This…[quote]Health professionals also reject the claim that organic food is safer to eat due to lower pesticide residues. Food and Drug Administration surveys have revealed that the highest dietary exposures to pesticide residues on foods in the United States are so trivial (less than one one-thousandth of a level that would cause toxicity) that the safety gains from buying organic are insignificant. Pesticide exposures remain a serious problem in the developing world, where farm chemical use is not as well regulated, yet even there they are more an occupational risk for unprotected farmworkers than a residue risk for food consumers.[/quote] looks like the money quote. Food is for providing nutrition to the body. If the food meets the required health concerns for its growth AND it provides the nutritional levels expected, then it is good, safe food.
If it can be done “organically” and brought to market at a cost acceptable to the buyer - good.
If non-organic food stuffs meet the health and nutritional needs and its at a lower end-user cost - good.
The biggest problem is depletion of soil nutrients. If the soil does not have the nutrients the crops grown in that soil will be deficient. Restoration of nutrients to the soil is imperative.
Now the manner of doing this is at the base - doing it with “chemical” fertilizers or with “organic” methods - which is better?
The former will be faster, lower cost, more applicable for a larger scale and easily monitored. The latter is “more sexy” to a certain market demographic.
Whats the best choice?
I think that both should be pursued. Serve both market demos and continue to provide the greatest amount of nutritious food for as many people as possible.
[quote=“bereal”]While it is evident that there is a food supply issue; the question is whether GM can solve world hunger problems. Several scientists argue that in order to meet the demand for food in the developing world, a second green revolution with increased use of GM crops is needed. Others argue that there is more than enough food in the world and that the hunger crisis is caused by problems in food distribution and politics, not production. Recently some critics have changed their minds on the issue with respect to the need for additional food supplies.
I don’t think that GM can solve the problem of hunger because, as stated, places like Central America, where there is still a lot of hunger in spite of the auspicious economic tallies, most small farmers cannot buy the GM crops simply because they cannot pay for them. the big farms are dedicated to exports, and they use humongous amounts of pesticides and fertilizers, which pollute and kill animal and marine life for kilometers, making it impossible to raise even subsistence crops, least of all organic agriculture. As to buying food from earnings from the exports, well, the big farmers or industrials who have the money have little interest in doing so because it is rather expensive in the world market and anyway, the masses don’t have enough money to pay them. The market sales outlets are controlled by this same group, they are also the middle man, the ones with the silos or trucks or permits to markets and supermarkets.
What has happened in many places that were small farmers raising crops for local consumption is that they got together for coops in order to export, then came the inevitable market crisis, they had to ask for loans to the banks, which are owned by the same people who own the market sales points. Results: lots of people heading North, led by coyotes, after having lost their land, their homes, and their livelihood.
Hence, it is not a question whether there are a lot of people but rather, a lot of people that are disposable, leftover, surplus. The logic behind exporting one or two high priced items in exchange for what “is more competitively produced elsewhere” is killing us. If you see stuff like the drought in Guatemala you may think it is just a natural calamity, when the truth is that there are no local means nor desire to make provisions, like irrigation systems or water dams. It is not as much as there is no money as the money goes elsewhere, and those with teh elsewhere see no point in investing in self-sufficient subsistence, staple crops locally. That is not what they have been taught as “modern” and “profitable” in universities in the developed world.
In Europe, no flights mean no flowers, no asparagous. In Central America, we are another 911, or worse, one WWIII from total starvation. Back in my Mom’s time, children were semi well fed as they could supplement their diet with fruits that grew wild. Now those lands are covered with housing projects, built over the most fertile lands, as real estate speculation pays better, especially if they sell those places to retirees from the first world. So, we don’t have a place to plant any crops, being organic or GM or otherwise.
I think a lot of people are missing the point about what is GM and what isn’t. Nothing we eat today is non-GM food, as mankind have been cross breeding plants for 1000’s of years by now to create the crops that we’re currently eating. Yes, it wasn’t done in a lab, but it’s still GM food and if that process can be speed up in a safe way in a lab that allows say for example wheat to grow in much more arid environments than it can today (which has been done already by the way), a lot more people could be feed by food they could grow in their own countries. However, due to “regulations” this food has been deemed not suitable for human consumption, as it’s GM.
