quality levels are declining (rapidly) and that some sort of enormous change in agricultural practices is needed to stop, let alone revert that (at least, that seems to be his claim; it's a bit unclear, upon rereading, whether he meant it narrowly for just those parts of Germany and what would be required to get within the limits of the Directive).

I can only speak for my state (Schleswig-Holstein), but the government has been saying this for years, that major agricultural change is necessary.

Our overall trend has been massively down, and it’s similar in many other parts of Germany.

So, even then, it’s still the Ministry of the Environment and Agriculture vs. you.

Northern Germany? Same here in the south (Bavaria).

For example, the small river that runs to and through Nuremberg is quite disgusting, lots of algae - the wrong kind, and visibly bad water quality. There is a lake in the east of the city where it runs into before going out the other end and continue through the inner city. That water is disgusting. It's quite obvious there is lots of agricultural runoff, before getting to the city the river passes mostly through farmland.

Despite disgusting, sometimes stinking water right in the city I have yet to see anyone complain or even raise the issue.

I'm from East Germany, and we had an even more polluted river (Saale), my grand parents told me people used to bath in it - I never saw anyone even touch the water. After reunification polluting industry was removed and all was cleaned up, now the water is wonderful, the right kind of algae grow, lots of fish, the water is clear and a pleasure to behold.

So Germany can do it, I have no idea why nobody cares about such a highly visible problem, after all, millions of inhabitants and visitors to the city see it every year. It stinks, literally. And sometimes it foams.

There also has just been an article in a major German paper (Spiegel) about concerningly high levels of nitrates in drinking water in many places. Still within official limits, but if you know something about those limits, their main component is "what is (technologically and financially) feasible", not "what is desirable". Also, they only test for compounds they know about already, there are thousands of compounds nobody even tests for because we have no idea how they work - especially not in combination with others. It is hardly even researched because it is too hard (not even lots of money can really help, the complexity problem is huge).

I think precision agriculture using data (multispectral satellite imagery, ground sensor data, etc) to minimise fertiliser/pesticide input for maximum yield will be able cut down their use a lot further

> 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).

I think this a good moment to side-track a bit into agricultural history. While I'm generally not a fan of Great Man history, Sicco Mansholt seems to be a very interesting focal point in this case:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sicco_Mansholt

Mansholt, a former farmer himself, and politically so left he would be labelled a communist had he been in the US, was one of the founding fathers of the EU, specifically it's commissioner of agriculture. He created the Common Agricultural Policy in 1962. In 1972, near the end of his political career, he had an affair with Petra Kelly while she was still a member of the Social Democrats. He greatly influenced her line of thinking surrounding sustainability. Kelly left the SPD in 1979 to found the German Green Party, which was the first major green party in Europe.

Here's a documentary about him, but it's only in Dutch without subtitles, sadly, so I'll summarise it below:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-AniIokCHtk

After WWII, a big worry was creating a stable food supply to feed everyone. One major problem was that farmers were not paid enough to sustain themselves. It was clear this wouldn't change, because the only way to fix it was to raise food prices, which would have all kinds of negative consequences. The solution seemed to be a mix of subsidies, and having less farmers take care of larger areas of land. The idea was that the same amount of money would go to agriculture, but since it would be divided among fewer farmers they would be able to eke out a decent living.

Mansholt was originally a farmer himself, and also had a personal stake in this: after the famines in the war he wanted to prevent this from ever happening again, and he was aware about population growth. And he also did not want to have ten million farmers living in abject poverty - better to have half of them switch professions in that case.

Just some context: his policies suggested that farms should be at least 100 hectares. Back then it was very common for farms to be one, two hectares.

So Mansholt was one of the main architects of this Common European Agricultural Policy within the European Commission (the precursor to the EU). There obviously were lots of protests by farmers, Mansholt was threatened, etc, but in the end he got his policies through. In 1962 the CAP was first implemented[0]. Ever heard of "get big or get out"? That was a phrase used by Earl Butz, US Secretary of Agriculture from 1971 to 1976. A decade later.

Funny enough, Butz did this thing around the same time the Club of Rome came out with "The Limits To Growth", in 1972. Mansholt was one of the early converts, going against his own earlier policies. The huge problems he saw with unexpected surpluses of food (in the Netherlands we even have words like "boterbergen" and "melkplassen" (buttermountains and milklakes) to describe this), grown unsustainably, were probably also a part of this.

He saw the error of his ways and started lobbying for sustainable practices. Which, btw, did not align with the typical organic farming practices this article rails against. To make things even more complicated, he fell in love with a 39 years younger German politician, Petra Kelly[2], who was then a member of the German Social Democrats. They had a two year affair, and in all likelihood they greatly influenced each other's thinking. In 1979 Kelly left the SPD and become one of the founding members of Die Grünen.

I find it very interesting to see how drastically agricultural practices have changed in the last century. While we talk about farming lobbies, it's easy to forget how big of a hand governments themselves had in creating these big farms. The story of Mansholt shows how hard it is to reverse the trend too: even the former chief architect of the policies that stimulated modernisation did not have enough political clout to get people to become more sustainable.

Having said all of that, I really hope the type of organic farming described in this article will take off. We'll need to find a way around the existing power structures though.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Agricultural_Policy

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Limits_to_Growth

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petra_Kelly

Ah, so that's the Thomas Midgley Jr. of agriculture.

The CAP has turned into a disaster for the environment and for the EU. Perverse incentives abound.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Midgley_Jr

From the old times exist the idea that is necessary to let the terrain to "rest" and let it to the nature mercy (in the bible was for a year each 7-years for example). Is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crop_rotation

So I wonder why not mix both?

> 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...

2. https://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2014/05/09/the-lawyer-bu...

3. https://www.agcensus.usda.gov/Publications/2012/Preliminary_...

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

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

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.

Knowing how to run a micro farm doesn't help you know where your food comes from.

In addition to that, it's rather easy to learn how to feed a family, if your goal is not to be cost efficient or have a very balanced diet. I guess most people could learn rather quickly how to grow enough potatoes to feed several people. You won't reach the same yield as a professional farmer, but if you had to, you could probably survive without extensive training (if you have the seed to start with).

> if you have the seed to start with

Seed would not be the limiting factor. Land would.

I feel fortunate to live on a bit more than one acre of suburban land that would be relatively appropriate for farming. But if you plow up the entire lawn, cut down the trees, and discount the drain field, house, and driveway, and don't purchase feed for livestock, that's just not enough area to feed my family.

And most people in my area don't have an acre. Sure, some local farmers have hundreds or thousands of acres - but there are a lot more people who only have a second-story apartment or a small city lot.

It's a simple problem of economies of scale. If you have a tractor, it's much, much easier to go from 10 acres to 100 acres than it is to go from 0 acres to 1 acre.

Yeah, I couldn't figure out why I was supposed to be terrified by that. Yeah, man, civilization and specialization. Sounds like progress to me. What's the concern? A Lucifer's Hammer style apocalypse? Failure of society at large to adequately meddle in the affairs of farmers?

Maybe only a fraction of farm workers understand the entire process at their farm, i.e. some drive tractors, some stick milking machines to cow udders, some are itinerant workers following crop harvests, some fly crop dusters, and none of these groups would be able to run the entire farm on their own.

Even so, it seems a strange thing to worry about.

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.

The current definition of what "organic farming" is has been obviously corrupted by the current farming industry. In the end it's just a label.

