myliftkk said:
i never claimed organic food was healthier for any one individuals biological system.
that argument is not the same as comparing industrial agriculture techniques to organic techniques and measurings known outputs like yields, soil toxicity, heavy metals run-off, etc. the discusison i'm interested in is one on farming techniques, which have in fact, been studied at length and shown to be roughly equivalent (with some possible environmental benefits), minus industry agribusiness' claims to the opposite.
http://www.cnr.berkeley.edu/~christos/articles/cv_organic_farming.html - see references
by the same token that you claim plants require high fertilizer inputs, you leave out that the seeds themselves are engineered to accept those inputs. biological matter has for centuries adapted itself quite well to environmental changes without monsanto engineers directing its course (we didn't invent evolution). should the required inputs no longer be available, can they not by the same technology re-engineer the seed strains to produce equivalent yields with differing inputs? i'm guessing they probably can, and have, but in the current environment, what would the market be?
personally, i'm intruiged by the work done to on the concept of vertical farms, operating mostly as a closed environment. partially because it proves the potential viability of extended space exploration. i have wondered myself whether anyone at osu has done any work on the subject? given the increasing density of population growth in modern cities, i'd think vertical farming would be an innovative soultion to bringing food to the cloistered masses.
This thread started last year as an inquiry about Foer's book on eating (factory farmed) animals. But the thread seemed to venture into a debate about organic v industrial ag.
So, even if we assume to be the big ag chemical companies' claims about industrial farming producing better yields than 'organic farming', what are we to make of industrial agriculture's heavy reliance on natural gas for chemical fertilizers and, perhaps more importantly, its heavy reliance on petroleum for sowing, irrigating, harvesting, and transporting the food, as well as petroleum for pesticides and packaging ? Petroleum is not an infinite resource the last time I checked nor is natural gas.
Second what are we to make of how heavy usage of chemical fertilizers destroys micro-nutrients and microbial life in the soil ?
Third, how about the effects of the millions of gallons and pounds of chemical pesticides and fertilizers that run off the soil and into our water supply ?
Finally, to say the least, big ag's claim about industrial farming being the only or the best way to feed the world's burgeoning human numbers has been credibly challenged.
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