I don’t think most people are even starting to understand what GM food means. There are of course things being done in some labs that makes very little sense where scientists are just having a play and we’re ending up with things that should never have been created in a natural way, but that’s a different matter. There are enough scientists out there that are trying to solve the world hunger issue, but due to people’s poor understanding, they’re not allowed to. :loco:
GM food can be grown organically, as much of the GM crops have been “designed” to be more resistant against various diseases and so forth compared to traditional crops and as such they don’t require to be sprayed by toxic chemicals. So in many ways, GM crops do have a huge advantage compared to traditional crops, but due to people’s misunderstanding of what they are, they’ve been deemed dangerous.
I use composted kitchen waste and rotate crops, and my veggies are growing just fine, thanks.
Proponents of organic ag aren’t generally making that argument. Nice straw man, there. As others have pointed out, the roots of food crises are elsewhere, and those are a separate issue. I know some people who who are opposed to condom use, have large families, and who sneer at organic farming and environmental protection. If they and others would come to their senses about population control, I might have more respect for their opinions on these other issues. The population of homo sapiens is not any danger of disappearing. The same cannot be said of many ecosystems and other species which are endangered by our current practices.
The poor are generally the ones who are preoccupied with putting food on the table, so I’m not really sure what you’re on about.
Concern about chemical residues in food and fertilizer runoff are ‘selfish’ now? Whatever, Chewy? :loco: This supposed concern for feeding the world’s poor expressed by those who are getting rich hand over fist through intensive agriculture is a sham. I’ll tell you what’s ‘selfish’ – growing the same crop, year after year, without use of cover crops, crop rotation and composted manure, because you can make more money that way, applying high levels of chemicals to do so, even though the Gulf of Mexico is dying as a result.
Another straw man. I manually remove butterfly eggs and caterpillars from my daikons, radishes and bok choy plants not because I think they’ll be more nutritious without insecticides but because I don’t want to use insecticides on my food or near my living space. Less use of chemicals also means less need for plants producing chemicals, which carry their own occupational and environmental hazards. Less use of insecticides means less residue on food. There’s a good chance trace chemicals like that are responsible for some cancers, for instance.
But that’s only looking at dietary exposure. Other concerns are occupational exposure to both the chemical factory workers and the farmers as well as the environmental effects. The next line in the source highlights the occupational exposure quite clearly:
Now, I don’t know about you, but if A-zhu in Miaoli handles his pesticides the way he drives his scooter, I’m certainly going to consider residual chemical toxicity to be a potential concern.
But that’s ok, as long as the farmers and Monsanto are making money, eh?
The choices aren’t limited to organic versus current practice. Population control, limiting consumption to reasonable levels and sustainable foods, and combinations of organic and more responsible practices are all part of the solution.
Certification of compliance with nitrogen runoff standards and/or minimal synthetic fertilizer application would also be welcome.
But not all of the damaging insecticides. And those remaining were merely less persistent. That pesticides have potential to harm the soil, our water supply, our bodies, our fertility, and the wildlife both on land and in the water is well known. It’s a good thing that the worst of the offenders have been banned, but what about the rest of them? And where is the discussion of chemicals in livestock and poultry? The hormones, antibiotics, and so on? The feeding of meat and bone meal to cattle? The article you cite is lacking in both comprehensiveness and balance.
WEll, you be sure and let us know when A-zhu, and his distant cousins in Fujian, who stock our local supermarkets here in Taibei have lasers attached to their [strike]sharks[/strike] tractors, now.
I don’t have time to deal with this at length right now, but the author does appear to be fairly biased in favor of GM and unreasonably dismissive of all else.
[quote=“Chewycorns”]Great article from Foreign Policy Magazine. Basically it hits the nail right on the head. Organic food has very limited benefits compared with genetically modified foods. And yet, as we see with discussions over global warming, people religiously believe that organic food will somehow help the environment and make people healthier. If anything can’t we say that genetically modified foods have helped save more lives on a global scale (by helping countries towards agricultural self sufficiency) than organic foods could ever help developing nations? And couldn’t we say that massive use of organic food would be an ecological nightmare?