But the question remains: how can we do sustainable farming, without polluting the soil and the water and without poisoning humans?

If we can't find a way to make that work, then we are all heading towards an apocalypse, because what we are doing currently isn't sustainable.

And no, GMOs are not an answer because efficiency is not our current problem. Pesticides are only needed because of mono-cultures, a problem that is only relevant in the context of current industrial farming practices. Even more aggravating is that we live in the information age, we can now build the proper tools to do industrial-scale farming without making use of mono-cultures or pesticides. We can have robots to do all the hard work, we can use AI for rotating crops in order to keep the soil healthy, etc. And GMOs would not help much, because you're not addressing the problem of raising mono-cultures and for example it will not lead to much healthier soils and would do nothing to help the bees.

Sadly, even though mother nature is proving how extremely dumb and primitive we are, we are still not learning ;-)

Reducing the consumption of meat seems like a step in the right direction. It's a huge drain on water, land, energy and calories. At the very least, people should be paying for the real cost. Taking it further, instead of subsidizing these industries, I wouldn't mind seeing a beef-tax.

I think you overgeneralize industrial meat production to all forms of ranching.

There are huge areas of the USA that are not amenable to farming but which can be ranched. Raising cattle on these lands does not necessarily consume any water, food, or arable land that would be productively used otherwise. This form of ranching serves many purposes, one of which is to simulate the effect of millions of grazing animals roaming free over the prairies as they did for millennia until about 150 years ago. Another is to eliminate the need for antibiotics, which are not required when grazing animals are not confined and fed a corn diet, and when sick animals are much more easily culled.

There is such a thing as sustainable ranching, just as there is such a thing as sustainable farming. The trick is to incentivize the right kind of ranching. Unfortunately, your suggestion would probably produce more unsustainable ranching, as it would lower margins across the board such that only the industrialists could turn a profit.

I think you've missed my main point: reduced consumption is an increase in sustainability [1]. And it's not clear to me that grass-fed beef is sustainable [2] (especially not at the current scale of consumption [3])

Farmers are critical, underpaid, and deal with a lot of risk. There must be some insurance. But consumers should pay the real price for their goods at the counter.

1 - https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/nov/07/tax-meat...

2 - http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/13/opinion/the-myth-of-sustai...

3 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_meat_cons...

On one hand I agree with what you're saying, biggest problem is that the price isn't fair, as it is subsidized, either by the government directly (corn subsidies, etc.) or by the damage to the environment and our health that we keep ignoring.

However you cannot introduce a tax on all produce, when clearly some practices are more sustainable than others. At the current rate of consumption, grass fed cattle might not be enough to satisfy the demand, but if a farm doesn't pollute the environment, then it does not deserve a tax.

In nature there's symbiosis in the food chain, there's symbiosis between predator, cattle and grass, with grass being evolved for grazing, which in turn helps to offset the CO2 emissions of the cattle consuming it, with predators playing an important role in trimming the herd, which would otherwise go out of control. This obviously doesn't have to be a zero-sum game and by the looks of it nature has been way more effective at converting sun's energy into organic matter than we have.

Surely meat is too cheap compared to what it actually costs to produce, but I fear that many people identify meat consumption as this big evil, but without identifying the source of the problem. The problem is with all industrial farming, because we've accelerated farming by burning fossil fuels, turning forests into corn fields and polluting everything in the process. Without cheap fossil fuels or government subsidies, industrial farming practices wouldn't be possible. And it's not sustainable because there is no symbiosis in anything we are doing.

And the other problem is over-population, with capitalism and poverty encouraging continuous growth. You now hear on the news that the population in Europe is aging, which should actually be a great piece of news, except that our current economic climate doesn't cope well with a diminished fertility rate, capitalism relies on constant growth, hence we actually rely on other nations remaining poor and producing imigrants ;-)

And we should be ending the global poverty, which I'm fairly certain that we can, which should flatten that growth curve, but we should also impose a maximum fertility rate of 2 and stop doing commerce with the countries that don't do that. Because we wouldn't need industrial-scale farming, if we wouldn't have 7 billion mouths to feed and Earth is limited.

I agree with you on most of your points including that grass-fed beef is not sustainable at the current rate of consumption, but that does not mean that it isn't sustainable at a lower rate of consumption / higher price.

"There is such a thing as sustainable ranching..."

Give two examples (in the USA).

I don't understand the question.

Can you help me understand why the idea that raising animals cannot be sustainable, when clearly grazing animals can live perfectly well on their own with no care whatsoever from humans (as they have for millennia) on areas of land that are not suitable for farming?

I think the direct answer to your question is that clearly carnivorism is environmentally sustainable, as it has been practiced by millions of various species for hundreds of millions of years.

Maybe your greater question is, "is a constantly growing human population sustainable?" which is outside the scope of this discussion.

Name two examples of sustainable ranching. In the USA.

If it's hypothetically possible, surely someone somewhere is doing it.

What I like to call an existence proof.

Try the one made famous through "The Omnivores Dilemma":

http://www.polyfacefarms.com/

But apart from that, just read the comment you replied to. Human history as well as nature itself are the examples. There used to be millions of grazing animals (probably even an understatement).

Ranching. Not farming.

Hope beyond hope, I attempted the Socratic method on riprowan, willing him to attempt a quick google before his concern trolling.

Top hit:

http://www.worldwildlife.org/projects/sustainable-ranching-i...

There. Was that so hard?

Buried lead: Once you learn anything about current ranching practices, you realize its at least as bad as current farming practices. Totally unsustainable.

Edit: Hey! Looks like riprowan found google!

> Ranching. Not farming.

Not two things. One thing. Polyface is a farm and a ranch. How can you do sustainable farming without animals?

You were the one asking for examples, so you should have used Google yourself. I thought about replying with a LMGTFY link, but I don't like being a dick.

You say you were trying to get me to think? That works both ways.

> Once you learn anything about current ranching practices, you realize its at least as bad as current farming practices. Totally unsustainable.

"Current" practices. Interesting modifier. I thought we were talking about ranching generally.

Please define what the "current" farming and ranching practices are in the USA. Please be sure that your definition includes the practices of everyone currently ranching or farming in the country. Obviously nobody can provide this definition. So let's drop the "current" modifier.

You challenge the idea that ranching - even in the abstract - can be "sustainable." To me the question is absurd, because animals and carnivores exist sustainably in nature.

The question is, what are the practices that will allow animals to continue to exist in nature, with humans as one of their predators?

Also, what sort of environmental impact will exist if farm animals go away? Where will all the animal manure come from to grow sustainable produce? Sustainable farming requires animals. Imagine if all the US heartland was sustainably fertilized. That's a lot of manure, man. There used to be a couple million (sustainable) bison that provided that manure. Humans sustainably ate them for tens of thousands of years. Then came fences and the end of bison herds. To replace them, it'll take a few million head of cattle.

Nobody here was arguing that "current" ranching practices (whatever that broad term means) are "sustainable." I am simply pointing out that there exist millions of acres of ranchable but not farmable land in the USA which can obviously support edible grazing animals sustainably without competing even with even one acre of arable land; and that sustainable farming requires grazing animals. If you question these obvious facts, then I suppose we're done here.

---

Oh, also. It's "buried lede."

"buried lede"

Gah. Thanks.

Okay, I no longer know what we're arguing about. Topic drift.

