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Comment by struppi | Hacker News Reader

"100-percent organic, locally sourced, non-GMO, and free of antibiotics"

Even if it does not have an effect on your health, three of those four (100-percent organic, locally sourced, and free of antibiotics) are at least good for the environment.

The fourth (free of antibiotics) is maybe even good for your health, in the long run: Over-use of antibiotics by farmers (not using them to cure sick animals, but to make animals grow faster) seems to be a big problem (creating resistent bugs)...

Edit (after reading a comment): I left out non-GMO here because I have ready about some evidence that - at least some GMOs - can be better for the environment and for your health.

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Organic is definitely not better for the environment than non-organic, by default:

>Not only are organic pesticides not safe, they might actually be worse than the ones used by the conventional agriculture industry. Canadian scientists pitted 'reduced-risk' organic and synthetic pesticides against each other in controlling a problematic pest, the soybean aphid. They found that not only were the synthetic pesticides more effective means of control, the organic pesticides were more ecologically damaging, including causing higher mortality in other, non-target species like the aphid's predators. Of course, some organic pesticides may fare better than these ones did in similar head-to-head tests, but studies like this one reveal that the assumption that natural is better for the environment could be very dangerous.[0]

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[0]: https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/science-sushi/httpblogs...

I think your "by default" is a bit misleading here. This is one paper, comparing pesticides for one pest in one crop. But I guess you are right - Organic is not always better.

But, AFAIK, at least here in Austria, buying organic will at least improve your chance that you get some sustainably-produced food - and animals that are kept in a somewhat species-adequate environment...

But thanks for making me question my assumptions ;)

Non-organic farming typically involves a lot of petro-based fertilizers being used that deposit large run offs of nitrogen, ammonia, and other goodies that “burn” the soil and run off into streams which then causes many other issues.

Organic farming typically involves a lot of manure-based fertilizers being used that deposit large run offs of nitrogen, ammonia, potassium, E. coli and other goodies that “burn” the soil and run off into streams which then causes many other issues such as algae blooms, water poisoning, et cetera.

100-percent organic is often bad for the environment because it takes more land to grow the same food.

It often takes more energy to grow food locally (greenhouses and fertilizer) than transported food.

Antibiotic-raised foods grow faster and thus have better caloric ratios, and less farmland per pound of beef.

Source?

There are many ways in which organic and non-organic affect the environment other than land use (which is likely a marginal difference). Big agro, most associated with non-organic farming, does lots of bad things for the environment. Pesticides that are linked to decline of bee populations, pesticides that yield local imbalances in what animals/bugs are around to eat each other, synthetic fertilizers that thrash the land from being able to grow diverse crops into the future, chemical run offs into local water sources, exposure of workers to high concentrations of pesticides and their subsequent-related illnesses, GMO seeds spreading farther than the intended land mass mating with other species producing unknown effects (and lawsuits), etc.

Organic food raised like industrial food will often take more land. But organic food raised in polyculture can sometimes take dramatically less space. Look up Land Equivalent Ratio and intercropping.

This makes intuitive sense but I have never seen good evidence for it. I personally do not believe that:

  - organic food is bad for the environment 
  - organic food is less space efficient to grow

I do believe that:

  - organic food may have lower crop yields

Uh...

> - organic food is less space efficient to grow > - organic food may have lower crop yields

These are the same thing. If you have to generate X calories, and you generate fewer per acre, then you need more acres of crop.

Think outside the box. Think 3D agriculture. Aeroponics.

But if you're willing to do that for organic you're also willing to do that for non organic.

The argument that locally sourced is better for the environment is a generally spurious claim based on incomplete understanding of modern logistics. For one, food production efficiency is extremely dependent on climate suitability for the crop. Two, transportation only accounts for 11% of food energy use...production (which again is highly dependent on climate) takes far more. Three, transportation energy usage is highly dependent on utilization and relatively independent of distance...A Californian eating a kiwifruit shipped in a packed container from New Zealand might very well produce less CO2 than a similarly sized Tomato grown 30 miles away and driven via pickup truck to a farmers market.

Organic is not automatically better for the environment, and often isn't. Sorry, one of my pet peeves.

> Even if it does not have an effect on your health, three of those four (100-percent organic, locally sourced, and free of antibiotics) are at least good for the environment.

Locally sourced may be good because of avoiding transportation impacts (preference for it may lead to types of agriculture being performed in places less well suited for them which may be bad, and might even increase transportation impacts of necessities to support agriculture, so net it might not always be good; there's a reason certain crops are grown in certain places, and preference for “locally grown” without reversing the preference for cosmopolitan variety may produce perverse impacts), and free of antibiotics is probably generally a positive environmental trait.

Organic is, OTOH, not something that there is much reason to believe is good for the environment, despite its cult virtue signalling status.

Your wording makes it sound like you've accounted for all four of those adjectives, but you haven't done anything with "non-GMO."

Because some GMO might be better for your health AND for the environment. Like that GM rice that provides vitamins ppl in some parts of asia lack...

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