As the article suggests, widespread use of organic farming would have a very adverse affect on the environment. To deal with the loss of synthetic nitrogen fertilizer, the US would need 5X the cattle. Imagine all the deforestation that would need to occur and how that would impact the environment.
It is crazy to think that organic agriculture will solve the world wide food crisis. Being sustainable means using the correct amounts of fertilizers for a good yield, only using them when there is an economic need to, and grow crops that don’t damage the environment they are in. In all aspects, conventional farming wins IMHO.
Furthermore, I like the ‘class struggle’ element of this article. The author states that ‘food has become an elite preoccupation in the West, ironically, just as the most effective ways to address hunger in poor countries have fallen out of fashion.’ Isn’t that selfish in many respects?
[/quote]
Wow ChewEy, didn’t expect to see you coming down hard on a new and profitable business opportunity (organic food). You are starting to sound like a bit of a socialist these days. Disappointing.
The problem that many people (myself included) have with GM is not so much the danger of consuming GM foods so much as the GM business model. I have serious concerns over the control that Monsanto has over the world’s food supply and their treatment of farmers.
And what about the fact that these things are expensive? Between pesticides, fertilizers, and being forced to buy new seeds every year (because the GM companies forbid farmers from saving seeds), farmers end up so far in the hole that they’re basically permanently in debt. Whereas for some small farmer in India, saving their seeds and using pig-shit fertilizer is basically free.
If we were really concerned about world food supply, there is a very simple change that would significantly increase the available food supply. Eat less meat and don’t feed corn/soy to livestock. But that doesn’t make anybody any money…
[quote=“zyzzx”]And what about the fact that these things are expensive? Between pesticides, fertilizers, and being forced to buy new seeds every year (because the GM companies forbid farmers from saving seeds), farmers end up so far in the hole that they’re basically permanently in debt. Whereas for some small farmer in India, saving their seeds and using pig-shit fertilizer is basically free.[/quote]I love these anecdotes. You even put the evil Monsanto in there. Here’s another one, Brazilian farmers were smuggling in Monsanto’s Round-up soybeans for planting because there was a ban on them in Brazil, the closer with they were to Argentina, the more likely they were using GM soybeans, but with the Brazilian govt ban on them they could pass them off as organic.
Farmers are not stupid. They are businessmen first and foremost. They will accurately decide what to grow and then weather permitting pull in a crop. In India and most of the developing world they face the prospect of limited land rights, poor infrastructure, and corrupt governance. I’d suggest you look at them in reality rather than romantacize them.
Organic is cute but at the end of the day it’s just another example of western do-gooder imperialism helping to keep the everyone else down. Due to their smaller hands on nature Organic farms tend to be better at picking and selling their produce at the peak of freshness, something you normally don’t get from factory farms.
With or without GM most farmers would face the same issues. It is not specifically a GM issue. It is very unfair to pick on a company like Monsanto instead of focusing on the subsidies that American and European farmers get. Besides, GM crops can be grown illegally or created in state labs and provided free of charge to farmers. India is working on programs to that effect, I’m pretty sure Taiwan has aswell, some of those giant fruits here are probably GM , they are popular although I think the giant ‘bala’ lacks a bit of flavour.
The problem is population growth and unequal sharing of resources, you’ve got too many people living at subsidence level. If the food price goes up more than 30% they start to face malnutrition, riots etc. Organic can’t deal with this issue. Now if everybody could withstand 30% more expensive food then I wouldn’t have such a problem.
There are some other issues though with organic. It takes more active management, probably more vulnerable to infestations (as in Taiwan, you need nets, specialist knowledge and careful management to make it work). It also takes more manual labour, meaning those people need to eat more food.
We should promote organic and more natural raised food and veggies as much as we can and still have a place for GM foods. GM foods are basically the same crops you eat everyday with one of two genes inserted. It’s really a very very minor change to the plant and only adding proteins that are already found anyway. The real health issues are from dioxins and pesticides and environmental issues are fertilizer run-off , overgrazing and overuse of pesticides and hormones. [color=#0040FF]A protein is degraded in the stomach, chemicals can linger in the bloodstream for years[/color]. I think anti-GM advocates need to learn basic biology before spouting on!
GM just isn’t worth any real attention in any scheme of things.