OP [Chris Newman] says comparing "organic" to "conventional" farming is apples to oranges and that a particular critic [a commenter on his blog?] is omitting too much from his argument, that conventional isn't sustainable either.

We somehow got to...

"Raising cattle on these lands does not necessarily consume any water, food, or arable land that would be productively used otherwise."

I know of no example of that being the case. I'll re-search when I circle back to this issue (that advocacy stuff I mentioned). The "sustainable" ranches I've looked at are less impactful, but still not sustainable. Also, you omitted "impact on other species and ecosystems" from your definition.

The closest I can think of are the sheep left to their own to over winter in New Zealand and brought in for slaughter. The valleys keep them contained.

I've seen serious proposals for switching to bison, because they do less harm than cattle (bite off food rather than pull up), but I haven't followed up. But even then bison will destroy riparian and wetlands habitat. Maybe use drones? Or pay for more cowboys? Or get comfortable with more predators also on the range? I dunno.

In a separate comment:

"I agree with you on most of your points including that grass-fed beef is not sustainable at the current rate of consumption, but that does not mean that it isn't sustainable at a lower rate of consumption / higher price."

Okay.

I wrote about vat grown meat and ranching becoming a niche source of protein.

"Even if all of this comes to pass, why will the resulting ranching industry be unsustainable?"

Well. We might be close in opinion here.

I ask myself "What would sustainable look like?" (As productive as What is art? What is morality?)

Sustainable means:

#1 Given best available science, what accounting system measures everything important, no externalities?

#2 What is the fair market price for resources and services consumed and accrued?

I honestly don't know how to get from where we are to something sustainable. In sum, all of our activity is exceeding the current carrying capacity of our earth. And we lie to ourselves about how much stuff costs.

"...what are the practices that will allow animals to continue to exist in nature, with humans as one of their predators?"

Husbandry or hunting? No matter...

Nature's gone. It's now garden earth, where we actively manage the whole thing, intentionally or not.

Aside:

Else where you mention the necessity of manure for farming. Huh.

You assume some level of sustainable ranching is possible. Whereas I assume farming without manure is possible (and desirable).

It even goes past that.

Try doing sustainable farming without animals. It can't be done. Animals are a requirement for sustainable farming.

Sure, here's the first two that I looked up:

http://juharanch.com/

http://www.yellowstonegrassfedbeef.com/node/100

QED. I'm sure if you bother to research this you'll find many others.

If you stop and think about your question more deeply I think you'll unask it.

Organic produce farming requires manure. Something like 1/4 of the land mass of the USA requires grazing animals to maintain an ecological balance.

That manure and those animals are requirements, not luxuries.

Sustainable produce farming requires sustainable animal farming, because nature is inherently symbiotic.

Ok. I'm being a dick. I should calm down. I apologize.

I should have replied "Sustainable ranching is harder than you'd think." I might remove my comments this afternoon, after you've and had a chance to see this apology.

I've worked with ranchers to conserve wildlife, especially apex predators. Indeed, I predict ranching will become a niche source of protein as vat-grown meat comes online (20 years) and taxpayers decide to stop subsidizing it (10 years?). The draughts, draining aquifers, and scourge of wildfires will also make ranching less viable. But I can't guess the timeline of climate change on ranching.

If you've met any (independent) ranchers, you'd see they know their world is coming apart.

> Ok. I'm being a dick. I should calm down. I apologize.

Apologies always accepted here. No problem.

> I predict ranching will become a niche source of protein as vat-grown meat comes online (20 years) and taxpayers decide to stop subsidizing it (10 years?).

Even if all of this comes to pass, why will the resulting ranching industry be unsustainable?

Lets not forget that CAFOs producing cheap beef, pork and chicken are only possible because of cheap corn, which is unhealthy for humans, since cattle aren't evolved to survive on a corn diet, being like a human being fed only candy, hence they also need to be fed with antibiotics, to prevent liver infections.

Corn that is subsidized by the government with your taxes. And where corn grows, nothing else does ;-)

"In the end it's just a label."

Worse. It's a racket. Text book regulatory capture.

If pressed, our local farmers say something like "traditional farming". But they can still claim no pesticides, no growth factor, yadda yadda, without paying off some goons.

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.

"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

", 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.

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.

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.

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.

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

Can you source that claim?

I'm surprised I need to. Here's one I found in ten seconds of searching.

http://extension.psu.edu/pests/pesticide-education/applicato...

That says large doses are potentially harmful to humans. It mostly speaks of harm potentinally coming to those who apply them.

I'm looking more for a peer reviewed study that states pesticides used in GMO farming are more harmful that pesticides used in organic farming.

  Actually, GMOs need less pesticides than non GMO crop.

Depends what you compare it to.

Roundup-resistant crops allow roundup-intensive farming [1] which does less* environmental harm than some more harmful pesticides (if you ignore the development of roundup-resistant weeds). But lower intensity, less productive organic techniques use fewer pesticides and do even less environmental harm.

[1] http://sitn.hms.harvard.edu/flash/2015/roundup-ready-crops/

Where in that link does it say that organic techniques use fewer pesticides?

Organic farming is restricted to naturally occurring pesticides which are often less effective than synthetic ones and so they need to be applied more often.

Also, organic yields are often lower than conventional ones, so more land may be needed to compensate. Clearing land is way more environmentally unfriendly than using pesticide, so any gains from organic techniques are nullified.

But i guess it depends on crop/climate and exact techniques

[0]http://www.science20.com/agricultural_realism/example_how_mu...

> > "GMO are generally sterile"

> You are confusing GMO with hybrids and no they are not sterile

Monsanto did have the (terribly named) "terminator gene". They said this was to protect the environment from spilled seed.

Terminator gene was never commercialised

What happens when you eat this BT corn?

The extremely acidic and enzyme rich system in your stomach demolishes the chemical structure, DNA, and proteins into constituant amino acids.

Amusing, but the real question is why it's safe for humans to eat corn laced with pesticides when (I assume?) we use essentially the same digestive process as the targeted bugs. Or, "why is it safe to eat food that is literally designed to have poison in it?" I would speculate that the answer is that the pesticide in question doesn't affect humans, but it's a legitimate concern.

Many bitter flavors and flavors of spicy foods actually arise from chemical compounds that are lethal to large classes of animals. The human metabolic process is very good at handling things that are poisonous to most animals, and the process of cooking is also a very effective way to combat most poisons.

Just because something is poisonous to an insect doesn't mean it's poisonous to humans, especially at the same concentrations. This is even more the case for synthetic pesticides, since companies optimize the design of synthetic pesticides for "healthy for humans, poison for pests."

The poison is in the dose. Of course all pesticides can be harmful, at least if the dose is a 200 litre barrel that is dropped on your head. Even pure water is harmful, and the dose for this is that drinking 5 to 10 litres will kill you.

> The poison is in the dose.

Not always. Endocrine disruptors work at very, very low dosages. Some pesticides have such an effect.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endocrine_disruptor

Macromolecules can actually pass the acid barrier. There are regular reasons such as leaky gut, HCL deficiencies, helicobacter etc.. but there also seem to be aditional processes that we do not yet understand completelly about human digestion.

You say this as if there was no organic poison that could kill you if you eat it...

You didn't ask about poisons. You asked about the corn. It does what corn does.

If the corn produces pesticides, which are poisons, it's a reasonable question to ask "what happens when you eat the corn" - are the ears/kernels covered with it as well, or could they even contain it?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetically_modified_maize#Ins...

