"Organic Farming cannot feed the world"

[Shermana]

One of the most common arguments in favor of GMO (with synthetic pesticides and fertilizers) and against Organic farming standards is that only through GMO can the world be fed.

Apparently about half of all food produced worldwide is thrown out:

» Why Half Of The World’s Food Goes To Waste

And organic yields are only 25% lower on average than not.

http://www.cnn.com/2012/04/26/world/organic-food-yield/index.html

Does the math add up for this argument?

(Extra: Consider how much environmental damage GMO farming and pssticides and fertilizers have on future generations of soil quality).

http://www.greenmedinfo.com/blog/un-earthed-monsantos-glyphosate-destroying-soil

 

[Desert Snake]

Nope, I think it's possible to feed the world via all organic farming. Small farms are the key to supplemental produce/meats

 

[Desert Snake]

(Extra: Consider how much environmental damage GMO farming and pssticides and fertilizers have on future generations of soil quality).

http://

No reason to leave out the dangers of genetically modified seeds, crops

 

[Shuddhasattva]

Yes. I say this as someone professionally tasked with this problem (my field is ecological engineering, a large part of which includes agro-ecology.)

Food waste is largely structural, even , and much of it is unavoidable - you have to consider it as a factor, it is not simply sufficient to say "we'll just eliminate the food waste." Changing this would involve:

A. Massive infrastructure investment - to say nothing of the implementation process itself from construction to training and imposing business processes in an uncertain (not merely risky) environment.
B. Even more significantly, the food waste problem is largely socially imbedded; institutionalized even, in the supply chain. Getting involved with this would be either a public (slippery slope...) or private (permissible, but still volatile) intrusion, and would involve changing the way a lot of people live - and that means minds. It can, should and must be done, but...

And certainly, any waste should be converted into useful inputs fed back into the food web.

Waste aside, organic farming cannot support the world without:

1. Significant clearing of additional forests, and additional exploitation of water resources.
2. Massive shifts in diet.
3. Reduction in population growth, if not a reduction in population itself.


Additionally, the nutrient cycle/budget of organic farming isn't necessarily much better than conventional means.

We need to get beyond the organic mentality and apply the full breadth of science and engineering to the agro-ecological equation to come to a new and better equilibrium for all stakeholders (read: species) concerned.

Such a system would be 'backwards-compatible' with organic ideals, but technologically oriented, offering replacements for fertilizers, pesticides, and conventional irrigation, out performing the production and cost efficiency of conventional means in the marketplace.

Through biotechnology and compounded synergies of mutualistic symbioses, cultivating the entire soil food web, developing polyculture harvesting machinery, etc, facilitating localized manufacturing of inputs, etc.

 

[Quintessence]

Hmph. Talk about dodging the elephant in the room. Let's quit quibbling about this and start seriously addressing that big elephant, eh?

 

[Willamena]

Hmph. Talk about dodging the elephant in the room. Let's quit quibbling about this and start seriously addressing that big elephant, eh?

What is the elephant?

 

[Pegg]

"control the food and you control the people"

can we afford to entrust the worlds food production to the hands of a few? Im not convinced.

 

[Quintessence]

What is the elephant?

That you can't expect a human population of seven billion and growing to be sustainable. Especially if you have any shred of environmental ethics. Failure to address the population problem will trump any and all food sustainability issues.

 

[Shuddhasattva]

Population is both the problem and the solution. Human resource is the most useful and valuable of all when properly supplied and trained to undertake the great work of civilization building.

Infinite growth can coexist with static resources, it requires continual progress of efficiency and the tapping of ever more refined resources.

Let's examine for a moment the ecological economics of it.

People are the most efficient processor of chemical, energetic, structural and informational inputs into value-added outputs.

Particularly the information part, which is the true key of limitless growth.

 

[Quintessence]

Er... what do you mean by "infinite growth" exactly? I'm going to ask instead of assume, because with what a phrase like that means to me, "infinite growth" is patently impossible barring supernatural intervention that breaks the fundamental laws structuring the universe. :sarcastic

 

[arhys]

That you can't expect a human population of seven billion and growing to be sustainable. Especially if you have any shred of environmental ethics. Failure to address the population problem will trump any and all food sustainability issues.

QFT. Organic vs. GMO is just a distraction from the real issue.

 

[Quintessence]

QFT. Organic vs. GMO is just a distraction from the real issue.

Well, don't get me wrong, I do think it is an important issue for other reasons. Just not for feeding the human world.

 

[Shuddhasattva]

Er... what do you mean by "infinite growth" exactly? I'm going to ask instead of assume, because with what a phrase like that means to me, "infinite growth" is patently impossible barring supernatural intervention that breaks the fundamental laws structuring the universe. :sarcastic

Except information processing may not be so conventionally finite.

 

[Quintessence]

Except information processing may not be so conventionally finite.

How is information processing relevant here? Population dynamics and natural resources (such as food) are most grounded in ecology and biology.

 

[Shuddhasattva]

How is information processing relevant here? Population dynamics and natural resources (such as food) are most grounded in ecology and biology.