Not only that, but saved seeds, especially from traditional stock, preserve biodiversity, which is very important when crop diseases periodically sweep whole regions or when broad changes in temperature, rainfall, salinity etc. start hurting crops. When seeds aren’t all sourced from big Western companies, then they less likely to ALL be vulnerable to the same problems. There’s greater likelihood that somewhere out there is a variety which can adapt.
Wow, that’s really off the deep end, Okami. Organic is an example of western do-gooder imperialism keeping others down? Er, right… those pesticide-free bok choy I’m growing are so imperialistic I can’t stand it! :roflmao:
Now, how on earth did you get from this (p.2 of this thread)
Don’t make this personal. You have really hit the bottom with this:
Wow, that’s really off the deep end, Okami. Organic is an example of western do-gooder imperialism keeping others down? Er, right… those pesticide-free bok choy I’m growing are so imperialistic I can’t stand it! :roflmao:
Now, how on earth did you get from this (p.2 of this thread)
[quote=“Okami”]Organic food is a choice, which I’m ok with since I believe in choice in most things. Problem I have with organic is labeling and standards. Organic, to me, means no unnatural pesticides, fertilizers nor herbicides. …Would I buy organic produce from a farmer I knew? Sure. Would I buy it from a store with a label that said organic, probably not. [/quote]to this[quote=“Okami”]Organic is…just another example of western do-gooder imperialism helping to keep the everyone else down[/quote]?[/quote]Can anyone read that and not see that as a personal attack?
Let’s just say you are in for a real debate for argument’s sake about what I said instead of this knee jerk reaction. I’m all about free choice. It’s a pretty libertarian viewpoint and most liberals really can’t understand it. You growing your own bok choy is your choice. You get to pick and eat it when you want at the peak of freshness which is a good thing. What I do have a problem with was the situation you had in Zambia where they turned away US food relief because of the fear farmers may plant it and cause them to lose their organic certs with the EU and a whole lot of farm business. There’s also the times parents force their peers at daycare to have more expensive organic milk be bought and provided by the daycare for an extra fee despite the fact that some parents may not want it and they can pack their own damn milk to school.
The difference in your 2nd example is that I know the farmer. I have a personal connection and would be more likely to purchase his products because of it. I like fresh food that is ripe and ready. I know the difference between that and food that is not ripe and fresh. I know that food labeled organic in a supermarket may not be organic at all, I don’t know the farmer and I may not be willing to pay a higher price for a “shiny” package. There’s no confusion nor hypocrisy. People do the same thing all the time at farmers’ markets.
Organic is nice, but the ugly truth is if the whole world went organic over a period of time, we’d have to kill half of the people on Earth and turn most of the forests into pastures to get enough fertilizer to feed the remaining half. That’s not hyperbole, that’s the simple fact because we wouldn’t have enough nitrogen fertilizer to feed everyone without using the Haber process that requires natural gas to be economical. Farming has come a long way with GPS and sensors able to tell a farmer exactly where to put what fertilizer where along with GM crops that fail less, grow faster and produce more.
[quote=“Dragonbones”]Not only that, but saved seeds, especially from traditional stock, preserve biodiversity, which is very important when crop diseases periodically sweep whole regions or when broad changes in temperature, rainfall, salinity etc. start hurting crops. When seeds aren’t all sourced from big Western companies, then they less likely to ALL be vulnerable to the same problems. There’s greater likelihood that somewhere out there is a variety which can adapt. [/quote]The problem with this line of thinking is that most varieties, special variants and species are cataloged and kept viable through western seed banks, Ag co-ops and universities. It would lead me to think that you don’t look through many seed catalogs. A good seed catalog can have 50+ varieties of tomatoes, 16+ varieties of Basil depending on Fusarium resistance and type of cooking, and don’t even get me started on what you can get out of Taiwan’s CoA outreach centers.
I can assure you it’s not. I have quite specifically addressed your earlier comments, which I found ludicrous, and not you as a person, whom I’ve met in person and, frankly, like. If you take a little more time to explain your position, hopefully we can have a productive discussion about it.
There are many arguments for and against organic produce, but one of the best in favor of it IMO is getting variety in your diet. Buying non-organic from supermarkets reinforces larger produce suppliers who tend to use few or even single strains of the fruits and vegetables they produce. And those strains are selected solely based on economic considerations, not nutrition value.