Short answer: it's not a pesticide which affects humans.

Discussions about poisons fundamentally have to include a discussion about mechanism of action, because plenty of poisonous things to one species are completely harmless to another - i.e. chocolate is toxic to dogs, but harmless to humans in fairly massive quantities.

Debate over GMOs is in no way helped by attempts to broad-brush, and in fact reveals some rather startling and unfounded biases - i.e. the idea that "natural" is healthy is completely absurd - the vast majority of plants, and animal meats, are toxic for humans to eat. If you ever go ocean fishing, you'd be incredibly stupid to eat a fish you couldn't identify.

Very many things are poisons, but not all poisons are equally harmful to different organisms. A substance that is extremely harmful to insects, for instance (pyrethrin), is not very harmful to mammals, particularly humans. Even within mammals, there are differences: chocolate is toxic to dogs and cats, but considered a delicacy by humans and the main adverse effect is excess energy content.

Farmer here.

> It's because they're optimised to withstand heavy pesticide use. Pesticides are bad.

The use of roundup on crops predates the roundup ready gene by a couple of decades. What certain GMO traits allows is reducing the pesticides down to pretty much only roundup, instead of the cocktail – including roundup – that ends up on the non-GMO crops. Other GMO traits help eliminate the need for certain pesticides completely.

If pesticides are bad, GMOs pave the path to reducing and maybe one day eliminating them.

> GMO are generally sterile

There was a theoretical terminator gene in the news, but it has never been made available on the market.

The law dissuades replanting patented seeds, if that is what you had in mind? It's not the big deal that you might think it is though. There are a number of reasons why we would not opt to replant the seeds even without GMOs being a thing.

> Great business model for Monsanto, not so much for the farmer.

Why single out Monsanto? There are many different companies that have GMO varieties on the market. In fact, the original roundup ready patent that started this whole hubbub has already expired. You are free to replant it now.

> The law dissuades of from replanting patented seeds, if that is what you had in mind?

That works too, though I also thought of F1 hybrids (made so second generation crops are crap), an idea GMO can copy. Here in France, there's a law forbidding to grow any food outside a pre-approved list of crops —most of which seems to be F1 hybrids. Fortunately it doesn't appear to be enforced right now, so some farmers grow old local species anyway.

> Why single out Monsanto?

They're a symbol, often recognised as "most evil". I'm sure others have similar practices, I'm just not aware of them.

> made so second generation crops are crap

To be clear, they're not specifically made so that second generation crops are crap. That's just the natural process of nature.

If you selected the two most ideal humans to breed, by the time their children have children, it's easy to see that there is no guarantee that the original traits in the parents that were selected for are carried down the line. The best traits are soon lost. It's much the same story here.

> I'm just not aware of them.

That surprises me. Bayer, BASF, DOW? I would have figured these are household names, and in some cases are much larger businesses than Monsanto.

Hasn't Bayer bought Monsanto by the way? In any case, you're certainly more aware of those firms than I am. It's your trade after all. I have heard those names, but the propaganda I've seen tend to point to Monsanto as the one deserving the torches and pitchforks.

> If you selected the two most ideal humans to breed

I get the point (super-crops that regress to the mean after a couple generations), but the actual downsides seem more serious: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F1_hybrid#Disadvantages On the other hand, the upsides are enticing.

> but the actual downsides seem more serious

What part seems serious? That the offspring are not useful for replant? It's really not that big of a deal, honestly. I, like most farmers, don't have the equipment to prepare the seeds for replant anyway, so by the time I contract that out I may as well just buy from someone who is already in the business of selling seeds. Specialization and economies of scale won out.

It's no surprise that farmers themselves are not overly concerned about the replanting issue. It didn't happen much even before it became a legal issue. It's funny to me how the rest of the population have latched onto that topic.

> What part seems serious? That the offspring are not useful for replant?

There is that, but also the cost of maintaining such seeds (seems to be higher than for regular seeds). I get the economy of scale though.

There's also the problem of single point of failure. I cannot help but think that if farmers were self-seeding, the system would be more resilient. I'm not sure.

Yet another problem is one of control. If Bayer controls our seeds the way Alphabet controls our data, this isn't going to be fun when start using that control for something we didn't expect. I mean, it's food. We need it, and they know it.

I don't trust them. I've seen a documentary talking about Indian farmers committing suicide when they noticed their wonderful F1 crops could not breed properly. They thought they they were making an investment. And that's without the even more obvious problems associated with planting crops unsuited to the local climate or weak against the local pests. A crop (F1 or not) that thrives in Arizona may not fare so well in Ethiopia. I believe the "oops it requires too much water" has happened before.

> but also the cost of maintaining such seeds (seems to be higher than for regular seeds).

You get what you pay for. Virtual anyone in the world can produce an identical product, so competition is fierce. I dare even say that farming is the most competitive industry in the world. There is no room at all to overspend on something, so the hybrids have to show a benefit to even consider the cost. They exist where they have proven to be worth it.

> If Bayer controls our seeds the way Alphabet controls our data, this isn't going to be fun when start using that control for something we didn't expect. I mean, it's food. We need it, and they know it.

I cannot speak for all farmers, but all the seed I grow, except for corn, is produced by local companies, one of which is owned as a co-operative by the local farmers. I don't really share in your control concerns. Corn is the exception on my farm as the technology that the major players have developed has far and away exceeded anything else being produced.

But, to be clear, corn is not the sweetcorn that you find down at your local grocer. Corn is primarily animal feed, with some use in production of HFCS and ethanol. So, maybe hypothetically, they can attack your meat consumption (and your sugary drinks, and your gasoline). Many people I have had discussions with would argue that is a good thing! But I also don't understand what the incentive would be. People will, as begrudgingly as it may be, start eating other foods and the value of their seed would drop to zero. Not a great play, in my opinion.

Besides, what control they can have over the market is entirely limited to the laws made by the people. While hybrids have been commonplace for nearly a century and GMOs for several decades without any trouble, if something magically changed in the future, the populace could force a change in the laws to save the food supply.

> I don't trust them. ... I believe the "oops it requires too much water" has happened before.

Sure. We had a hybrid variety fail a few years back. We were compensated by the seed vendor for their failure to deliver. I don't know about this situation in India, but they seem to understand the value of not pissing off farmers in my experience.

> all the seed I grow, except for corn, is produced by local companies, one of which is owned as a co-operative by the local farmers.

Sounds like excellent news to me. Keep this up.

> GMO are generally sterile, so you have to buy seeds every year from Monsanto

It's incredible how these myths are able to multiply. I suppose it's because they grow organically?

To the point: No, GMOs are not generally sterile.

Also "conventional" seeds or mostly bought from a seed company, because that is most efficient. And, the subject of seed IPRs is not related to GMO technology at all; it has been there in the U.S. since 1930's and throughout the developed world by 1990's.

For mass producing food, GMOs can be good. They increase yield. Then again, at the same time, look at all the food we throw away in the western world. Do we actually need to increase crop yield in the developed world?

You may call it a luxury product, but I will personally pick true organic food any day of the week. Pesticides are bad and unhealthy. Organic food is even already somewhat being exposed to pesticides through historical pollution. I only have one life.

Given the amount of lobbying multinational companies are able to do and the fact most politicians can be bought for a relative pittance, you have to be a fool to believe you aren't being exposed to harmful pesticides year round. Just look at the whole Monsanto / glyphosate / roundup discussion.

