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Science

Organic Farming Examined 79

Posted by michael from the good-earth dept.
Yokai writes "An article to be released in Science shows that organic farming makes sense. The 21 year study by a Swiss team shows that even though the organic patch had 20% less yield than conventional farming, the input of fertilizer and energy was reduced by between 34% and 53%, and pesticide use by 97%, leading them to believe that organic farming makes sense. Also, the soil from the organic plot was healthier and held more organisms- including those that kill pests."
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Organic Farming Examined More

Organic Farming Examined

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  • correct link (Score:4, Informative)

    by Kraft ( 253059 ) on Friday May 31, 2002 @06:16PM (#3620322) Homepage
    here [bbc.co.uk]
  • the input .. was reduced by ... and pesticide use by 97%



    How does that work? I thought organic farming used NO pesticides, not 3% of the pesticides. Can someone clarify?

    • Re:Pesticide math? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by caca_phony ( 465655 ) on Friday May 31, 2002 @06:50PM (#3620488) Homepage
      It is not pesticides that cannot be used in organic farming, but rather non-biological ones (you can use all the ladybugs or BT you want- both are technicly pesticides, though they are organisms).
    • Organic farming implies limited pesticide usage. All the pesticides have to be approved as organic; they are usually plant based (rotenone comes from marigolds for example) and have no to very few environmental side effects. You generally can eat produce sprayed with these things right after spraying. You can't use most chemical herbicides, you have to enrich the soil with compost (usually carefully composted manure). You can use high tech methods like row covers, spun bonded polyfiber frost blankets, micro irrigation...

      Organic farming has now been defined by the FDA. There's a big list of what you can and cannot do as an organic farmer. If you wish to call your produce 'organic' you must submit to onsite inspections, follow all the FDA guidelines, and get certified every year at a minimum cost of several thousand dollars. In other words, organic is now Big Business.

      I was an organic farmer. I now grow 'farm fresh', 'wholesome' and 'traditional' foods, as I have been shoved out of the organic field by the FDA's rulings. I can't afford the certification, so, I can't use the organic term which the FDA decided it owns.

  • The same goes for your lawn (Score:4, Interesting)

    by bihoy ( 100694 ) on Friday May 31, 2002 @06:55PM (#3620521)
    Today many homeowners use chemicals on their lawns. The use of products such as Scotts "4 step" actually give your lawn a chemical dependency. They don't allow them to function in a natural organic fashion. In addition they contribute to the pollution of water tables and watersheds. You would be amazed at how far away from a lake, river, or stream that a watershed extends. Basically the use of these chemicals is simply the easy no hassle way to have green lawn. It not necessarily a healthy lawn or healthy for the environment but people don't think about that.
    • sometimes these super green lawns look unhealthey anyway, in suburbia (shudder) there are subdivisions that seem like they have neighborhood regulations about the color of grass, every single lawn the exact same disgustingly unnaturally bright looking green

  • Is this labor-intensive? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by texchanchan ( 471739 ) <ccrowleyNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Friday May 31, 2002 @07:34PM (#3620732)
    The real question is, how labor-intensive is organic farming carried out on a large scale? For small plots that fit between Swiss mountains, I can imagine it working a lot better than on a Kansas wheat farm.

    Who is going to be out there doing the labor? How many more field workers does it take? Where are they going to come from?
    • why would it be labor intensive? did i miss something?

      actually, it is my understanding in fFact this is actually easier on labour. instead of laying fFertilizers 5 times a year, they are only doing it twice a year, and then the loads are lighter and work more on their own.

      fFor example, a load (so to speak) of manure sits quietly on the dirt and sinks into the soil. as opposed to chemicalstuff, which has to be replenished regularly to keep active. or something of this nature.
    • I think a major point of the organic movement is to effect a change in the perception of value of food. Most people see a 1 lb apple and think it is of great quality. Or they see a shiny, bright red apple as opposed to a dull one and think it is better. Ag-companies have played upon these misconceptions for years to sell more products and put smaller growers out of business. As the article hinted, organic foods are generally higher in nutritional value than non-organic. There is a fundamental economic problem with the way farmers are paid per pound of crop, instead of taking quality into account. As the article said, organic methods may only produce 80% of the yields of conventional farming, but the higher quality of the food more than makes up for this loss.
  • Wow, this is nothing like indigenous people have known, um, forever...before we introduced them to "correct" farming by ripping up the ground with a plow and stuffing it with chemicals and pesticides. They should thank us for indebting them to big agribusiness/chemical companies instead of falling for all that "sustainable" mumbo jumbo.
  • yes, i realise the quote of the day changes so frequently, its hardly worth the karmic holocaust of pointing out a problem with it, since by the time some well-meaning person reads this the quote will have changed anyway, but,

