Organic food worse for the climate | Hacker News Reader

Organic food worse for the climate

mynewsdesk.com

26 pointshuntermeyer21 comments

This headline is incorrect for how little is actually measured in this study. It's like staying that rammed earth houses are bad for the environment because they use more dirt that otherwise might be growing plants - so everyone should build with lumber instead.

They invented a new metric called "Carbon Opportunity Cost" and only looked at one thing: some types of organic farming require more land area which might be otherwise left for forest.

There are so many things that go into farming and a true evaluation of "climate" impact. Synthetic chemical production, environmental contamination, soil depletion, shipping, chemical runoff, farming equipment production and emissions, etc...

Even the researcher understands this: "The type of food is often much more important. For example, eating organic beans or organic chicken is much better for the climate than to eat conventionally produced beef"

> "The type of food is often much more important. For example, eating organic beans or organic chicken is much better for the climate than to eat conventionally produced beef"

There's something strange about that quote, maybe a PR sound? I imagine conventionally produced beans and chicken would have less impact than organic beef as well.

Maybe the chicken is better than the beef, but the beans are more questionable. Methane is a very strong greenhouse gas.

Well yeah, factory farmed monoculture anything is worse for the environment - organic or not... time to plug permaculture once again: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permaculture

Anyone interested in learning more - this is a great free introduction: https://open.oregonstate.edu/courses/permaculture/

It’s worse for the environment except the part where it feeds the same amount of people using less resources.

It seems you have not researched permaculture. It uses very little resources compared to common industrial agriculture.

Edit: the article makes the argument that organic farming leads to increased deforestation. Permaculture incorporates trees into the production cycle.

Look, no offense, but I'm going to trust the ruthless profit seeking motive of industrial-scale farmers, who are not pursuing permaculture, over the postings of internet denizens who've read some blog posts.

I agree that there are some cargo cult farming practices like biodynamics. The reality is, permaculture, a systems approach to farming, works. Not just in profit or yield, but also for unaccounted for value such as biodiversity.

Look, you are entitled to your own opinions, but not your own facts. You have provided little more than anecdotal evidence; no better than the 'the postings of internet denizens who've read some blog posts'. Permaculture has enormous potential to restore environments and ecosystems[0] and is better for the environment than industrial farming[1].

I'm actually genuinely curious why you seem to have such hate for permaculture? What has it done to you that you dislike it so much?

[0]https://www.omicsonline.org/scholarly/permaculture-journals- articles-ppts-list.php [1]https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/10/9/3218

I don't hate permaculture. If it works, I'm all for it. But it seems like a fad, so I'm skeptical. And there's a certain level of dipshittery and lack of critical thinking on this website when it comes to diet and food production. I'm not sure why that is, but it's almost as if diet is religious and/or ideological for many people. So I push back.

Regarding facts: you're right, I'm not entitled to my own facts. But here's a fact for you: roughly 2.5 * 10^14 calories are consumed in the U.S. each year (360 million people * 2,000 calories/day * 365 days). Approximately 0% of those calories are produced using permaculture. The producers of those calories are voting with their feet on the viability of permaculture to produce the calories needed to feed Americans.

So on the one hand, we have all of the people most intimately involved in the day-to-day business of producing food. And on the other we have a bunch of people making noise on the internet and in academia. You'll have to forgive me for assuming that the people with real, practical knowledge are probably right here.

Look, no offense, but I'm growing most of my family's food using permaculture techniques and selling the surplus at the local farmer's market. Just like my parents did before me and my grandparents did before them. I'm not just some internet denizen who has read some blog posts. Just because it wasn't called permaculture until Bill Mollison published his "Permaculture Manual" in 1988 doesn't mean farmers haven't used many of these principles for a very long time. In fact, this is how stable, complex natural ecosystems actually work.

As for my effective hourly rate, I haven't bothered. The peace of mind and food security alone is priceless, not to mention the health benefits of getting out and playing in the dirt.

I spend on average, around an hour in the garden a day. The property was badly eroded range land when I began. The soil was basically sand. Through careful management, I have built a significant amount of humus through carbon sequestration, composting, mulching and no-till techniques.

What is your effective hourly rate? What is it once you factor in what your land could be leased or sold for?

Natural ecosystems don’t feed humanity. Heavily modified ecosystems subjected to highly engineered agriculture practices feed humanity.

As you say it looks for profit. Not yield but profit. Which means that it can be profitable to always have mass culture of the most profitable crop even if having pluriculture with different less profitable crops would yield more. This is how you get entire regions or countries dedicated to a single crop that happens to be expensive and profitable, to the detriment of soil and general output.

No offense, but your argument is an attribution fallacy. You need to go research permaculture instead of posting chippy comments about your ignorance if you want to contribute.

Permaculture means permanent agriculture. It's a way of farming multiple types of plants, animals, and fungi in a way that is sustainable from a standpoint of soil health.

Many ideas/techniques/whatever are good in theory. But for something to actually work, it needs to be good in practice. Right now, all of the practitioners are voting with their feet. That is strong evidence about the (non-)viability of permaculture. I'm open to being wrong about this, but there is a huge chasm between what works on paper or in small scale experiments and what works in the real world, at scale.

If permaculture is a viable way to produce food at the scale necessary to feed 7 billion people, we would be in the midst of a wide-scale roll out. But we're not. So I remain skeptical.

Sure, the article makes a good point on land use, but two things bother me here: 1) I think that people who favor organic food tend to eat less meat or are vegetarians or vegans. Don;t forget that a predominantly meat diet uses an order of magnitude more energy and water compared to vegetarian. 2) I think people should have the personal freedom to decide on organic vs. non-organic and on whether they eat meat. However, I dislike the huge US government subsidies for meat production: people should pay the real production costs for meat (I eat meat sometimes, full disclosure).

Don't forget that a predominantly meat diet uses an order of magnitude more energy and water compared to vegetarian.

The articles does cover that as aspect well

“The type of food is often much more important. For example, eating organic beans or organic chicken is much better for the climate than to eat conventionally produced beef,”

Plants have a 50x range in the amount of calories they provide per unit of resources. Grains, starches, and legumes are generally less resource intensive than meat. But most meats are less resource intensive than leafy greens and fruits.

If you want to lessen the environmental impact of your diet, then you need to optimize cost, not simply exclude animal flesh.

Also organic meat is really expensive

The article states "...organic food is so much worse for the climate is that the yields per hectare are much lower, primarily because fertilisers are not used." It uses this metric to assume organic agriculture increases deforestation and is thus worse for the environment.

The flaw in this reasoning? Fertilizer manufacture is responsible for the majority of our current atmospheric CO2 emissions.

Completely ignores unsustainable soil depletion, groundwater depletion and pollution, carbon emissions to run machines and manufacture chemicals, etc.etc.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com

​Organic food worse for the climate

Organic food worse for the climate