If the alternative is losing a billion dollar a year business, how much would a multinational company be willing to pay to politicians and scientists (above or under the table) to make sure a certain substance doesn't get banned? A lot, I would reckon. Tens of millions easily, hundreds if required.

> Then again, at the same time, look at all the food we throw away in the western world. Do we actually need to increase crop yield in the developed world?

This is equivalent to asking if we actually need for food to be cheap / cheaper. I'd say "yes". Unfortunately, food waste is simply a side effect of it being easily and cheaply available. You can't eliminate food waste - you can't create a perfectly efficient system in a real world - but if you want a shot at reducing it, ban catering companies.

(More generally, if you want people to stop doing stupid things with product X, the market solution would be to increase the price of product X to such a level that almost no one would dare waste it; in case of necessities like food or water, I'd really prefer the regulatory solution of taxing/fining the stupid thing itself.)

> You may call it a luxury product, but I will personally pick true organic food any day of the week. Pesticides are bad and unhealthy. Organic food is even already somewhat being exposed to pesticides through historical pollution. I only have one life.

For the very same reason I'll pick industrial, preferably GMO food, any day of the week. As you wrote, pesticides are bad and unhealthy. They're also - from what I hear - happily used by organic farming industry as a replacement for the 'bad', 'unnatural' methods of conventional agriculture. So this way, organic food gets exposed to poisons more.

> Just look at the whole Monsanto / glyphosate / roundup discussion.

Oh yeah, I remember it turning out to be mostly harmless and a much better alternative to what your typical organic farm would use. Saying "it's bad" is easy, but what's often missing is the "compared to what?" part.

1. Given I buy a lot of locally sourced stuff, I know for a fact that no pesticides are being used.

Yes, it’s more expensive. No, your industrial GMO food won’t be healthier, because they’ll still be using pesticides. But it will be healthier than the alternative (i.e. having to use a ton of pesticides).

2. I’m not against GMO food, but I am against heavy pesticide usage. If certain crops are modified to be resistant against certain insects, for example, and less pesticides have to be used because of that, that’s good.

An “organic” GMO vegetable (i.e. increased resistants against common diseases etc, no actual pesticide usage) could be an interesting avenue to explore. We just need to get pesticide usage down.

3. Maybe I have my tinfoil hat on here, but I do not believe for a second that Roundup isn’t massively unhealthy. Most of the positive research was funded, directly or indirectly, by Monsanto.

Even the most legitimate scientists can be bought and paid off. Don’t forget that.

In addition, do we really have to prove something is actually bad? In this case, I think there really should be conclusive evidence that something ISN’T bad.

A friend works in a food safety testing lab. They get all kinds of interesting anecdotes, which I'll avoid because well, every type of farming gets evil people who only get caught in testing, but you'd better really know for a fact that no pesticides are being used, as otherwise the less-controlled farmers markets tend to also get unscrupulous sellers with produce that is overwhelmingly over allowed limits and couldn't get sold for a supermarket because they'd test and notice that it's bad.

However, a key takeaway issue is that everyone in their lab now avoids organic produce as such because of multiple observed parasite incidents - local organic farms tend to replace nitrate-based fertilisers with manure, and thus their produce carries a risk of parasite infections that "classic" industrial farms don't have. For many horrible parasites the only vector used to be improperly cooked wild game meat (or illegally slaughtered home animals), but now with the risen popularity of organic produce, they are also spreading with vegetables.

> Given I buy a lot of locally sourced stuff, I know for a fact that no pesticides are being used.

I wonder how do you know ? In huge local food bazzars in our country its not unheard that commissions finds overusage of pesticides and antibiotics because there is no strict control. Food producers are common villagers, not a scientist and they can abuse the tech for various reasons.

They're a cooperative mainly consisting of local farmers, and they don't use pesticides. My grandfather used to take care of their accounting (as a side project) and has helped build it up over the last 20+ years.

The point is, while you may personally know a single cow or few farmers, majority of the stuff entering your mouth is uncontrolled.

THe best way to combat toxins is from the inside, rather then outside IMO - take care of your liver/kidnies/skin with adequate food and supplement choices. Avoid obvious toxins such as cigarete smoke.

most subsistence farmers will never be able to use GMOs. It requires capital outlay that is just not possible.

> For instance, organic farming thinks GMO's are bad

No, I think modern GMOs are going in the wrong direction. Modern wheat varieties have shrunk from being ~1.2 meters to not very high, through the use of selection, as has herbicide/pesticide tolerance. GMOs just make it faster.

All of this means that you don't have to look after the soil. Which is great, but then you have to irrigate it. but then that become expensive. Then you have to fertilise it, and that become increasingly expensive.

> some hilly permaculture farm in Austria

I can't see a combine getting up there, can you?

> impoverishing a large part of the population by doing manual labor on farms.

Thats what subsistence farming does. They can't afford mechanisation, so have to manually plough and weed.

Ofcourse weeding is greatly simplified if you grow your seeds in rows. We've known that since jethro tull's days.

GMOs are basically a sticky plaster. Yes, they can be more drought resistant, but why are there droughts? perhaps, just perhaps removing the spongy organic layer of soil that trapped the water might be the answer. increasing drainage so that floods dont happen, might also be a cause.

Farming is fucking complex, I'd suggest you go and work on a permaculture and "modern" farm, to see just what's required.

> GMOs just make it faster.

No, GMOs will inherently change the game in the long term. We'll be able to truly engineer life to be an optimal food supply, e.g. there's no inherent reason there can't be a plant that can sit in your window, withstand freezing temperatures, and grow both tomatoes, avocados and bananas.

Some versions of this are already happening with GMO food, they're surgically introducing features to these plants that wouldn't be doable with just mutation farming.

> I can't see a combine getting up there, can you?

No, but that was my point. The author of the article is railing against industrialized farming and then producing a counterexample of some farm in Austria that clearly isn't and can't be mechanized easily. That's clearly not something you can use as a rebuke to current industrialized farming, one feeds the world, another is a backyard hobby project.

> They can't afford mechanisation, so have to manually plough and weed[...]

Yes, and the solution to this is to enrich their societies, starting with the introduction of modern farming practices. No need to start doing something revolutionary we haven't tried in the west, just introduce them to mechanized farming.

> Yes, they can be more drought resistant, but why are there droughts? [...]

Even if we perfectly manage everything else GMOs would still be a great tool to expand the use of our land for farming. E.g. you could grow some cactus in the middle of the Sahara that was easily edible.

> Farming is fucking complex, I'd suggest you go and work on a permaculture and "modern" farm, to see just what's required.

And I suggest that if you're trying to make some point here about some hidden knowledge I'm obviously missing and could only acquire through hands-on experience you just come out and point that out, rather than effectively make an ad-hominem argument by proxy.

I take your last point, I apologise.

So, the problem with permaculture, its that they like to share techniques but not the results in any meaningful way. There are some places that do proper scientific studies, but they are often drowned out by the "beardy weirdies" Its very difficult to asses which technique is worth trying.

However, the take away is that you make nature do most of the work. For example mixing crops in the same field, This increases yields in some cases, and reduces the need for weeding (mechanical or not) in others.

You also have to take care of the soil, some crops are nitrogen fixers, some are not. Other leave nutrients, some take them away. One example still in use is beans. You'll see bean crops rotting in the ground after harvest, this is so that the root nodules release the nitrogen they fix during life.