I eat a little of both but tend to get my fruits at the local farmers market. The taste isn’t something that can be measured in a lab or economic index.
Yes, and also not flavor. Large-scale commercial production of many fruits and vegetables is often geared toward producing goods that last longer and can endure more handling and LOOK better (hard, bright red, flawless tomatoes, for instance) but which often have no flavor whatsoever (or a poor imitation of what they should taste like).
As for the arguments that organic couldn’t feed the world, although I think it’s a straw man put up by proponents of large-scale industrial agriculture and the agri-chem companies behind that, there is abundant evidence to dispel this notion. The linked article from NPR and its excellent and detailed continuation in Foreign Policy (see link further below) directly challenge the pro-intensive farming spin of Robert Paarlberg, the author cited by Chewycorns earlier:
[quote]Catherine Badgley, an evolutionary biology professor at the University of Michigan, took her students on a research trip to an organic farm near their campus. Standing on the acre-and-a-half farm, Badgley asked the farmer, Rob MacKercher, how much food he produces annually. “Twenty-seven tons,” he said. Badgley did the quick math: That’s enough to provide 150 families one pound of produce every single day of the year.
“If he can grow that quantity on this tiny parcel,” Badgley wondered, “why can’t organic agriculture feed the world?” That question was the genesis of a multi-year, multidisciplinary study to explore whether we could, indeed, feed the world with organic, sustainable methods of farming. The results? A resounding yes.
…the argument for industrial agriculture and biotechnology is built on a misleading depiction of what organic agriculture is, bolstered with shaky statistics, and constructed by ignoring the on-the-ground lessons of success stories across the globe.[/quote]
There are more specifics on why organic, aka agroecological, practices are in fact worth pursuing and may even INCREASE yield compared to current, chemical-intensive ones, as outlined in this very interesting source in Foreign Policy magazine:
[quote]
In Badgley’s study, for instance, data from hundreds of certified-organic, industrial, and low-input farms around the world revealed that introducing agroecological approaches in developing countries led to between two and four times the productivity as the previous practices. Estimating the impact on global food supply if we shifted the planet to organic production, the study authors found a yield increase for every single food category they investigated.[/quote]
And these aren’t just one-off, small-scale studies by some liberal coop in Berkeley:
[quote]In one of the largest studies to analyze how agroecological practices affect productivity in the developing world, researchers at the University of Essex in England analyzed 286 projects in 57 countries. Among the 12.6 million farmers followed, who were transitioning toward sustainable agriculture, researchers found an average yield increase of 79 percent across a wide variety of crop types.
Even the United Nations backs those claims. A 2008 U.N. Conference on Trade and Development report concluded that “organic agriculture can be more conducive to food security in Africa than most conventional production systems, and … is more likely to be sustainable in the long term.” [/quote]
What many don’t understand is that organic, or agroecological practices are much more than just not using chemicals. They focus on sustainable practices which minimize soil erosion, water usage, soil nutrient depletion and so on, and in the long run these practices are good for the land you farm and therefore good for yields. In the long run these practices are going to be vital for feeding the world’s hungry. And don’t forget that growing dead zones in the ocean threaten our food supply, too.
There’s plenty more debunking of Parlberg’s narrow, one-sided and overall grossly misleading treatment of the issue in the Foreign Policy article, which is good reading. For instance:
[quote]
Among the pitfalls in Paarlberg’s analysis, two stand out. First, the benefits of his approach are speculative, at best; at worst, his assertions are disingenuous, based on cherry-picking evidence and misrepresenting data. [/quote]
and, bolstering a point I made earlier:
From Nature magazine, Aug. 2009, another comment on Parlberg’s disingenuous spin, by:
[quote]two development specialists… Ian Scoones and Dominic Glover:
"In its narrow focus, Starved for Science dismisses a slew of scientifically validated approaches to agriculture, including integrated pest and soil-fertility management, ‘low-input’ techniques that reduce reliance on synthetic fertilizers and pesticides, and even other forms of biotechnology. Yet such methods have performed well in African contexts.[/quote]
POI - “traditional or saved seeds” are referred to as “Heirloom” seeds in the trade. Some interesting, if ya like that kind of thing - which I do, info about them via web search.