    "Don't try to outweird me, three-eyes. I get stranger things than you free with my breakfast cereal." - Zaphod Beeblebrox in "Hithiker's Guide to the Galaxy"

    has a typo. IT IS REALLY SAD that taco and company have seen fit to edit the quotes to their own standard of typoing. alas :(

  • Pesticide free works for myself (Score:3, Interesting)

    by BetaJim ( 140649 ) on Saturday June 01, 2002 @10:12AM (#3622432)
    In my garden the Colorado Potato Beetle is my summer nemesis. Growing up, Dad would always use pesticides to control them. It didn't work very well. We still had to pick the larva off the plants by hand.

    Now, for my garden, I've ditched the pesticides. After doing some research on the potato beetle, I found out that they quickly become resistant to one pesticide, unless you continuously use different type of pesticides (this explains my father failing to control them.)

    My solution? I control the bug by hand. Once a week I examine the plants and squish and kill all the egg clusters, larva, and adults that I find. This keeps the population managable to the point that predators of the potato beetle keep things under control. This method works very well.

    I don't expect that large farms can invest in this much labor, but for my home garden this is a good solution. Oh, large farms also use other pesticide-free methods to control the beetle, such as plastic lined trenchs that catch and trap the bug.

  • Devils Advocate (Score:4, Interesting)

    by 4of12 ( 97621 ) on Saturday June 01, 2002 @10:14AM (#3622433) Homepage Journal

    pesticide use by 97%,

    For the record, I

    • like organic farming,
    • prefer to buy organic produce when I can,
    • dislike GM foods or GM anything else (there's too much unknown about biochemical interaction in our ecosystem),
    • dislike livestock loaded with hormones and antibiotics, etc.

    But.

    I have to wonder about how sustainable the non-use of pesticides can be.

    Think about human vaccinations against childhood diseases. Overall, it's a great idea. On an individual basis, if everyone else's child has been vaccinated, then you can forego the risks of vaccination, secure in knowing that your child will probably play only with other vaccinated children that will not subject your child to those diseases. Also, by not vaccinating your child, you don't suffer the one in several hundred thousand risk that your child will actually get sick. Great.

    Great, until more and more other parents also decide that they don't like the risks of vaccination on their children, either. Then you end up with a sufficient pool of unvaccinated children, where there is increased risk that the diseases will take hold and be communicated in that group.

    Is it not similar to an organic farmer sitting in the middle of California's Central Valley, with all his neighbors using all manner of ugly pesticides to effectively sterilize their fields? The small organic farmer has little to worry about: he's not going to catch any pests from his neighbors.

    You see my point. At some critical level of non-use of pesticides, the pests will start to propagate much more than they do now.

  • If organic farming is so much cheaper than conventional farming, why is it that they charge so much more for the produce? I don't buy organic for the simple reason that I don't taste much difference, and I don't like spending that much extra money.

    There are very good reasons that we use pesticides and fertilizer and they have nothing to do with "conspiracies." It all comes down to growing crops cheaper so you can make money in a competitive system.

    If organic was actually cheaper, I guarantee you the farmers would have found out a long time ago.

    brad
    • i agree in concept. but in truth, there's a couple things to take into consideration.

      fFirstly, supply and demand. it's quite likely you eat more or less organic fFood without knowing it. but when people put a little label on it, this makes it really worth something. so the price goes up.

      and because people are willing to pay the premiums. people like to fFeel like they are getting more than they are getting. my mother in law will eat only organics if she can. and she maintains my next point.

      the fFood is simply better fFor you. the yeild may be less, but it is a higher quality. so the price actually is higher fFor the higher value. to put this into more common terms, compare Mcdonalds with the Ritz Steak House. the ritz makes more money per meal, because the price is higher. but not everyone eats at the ritz all the time. sometimes ya just wanna crummy burger and fFries. or its all you can afford right then. likewise, organic has a higher payout fFrom a higher price fFor higher quality fFood. but not everyone is willing/able to buy the better stuff.
    • If organic farming is so much cheaper than conventional farming, why is it that they charge so much more for the produce?