Traditionally, you'd rotate the usage of a field, sometimes wheat, sometimes beet, potatoes, and then lay to grass and get the animals to shit all over it. However that doesn't work everywhere. Some places, laying to grass means you loose half your soil.

But, with average field sizes growing, and subsidies, it means its often not practical to run animals over it. plus it can be a massive hit in profits, having a whole field devoted to animals.

Then there is drainage. Pesticides kill the soil. I know that sounds stupid, but the soil is a massive sprawling savannah of microbes, beetles, fungii, worms, bacteria, and things not yet known to science. Why is that important? because a) it provides a way of transmuting stuff to nutirents, and b) it makes a soft, water retaining self regulating temperature controlled sponge.

You can make some your self. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terra_preta if you are feeling advances. Or more simply, take one weeks food waste (a good mix of wet and or fibrous material) shove in cardboard box in the corner somewhere, not to hot or cold.

leave for a few months (if you're lucky it'll generate heat)

then take the rich dark odourless compost, and grow something in it. as a control, take sand, and use which ever balanced fertiliser liquid you like.

sorry that was rambling. However, does that help in any way?

"just fine with irradiating large fields full of plants"

Are you referring to UV/cosmic radiation?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_gardening

and

http://www.ediblegeography.com/strange-and-beautiful-seeds-f...

Herbicide resistent (Roundup Ready!) plants are bad.

Patenting life is bad.

Using your patents to then economically enslave the developing world is bad.

If you call all that GMO, then GMO is bad.

Objectively, empirically, morally, ethically. Bad.

I know, facts are second millennium woo woo. Sorry, I just haven't been able to let go. Must make me bad too.

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

"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.

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

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.

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.

Do you literally mean "modern farming requires empty soils" or are you just saying that empty soils are a common result of modern farming, which is a bit different statement.

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.

> 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.

"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."

Even leaving aside what 'organic agriculture' means, there is no evidence that yield are higher than conventional farming. Yield could be enough to sustain enough people with the same area we use now for farming, yes; but super-yield claims are unsubstantiated.

But apart from that, what's swept under the rug here is that labour is a major component of food cost; so saying 'sure we need 50 people to harvest what would otherwise be done by one guy but the per-surface unit yield is enough!' is disingenuous. It's not realistic to expect people to go back to harvesting their own food; nor is it realistic to count on huge price rises to pay for 'organic' ag (labour and packaging make up about 60% of the cost of the food on your plate).

And there are no scalable techniques for growing food in mixed ecosystems, except maybe at the very basic silvopasture level. But those aren't the ones that are going to wean us off traditional agriculture.

> super-yield claims are unsubstantiated.

I have one example of 2 japanese farmers growing rice next to each other. One is going organic (few chemicals, if at all), the other is going full conventional (machines, spray, and all).

I don't claim to understand the reason, but the organic farmer's rice plants (and number of grains) was bigger by half. So, visibly higher yield on the rice alone. But that's not all: on the same land, the organic farmer also grow fishes and ducks. The fishes feed the duck and the soil, so he can sell the ducks as well as the rice.

I was astonished by this, but if one can shoulder the heavier workload, the super-yield by surface unit does seem to hold, at least in some cases.

There are other examples where the yield per specie is lower, but because you grow multiple species on the same piece of land, the overall yield does approach this unbelievable super-yield. Again though, less automation, more labour.

> And there are no scalable techniques for growing food in mixed ecosystems,

I know of one. It's called "more farmers". A way to get them is to recruit the victims of technological unemployment —drivers come to mind. It's not miraculous, or even insightful, but it is possible.

> 'sure we need 50 people to harvest what would otherwise be done by one guy

I wouldn't know, but I expect the multiplier to be between 1.5 and 3. I'd be surprised if it were more than 5.

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.

The rethoric I've heard here (Netherlands) is that France idealizes the small farm as a living unit, which leads to undersized and under-modernized farms. This is then being propped up by subsidies, but imports (and government budgets) are putting more pressure on these farms' inefficiencies than the subsidies can compensate.

I am in no position to judge either way.

> 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?

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

I don't think the yields go back to pre-fertilizer levels, otherwise we wouldn't be able to sustain so many more mouths than before Haber-Bosch.

No they don't, not right away. You need that damn 3-years hiatus with zero yield before you can start over.

Clickbaity, yes, but in an obvious way. The article is a response to a criticism, and the title conveyed that well. As much as I dislike click baits, I didn't mind this one.

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.

> 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/

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

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.

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").

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.

You're making a lot of assumptions, and they aren't founded. Of all the people I've met who have gardens, the vast majority of them do some form of composting. Tilling is almost never used as is is too labor intensive, they mulch instead. They plant a diversity of crops, and not just annuals - a plethora of perennials as well. They typically don't spray pesticides, though some will spray soapy water around pests. Most counter pests by creating habitat for birds and beneficial insects like lacewings, and by intermixing pesticidal plants into the garden.

This sort of gardening absolutely decimates conventional ag in terms of food/acre. It is also sustainable, produces better food and creates an attractive green space. Properly performed, permaculture farming principles can even reclaim deserts. The cost is labor, but what if all the people trying to sell you stupid shit you don't need decided to farm instead? Can you imagine beautiful green cities with fruit trees and gardens everywhere? How nice would it be to be able to forage in your neighborhood to get fresh vegetables for dinner rather than go to the store? That can be reality, if we as a species can overcome this idea that we need to produce and collect as many widgets as possible.

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?

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.

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

The article is discussing how we 'whether we will be able to make enough food if we try to grow everything locally', which I am saying is silly since we aren't really headed in that direction outside of high end niche markets.

You are saying the other way around, 'we have to go local because we can't make enough food', which is great, and I believe something people should be more prepared to do just in case, but it has nothing to do with the article.

You seem to assume organic food is much more expensive to produce than chemical food. You'll need to justify that assumption, especially in the face of hidden costs: scorched soils (that require chemicals to grow anything), light but pervasive food poisoning (pesticides), growing resistances to our pesticides and antibiotics, heavy dependence on fossil fuels, as well as quite a bit of oil for chemicals.

As a not so separate issue, there is the cost of distribution. Carrying food across the country, across the world, has costs: more need for energy, and degradation of the food (fresh is better). Such costs could be lowered right now, but cannot be eliminated as long as we keep large monocultures: with them, you don't get any diversity without moving lots of food around.

Please don't use the word "chemical" like it is something unnatural or harmful. Water is a chemical. The active ingredients of natural fertilizer are chemicals.

It's "intellectual property" all over again. While I agree my usage of "chemichal" is loaded, I think "conventional" is even worse: it's an implicit acceptance of the status-quo, and unfairly shifts the burden of proof.

On a "chemical vs organic" debate, we focus on the (over) use of synthetic, unproven, or even unsafe chemicals. Reducing their use, if possible, is obviously a good thing.

On a "conventional vs organic" debate, we focus on the risks associated with change. We have a working system. Changing it on a global scale is an obvious risk.

I am personally convinced massive change is necessary, and the sooner the better. So I frame the debate in a way that doesn't talk much about the associated risk, and focus on the benefits. I am not aware of a more accurate, more neutral term to name that conventional/chemical thing.