FF -
One thing I noticed back in the world was that the increased diversity of vegetable/fruit offerings in the local markets seemed to roughly coincide with the increase interest in and demand for “organic” items.
IMO, heightened consumer education about nutritional/pesticides/“healthy eating” and a broadening of knowledge as to what was good to eat around the world went hand & hand in this situation.
Also, increased diversity of populations - people wanting things from their homeland - led to their wants/demands creating new markets to be filled.
Hell, I remember when star fruit hit the Big Bear store in Columbus, Ohio. The Asians were delighted and the locals had in-store classes on 'exotic fruit and how to eat them." Win-Win for all.
Of course in SoCali the 99 Ranch Markets have had their shelves and coolers stocked with foodstuffs from around the world. They even have an “Organic” section that complys with California Organic Certs; which are among the tightest in the USA. As do just about all of the larger mainstream grocery chains now.
I grow veges, trees, flowers and fruit organically.
No pesticides or herbicides.
No chemical fertilizer.
And rather than use power machines, I do everything by hand.
I don’t even use netting to keep birds off the fruit. I enjoy sharing my harvest with mother nature.
Of course, I do it as a hobby, and primarily for exercise. If my family were living off it we’d starve to death in a very short time.
While I’m no fan of agri-business, I’m with Okami when it comes to organic farming. A lot of it is hippy bullshit. Fine for a hobby, but not much use for producing large quantities of food and providing farmers with a good living. Obviously, a mix of the two systems, smart environmentally-friendly industrial agriculture is needed.
One problem with so-called organic success stories is that they cheat. They’re tapping into an existing industrial farming infrastructure - roads, water, electricity, etc. - and they’re not measuring all the inputs such as labour.
I choose to dig out tree roots and stumps the hard way. I have a brush cutter but prefer to use hoes and machetes because I enjoy hard monotonous physical exercise. It’s a nice break from sitting in front of a computer. The power contained in gasoline is truly miraculous. With a single liter of this concentrated energy, it can power a machine - whether a chainsaw, water pump or tractor - that turns days of backbreaking labour into minutes or hours of relatively easy work. It really is the difference between starvation and living well.
When you’ve got the whole lot growing together, complementing each other, sharing the same space, how can the sum total of produce be less than traditional farming of filling the entire paddock with one and only one crop? If you’re growing a grass, fine, you get X amount, but if you’re growing the grass AND some apple trees, surely you’d get slightly less grass overall you’d get far more produce.
When you’ve got the whole lot growing together, complementing each other, sharing the same space, how can the sum total of produce be less than traditional farming of filling the entire paddock with one and only one crop? If you’re growing a grass, fine, you get X amount, but if you’re growing the grass AND some apple trees, surely you’d get slightly less grass overall you’d get far more produce.[/quote]
Nice set-up for a garden but not that useful for farming. If you read up on these farms, you’ll find that the “farmers” have day jobs. Or they’re trial plots.
The economics of this forest gardening don’t really work. Do you know of any successful working farms using these methods?
You must have missed my earlier post. There’s this guy, with his 45 ha “garden” :roflmao: … which he’s been running for 30 years with no pesticides, herbicides or fertilizer. Must have quite a day job to afford this, hey?
As I said before, "Farmers just don’t do it, because it’s more labour intensive and less convenient, especially for hauling things to market. "
I must admit, as of yet, I haven’t read anywhere as much as I’d like to. But I do find it very interesting and thought provoking. I was fascinated to be informed last week that Taiwanese aborigines used to do this sort of thing… pity it’s all Bing Lang now…
[quote=“ice raven”]You must have missed my earlier post. There’s this guy, with his 45 ha “garden” :roflmao: … which he’s been running for 30 years with no pesticides, herbicides or fertilizer. Must have quite a day job to afford this, hey?
[/quote]
Yes, seminars, books, and tourism (day trips and overnight stays at the farm). Hardly a typical farm.
The author states that ‘food has become an elite preoccupation in the West, ironically, just as the most effective ways to address hunger in poor countries have fallen out of fashion.’ Isn’t that selfish in many respects? 
, they are popular although I think the giant ‘bala’ lacks a bit of flavour.