Sometimes I swear people don't even read my posts - going by the replies, anyway.

Let's examine for a moment the ecological economics of it.

People are the most efficient processor of chemical, energetic, structural and informational inputs into value-added outputs.

Particularly the information part, which is the true key of limitless growth.

Put simplistically, information is maxwell's demon, and, as much or more than energy, information is the scriptor for complexity and diversity. Specifically, processing information: selecting for more and more efficient uses of energy towards more and more chemical diversity/complexity and applicability ("value.")

Human intelligence represents a monumental leap in that information process, going from genetically driven to meta-genetically as we begin to use organisms as self-replicating chemical processes by means of our information/technology.

Put into concise terms: negentropy by way of computation is the only saving grace we have from entropy

Put in simple terms: the mind is life; the more mind, the more life can be supported.
Explained: abundance is created from seeming scarcity through the ability to optimize productive systems and actualize potential values.

 

[LuisDantas]

Even so, "infinite" is such a bold word to use. Do you really mean it?

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

One of the most common arguments in favor of GMO (with synthetic pesticides and fertilizers) and against Organic farming standards is that only through GMO can the world be fed.

Apparently about half of all food produced worldwide is thrown out:

» Why Half Of The World’s Food Goes To Waste

And organic yields are only 25% lower on average than not.

Study: Organic yields 25% lower than conventional farming - CNN.com

Does the math add up for this argument?

That depends. For example, what percentage of produced food is thrown out is not equal to (nor necessarily a linear function of) what is consumed. That is, lots of food is thrown out which goes bad, or is contaminated, or is partially consumed, etc., such that it could not simply be partitioned out enabling all food produced to be consumed. Such a model is incredibly over-simplistic. I've heard of parents threatening and motiving (or trying to) children with talk of how much the food their children are too picky to eat would be useful in another country ("think of the starving children in X country"). This doesn't mean that the parents have any way of actually getting food to these people. For various reasons (perishability, transport costs, health concerns) not everything which is produced can realistically be eaten. In order for the argument that we produce more than we eat to support poorer production methods, we'd have to show that there is a realistic method of getting the portion "thrown away" to people who can/would consume it.

Then there is the issue of why. What empirical evidence is there that organic food is healthier, or that it is better for the environment? It still involve anthropogenic changes in land use, which necessarily impacts ecosystems. And as fruits and vegetables often have as many carcinogens as pesticides (or chemicals which otherwise endanger human health), yet like many pesticides can only be shown to be dangerous if consumed at rates and levels more or less impossible, I'm not sure organic farming somehow produces safer (from a health perspective) goods.

(Extra: Consider how much environmental damage GMO farming and pssticides and fertilizers have on future generations of soil quality).

Farming substantially decreases nutrients in soil. That's why, before artificial nutrients, fields were left unplanted so that they could replenish (fallowing). Organic farming doesn't change this. Nor does organic farming mean zero pesticides. In fact, it can mean the introduction of "natural pesticides" like insects into an environment without control, causing a greater change in nearby ecosystems because of the spread of certain types of insects.

 

[Quintessence]

Sometimes I swear people don't even read my posts - going by the replies, anyway.



Put simplistically, information is maxwell's demon, and, as much or more than energy, information is the scriptor for complexity and diversity. Specifically, processing information: selecting for more and more efficient uses of energy towards more and more chemical diversity/complexity and applicability ("value.")

Human intelligence represents a monumental leap in that information process, going from genetically driven to meta-genetically as we begin to use organisms as self-replicating chemical processes by means of our information/technology.

Put into concise terms: negentropy by way of computation is the only saving grace we have from entropy

Put in simple terms: the mind is life; the more mind, the more life can be supported.
Explained: abundance is created from seeming scarcity through the ability to optimize productive systems and actualize potential values.

I'm going to be honest. I really don't get what you're driving at. I think it's because you're using the word "information" here where another word would be better suited to describe the phenomena. None of this negates the fact that all exchanges of energy are inefficient and involve loss of energy that isn't utilized by the organism. None of this negates the fact that matter and energy are not created or destroyed. None of this negates the intrinsic limitations of any environmental system as bound by the laws of nature (as we understand them).

 

[Valjean]

"Infinite growth" sounds to me like a cancer. We're not sustaining the population we already have at anything approaching comfortable levels, and the climate, water tables, arable land, topsoil &c are all rapidly degrading. We'd be depleting the planet's resources faster than they can regenerate even at half our population.
We cant continue to "feed the world" even with high-tech farming -- or mining, or forestry, or fishing......

 

[illykitty]

What about non soil farming like vertical farming that uses hydroponics? That certainly would help give a break to the soil.

I also agree that a lot of the food is wasted, and often by supermarkets. For example, Tesco a chain here, ordered a lot of food from a company someone I know works for, then in the end wasted more than half of what they ordered. It all went to waste. I don't remember the full story but it was horrible to know how much went wasted.

Also, I agree with others, a huge still growing population isn't going to be sustainable at some point. This is a planet with finite ressources after all. It's a good thing that not everyone consumes and wastes like Americans though, otherwise we'd need 3-5 Earths!