I understand the point you're trying to make. Likely you understand the distinction your parent intends as well, and this is a commonly understood way to discuss the topic. Do you have a preferred alternative to suggest that conveys the same intent, preferably one that is also widely understood?

>Likely you understand the distinction your parent intends as well

In principle, yes. I can imagine there are different chemicals used for farming, and that some of them may cause more harm to consumers of the produce than others.

But in terms of specifics, no. I have very little idea what distinctions are being made when people refer to "chemical food" or similar, because objection to it tends towards these vague emotive terms, rather than highlighting specifics.

because objection to it tends towards these vague emotive terms, rather than highlighting specifics.

You're not 'geon, so this may not apply to you, but if this is the case, a purely pedantic comment is very unlikely to do anything constructive to move the conversation forward. It's not going to encourage reflection (as they're vague and emotive). The goal is civil and substantive discussion.

You might sincerely speculate what distinction they're trying to make. Or honestly and civilly ask for clarification. If you don't think they're reasonable, do you think they're likely to be swayed by anything you consider reasonable? I think it's better to refrain from commenting if it's not going to move the discussion forward. On topics like this, the ground is well-worn. It doesn't need to be rehashed if people aren't actually listening to each other. At least not on HN.

>but if this is the case, a purely pedantic comment is very unlikely to do anything constructive to move the conversation forward.

Because the intent of the comment was not to further that particular conversation, but instead to critique your rhetoric.

It was not simply a pedantic comment saying "actually you're wrong because water is a chemical" it was a suggestion to use a different term.

It's not a constructive critique. If the intent is not to further the conversation by improving it and moving it forward, there's no constructive purpose in making it. Further comments by 'geon make this clear: there's no sincere attempt to understand or charitably grant that the interlocutor might be have a reasonable argument, even if it's one you might not agree with.

Edit to add: Rapoport's rules are really helpful, particularly when discussing contentious topics.

https://www.brainpickings.org/2014/03/28/daniel-dennett-rapo...

This is too far off-topic now, and at best we're talking past each other, so I'll take any answer off the air.

>If the intent is not to further the conversation by improving it and moving it forward, there's no constructive purpose in making it.

It is an attempt to start a different conversation. You could argue that it's off-topic, and choose not to follow up, but that doesn't mean it's not potentially constructive.

>there's no sincere attempt to understand or charitably grant that the interlocutor might be have a reasonable argument

They didn't claim that you don't have a reasonable argument to make, they just asked you to use different (more precise) terminology to make it.

"fossil-fuel intensive synthetic fertilizers" or "inorganic synthetic fertilizers"

NH3 in particular is commonly synthesized by combining N2 from the atmosphere with H2 extracted from CH4 (natural gas).

Use terms that convey the objection you have to it. Or object to the negative effects they have in the first place.

What specifically do you suggest? If you're being pedantic and snipey, you're not engaging in good faith. If you disagree with the general argument, be honest and say so. If you're looking to have a constructive discussion, help move the conversation forward, which includes showing you understand what they intend to say, even if you disagree or they're not expressing themselves as clearly as you'd prefer. Understandably you can't read their mind, but you can speculate charitably.

If you don't think they're discussing in good faith, you can choose to civilly explain why that's so, or choose not to comment at all if you don't think there's a constructive way forward. For controversial topics, it's even more important to do this as it's that much easier for discussion to devolve into a flamewar.

I don't have a specific suggestion, but it could be something like "synthetic fertilizer kills the symbiotic microbes nevvessary to..." rather than "scorched soils (that require chemicals to grow anything)".

Just an example. I have no idea what "scorched soil" means.

Cadmium is a chemical (I just worked with some watercolors, that's why it comes to mind). Do you want that in your water table just because 'it's a chemical, like water'? How about lead?

Cadmium is also in tattoo ink and completely harmless because it's not bioavailable.

Your exact example proves the parents point: be specific about what you're talking about because it matters.

But the EPA says it'll cause kidney damage in the water table, which is what I specifically said. The WHO specifies that contamination with cadmium causes osteomalacia with various grades of osteoporosis accompanied by severe renal tubular disease. I also mentioned lead, which you've glossed right over. I said nothing about tattoo ink.

Your example underscores my point. Why should I trust you when you whip out an unrelated example to try and ad hominem your way to all-chemical farming, in the service of the idea 'organic farming will kill us all'?

How exactly does your example of 'cadmium is harmless in tattoo ink' make the larger concern irrelevant? From where I'm sitting (admittedly, it's Vermont, where we like organic farming a lot) you represent a prevalent class of agriculture arguers, who are insisting on full-tilt-bozo unnatural farming to the Nth degree, claiming it is the only thing that can save the world.

And yet, the arguments are as manipulative as 'cadmium is harmless in tattoo ink' when it's NOT considered harmless in the water table, and you may have known that full well.

Your example suggests (does not prove) my underlying concern: individual chemical compounds may well be trusted, but I do not trust the people selling them. It's far too profitable to be dishonest about this, and that's not going to get any better (indeed, as this way of farming wrecks the environment, it will get even more profitable to lie and mislead about it)

You continue to reference chemistry inaccurately: cadmium in tattoo-ink is also harmless in the water-table, generally, because its complexed into a non-bioavailable state which is why it works in ink and paints safely. Conversely free cadmium in any form is a toxic heavy metal.

No one is farming with cadmium-based fertilizer, so I don't know what the point of your first 4 paragraphs is? You tossed out an example intended to say "chemicals are bad". The topic under discussion was "what chemicals are you opposed to" - because "chemical" is a meaningless and unhelpful term to make public policy on.

Perhaps then, it is important to speak accurately about chemical compounds when trying to decide how to regulate their usage, and a blanket declaration of "but it's natural!" is actually very unhelpful. Salt is natural, but that doesn't mean a farmer dumping it into a fresh-water river in bulk isn't going to kill it.

Yeah, we're not communicating well: I'm sorry. I'm making an effort.

I don't remember anywhere suggesting that _I_ was talking about tattoo ink. Context suggests that I meant the toxic heavy metal… and while I obviously am not petrified with fear of cadmium if I keep Cadmium Yellow around, I don't propose to lick it even if your context suggests it's effectively as harmless as Burnt Sienna (iron oxide-based).

And this is the point: 'organic' farming doesn't typically consist of salting one's fields, but ultra-modern high efficiency farming is based on extremely complicated chemistry and people not in the industry cannot hope to even guess at what's being done out there. Non-farmers probably don't know what crop rotation is either (an anachronism in synthetic farming) but ultra-modern farming has a nasty way of dumping LOTS of very strange chemistry into people's diets.

Trust is the issue, not 'referencing chemistry accurately' because it's not my job as a food-eater to analyze chemical compounds and reference chemistry appropriately. Try to look at the organic farming movement as a trust issue: a vote of no confidence in current and future inventions for increasing crop efficiency.

In that light, 'water is a chemical' is not an effective counter, and pouncing on cadmium in the water table (known for kidney damage) and talking of tattoo ink which is cadmium sulfide, cadmium sulfoselenide or zinc cadmium sulfide, is more behavior that tends to erode trust.

See, this is great! Im learning stuff now.

It feels a little like you are replying to what you imagined the article was about rather than reading the actual article.

Please correct me if that's unfair but it does cover some of the things you're railing against.

It already captured 5,3% of food revenue in Germany and growing (4,7% in 2015). Source http://www.spiegel.de/wirtschaft/unternehmen/dm-gegen-alnatu...

