Sorry–organic farming is worse for climate change
technologyreview.com
technologyreview.com
This article isn't that helpful in my view. It calls for the status quo because current practices produce more on less. But the status quo is bad as well. So the take away is both things are bad.
Well great, let's stay on this path while all our insects and birds die, but at least global warming is still on the rise.../s
Organic farming absolutely uses pesticides and herbicides. In fact they often must use more of it and at greater frequency than conventional farming methods because the organic variants are inferior. This also requires more frequent use of heavy farming machinery for the application process.
> Well great, let's stay on this path while all our insects and birds die, but at least global warming is still on the rise.../s
Well, no, there are MANY people working toward improving the "status quo" but are often derided or dismissed when they begin talking about advances in pesticides, herbicides, and GMOs. Those are all dirty words in the minds of a few, loud special interests. Those special interests then hock their pseudo-science missives to conscience-minded, consuming society and, before you know it, you have a sizable group of people convinced that the right way to go for a more healthy, sustainable planet is "organic" agriculture.
That's the damn tragedy of it all. Decent, well-meaning people, genuinely concerned for their -- and others' -- health, aggressively pursuing the path that leads them further from their ideal.
Got a citation for that? I've always been under the impression that organic farming by definition doesn't use pesticides and herbicides, and that's why they're more expensive. The yields are lower because of some crops being eaten by insects, and quality is lower due to having to battle weeds devouring nutrients from the soil. Is this not accurate?
Come to think of it, I do seem to recall at one point reading about organic farming using "natural" pesticides and ending up needing to use more of them because they're less effective.
HN user "widowlark" posted (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21337495) a link to a "Scientific American" article which you may find useful: https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/science-sushi/httpblogs...
The Wikipedia article on "Organic farming" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organic_farming) has a section-or-two discussing the practice; it'll provide a decent jumping-off point for further research.
However, once again, we have just torn down organic, and left people with the status quo. I've yet to read about any studies talking about wildlife populations bouncing back because of the advances in pesticides, herbicides, and GMOs. I have however read several articles recently about the sharp declines in insect populations like I mentioned before.
This brings me back to me original complaint. Everything is bad. Nothing is helping.
And because regular farming is bad, and organic is bad, I can't make a difference. There is no viable third option(I don't care to hear about how I can buy land and grow my own everything, and weave my own clothing).
If you want the status quo. This is what you do. You shoot down every new path.
It follows that the other step needed to shore this up is to have less food waste, more local food, and most likely eat less meat per-capita.
I'm not sure why the end interpretation of the study was "this is entirely useless" instead of "this is one step". It's a little like saying Kubernetes is useless, total overkill to make my blog.
Authors of papers and articles that purport to talk about scientific results should have to disclose funding, finances, etc.
Some organic products taste better, but most of them don't. Some organic products are better for the environment but many are not. Most staple foods should not be organically farmed. For everyday foods it's important to to maintain good quality, avoid wastage and reduce the use of farmland if you want to be ecological.
Reducing the use of pesticides with better farming methods, breeding and genetic engineering should be part of ecological farming.
They looked at one meta study and one study that was ESTIMATING the effectiveness of organic based on land usage.
Organic farming is needed to increase top soil depth which results in increased carbon sequestration and water absorption.
Organic farming isn't specific enough. It's permanent agriculture which is needed, usually in the form of organic agriculture.