It's captured that many people because of fear-based marketing.

Many people believe that organic also means "healthier" or "has more nutrients" and that GMO means "unhealthy". "Organic" acts as a namebrand compared to the "no-name" non-organic products.

On a related note, "GMO free" has actually become a qualifier random companies slap on their products to imply health benefits over competitors. Kamps bakery[0] for example advertises itself as "just saying no" to GMO "for the benefit of the customers". Similar things have happened with "gluten-free", "lactose-free" and vegetarian products.

To be clear: I'm saying that gluten- and lactose-free products are being marketed to people without special dietary requirements who have become convinced that these products are inherently more healthy (just as with "diet" products before, which often advertised e.g. less fat but contained more sugar or vice versa; and with organic and "GMO-free" products which offer no plausible health benefit whatsoever).

[0]: A large chain of ~500 take-away bakeries mostly in the North-West of Germany.

5.3% of Germany is 4 million people. And a wealthy 4 million people at that. Organic food is not going to feed China, India, Indonesia, Nigeria, etc.

It is ludicrous to think that there is a chance that the 'local/organic' movement will ever...

Why are you conflating local and organic? Neither implies the other and they're two entirely different questions.

(local && organic) may never capture a huge share of the market, but that is an entirely unrelated question to organic farming

Yea I agree, the article largely conflated them and I was arguing with the article.

And yet in the US there is at least one supermarket chain running entirely on the premise that people do care. Whole Foods. Afaik they're pretty successful too.

The worst part is that unlike in Europe, I can actually taste the difference in the US.

> The worst part is that unlike in Europe, I can actually taste the difference in the US.

Yeah, I've heard about the taste thing from friends who visited US. And it makes me wonder - given that a sizeable part of the food we eat[0] is made by the same megacorps (Nestle, Unilever, etc.), where exactly does this difference come from? Is this about local ingredients? Slightly different manufacturing methods? Differences in legal landscape causing those?

[0] - the tastier part; doesn't necessarily mean the healthier part

The food in big supermarkets in the US/Canada often used varieties selected for their storage longevity, prettiness, and yield. Then they are often picked early and cold stored. It's miraculous that we can have year round supplies of cheap fresh fruit and vegetables, but we sacrifice taste and variety to get there.

I'd like to think this is the reason Whole Foods is successful - hierloom tomatoes that taste great etc, not did from the woo woo anti-aircraft lobby.

Sure but if this was the 1950s and the article was about abstaining from smoking, you could have made similar arguments.

The people of tomorrow will not think like the people of today.

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.

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"?

... 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.

> 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.

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.

Seriously, try this:

https://www.edx.org/course/sustainable-soil-management-soil-...

Sustainable Soil Management: Soil for life

Learn why soil is so important, how it’s being threatened and what we can do to protect this natural resource so vital to our lives.

Oh no. It's blindingly complex. The Dust Bowl happened well after Haber-Bosch.

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.

It's not a simple issue. A proper argument would require a few hours.

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

I just posted this above, try

https://www.edx.org/course/sustainable-soil-management-soil-...

I have seen a number of documentaries, but they're all in French. "Solutions locales pour un désordre global" and "Alerte à Babylone" come to mind.

> 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.

"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?

> 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?

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

'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.

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.

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...

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.

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

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.

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.

Plants need oxigen to breath, too.

The whole question is whether, when you include the energy inputs such a system require, it's more efficient. The jury's still out. Many people don't consider food grown in substrates with 'artificial' (concentrated) nutrients to not be 'organic'. I don't personally care about labels so much, but my point is that it's not clear at this point which direction is a) viable, in the long term and b) the 'best' (or rather, we don't even know what our optimum function looks like, let alone that we know what system is best)

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?

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.

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.

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.

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?

> 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.

I'm not aware of any definition of organic farming that excludes the use of pesticides. There is also Biodynamic farming, which does avoids pesticides and artificial fertilizer.

From what I hear, it does. More than that - because "organic" is at least in some part based around scaring people with "unnatural things" and "evil chemicals", it limits its choice of pesticides, potentially excluding ones that are less toxic and less harmful, just because they're not "natural".

Marked will decide. In France I already see more Bio (Organic) shops around than those selling conventional food. I don't go there because of the price but the demand is clearly growing. Most of the organic food is produced by the same companies that do conventional farming anyways, shift will come.

"Market will decide", as if.

Governments can (and some do) help to bootstrap a saner "organic" economic landscape by creating demand through regulations such as "school restaurants food should be 50% local and organic by 2020, 100% by 2030".

Government could do that, but it should only be necessary if the claims that "you can produce more calories per acre of organic food compared to traditional agriculture" are false.

If it is cheaper to produce more, of more expensive produce, you can bet that the agriculture industry will shift.

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.

The ecosystem can be of great advantage, different crops can help themselves in warding off the intruders. As an example I mix tomato plants with french marigold and basil. Some farmers have built impressive ecosystem where everything makes sense, type of plant, seasons, minerals, nitrogen, etc

I've dabbled a bit with permaculture while reading a quite a bit about it. They talk about combining plants into a "botantical guild" such that pests are deterred or controlled in a way that yields are maintained. I've not been successful with it. I live in the tropics and pests are ferocious here, much more so than where I lived in the US. The only success I've had is with low yield native plants.

I'd suggest you try it your self.

try growing stuff on a city balcony. assuming sun and water, it'll grow really well, due to the urban heat island.

However when you get pests, thats it, game over. you've got black fly, and they are never going away(I tried sprays, buying ladybirds, nematoads)

Why? because you only have one tiny portion of the ecosystem that is based on pests. Most pests are way down the food pyramid.

Now, I moved to an allotment, with a huge range of crops, which has a huge range of pest and predators. I had black fly for a week, and then the ladybirds came.

Why? because pests are seasonal, you need broad range of pests to keep the predators in any useful numbers.

A single point of failure is an advantage?

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".

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.

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?

> 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.

Blanket chemical warfare is like feedback linearization. Wasteful in terms of energy and has other flaws associated with stability. There is a better approach, e.g., passivity based control, which requires understanding the underlying nonlinear dynamical system.

Interestingly this has been the same problem in medicine. However, there are more nuanced control-oriented medical techniques being developed (need better observers and actuating mechanisms).

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

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

The problem with monoculture is the you have a potential for a complete and utter failure. Ant it is not really "single-point", there are numerous mechanisms by which crops will fail.

The seminal work on this topic is 'Edible Forest Gardens' by Jacke and Toensmeier, but there are others that have ecosystem design chapters; for example the books by Martin Crawford (also see his website www.agroforestry.co.uk for literature if you don't want to buy books just for a quick read).

The gist of it is that in balanced ecosystems, you have natural remedies against pests; birds against insects for example, or certain plants that repel insects, or plants to combat diseases, or predators that eat insects that distribute diseases.

This is the theory; currently there is little evidence (as in, scientifically valid results, not anecdotes) that this works as it's claimed. I'm working on an experimental food forest to test some of these concepts. There are many things I'm very skeptical of, but in the mean time I have an excuse to work outside in the field, so hey...

This is a common misconception.

Every culture faces multiple classes of pests: virii, fungus, bacterias, nematods, insects, rodents, birds...

What is good to control a pest can be beneficial to another since they compete for the same resource.

In the intensive context of monoculture, losing a battle often means losing the war.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/comments/1h9hye/i_beli...

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

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.

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