      Because industrialized agriculture gets to exernalize much of its costs.

      If argibusiness had to pay for all the soil erosion, pesticide and fertilizer run-off, medical costs of pesticide-contaminated food, et cetera; and if big farms didn't have massive subsidies for water; and if we all paid the true price for a gallon of fuel, including enviromental costs and military costs to keep the oil flowing; then it would be obvious that the true cost of organic agriculture is much lower.

      But until we have an economic system with some basis in reality when it comes to natural resources, you'll have to take all this into account yourself.

  • I seem to remember having read different stories about organic farming actually yielding more produce than conventional farming.

    (The difference was largely attributed to crop rotation being used in organic farming, leading to the soil becomming less 'exhausted' than on a single-crop scheme)

    Here's one...
    http://www.projectcensored.org/stories/200 1/12.htm l

    .

  • Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    [Organic Farming has] 20% less yield,[but] fertilizer and energy was reduced by between 34% and 53%, and pesticide use by 97%.

    Initial response: Wow! 97, 34, and 53 are big numbers, and 20 is a smaller number.

    Reasoned Response: Time for a little algebra. Say 'g' is the gross income from crop sales (yield * price per bushel), and 'p' is the total cost of pesticides, fertilizers, energy, etc. in a conventional farm. so:
    (1*g - 1*p) is the amount of money left over after paying for pesticides, etc. in conventional farming
    Let's say that organic farming results in a 60% decrease in total costs of energy, fertilizer, pesticides etc. (60% is a round number near the average [61.3] of 34, 53 and 97 %) so:
    (0.8*g - 0.6*p) is the amount of money left over after paying for pesticides, etc. in organic farming.

    Let's compute the "break even" point for the percentage of pesticide costs as a fraction of gross profits.
    1*g - 1*p = 0.8*g - 0.6*p
    0.2*g = 0.4*p
    p = 0.5*g

    So in order to make a switch to organic farming economical for a farmer, the cost of pesticides, fertilizer and energy has to account for at least 50% of the *GROSS* income, leaving less than half to take care of the morgage payments on the land, the cost of seed, morgage on the machinery, machine maintainence, cost of hired help, taxes, living expenses for the farmer's family, etc.

    The savings would be nice, but I doubt farmers spend the majority of their income on fetilizer, pesticides and energy.

    • ahhhh .. this is a much better version of what i was trying to illustrate over here:
      http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=33492& cid=3625213 [slashdot.org]
      although i think mine sounds like simpler english, you have nicely asked what i was struggling to get at. the basic actual math of the loss/gain difference.

      at any rate, all this doesnt mean they are "lying", per se, just not giving us all the data. consider, what is the time difference involved, or more specifically, the labour-pay rates. (are organic methods more/less labour intensive, or do they require a more/less skilled hand, which would require more/less pay?)

      this is a great study. but this article alone doesnt give anywhere near enough data to convert an entire industry.
  • So let's try to sum this whole thing up: Organic farming is "better" because it produces ~20% less yield but there are more bugs in the ground. Yeah.

    But let's delve deeper into the actual methodology. How big was the plot of land that they studied. One would assume that they would devote several hundred acres so that minor local anomalies would skew their results. Well, one would be wrong. The plot was about 3.5 acres. And what about the "ecological benefits" that make the smaller yields palatable? How was this actually measured? Did they look at chemical content in the earth? How about in the crops? No, they counted the number of worms and insects. How is that ecologically meaningful, especially with such a small sample size?

    While there is a need for greater efficiency in the chemicals and methods of modern day farming, this "study" proves nothing. If anything, it shows that anyone who buys "organic" crops is getting ripped off. After all, if "organic" farming is so much more efficient (get a load of how they caculated that!) why do they cost more at the store!?

    This [junkscience.com], and other garbage science, is debunked on a regular basis at JunkScience.com [junkscience.com]
    • After all, if "organic" farming is so much more efficient (get a load of how they caculated that!) why do they cost more at the store!?

      The same way a car that is more "fuel-efficient" costs more than one that is not. The study used efficiency in the proper, (energy-input)/(product output) sense. This has nothing to do with economics, it's called "science". Go read a highschool physics textbook and get back to us.

    • I may get flamed for this but, I don't know if I trust a source that cant even get the first sentence of their article right. I would tend to believe the organic peoples results over a guy who cant write an english sentence. Just a thought.

    • I went and looked at JunkScience.com. As a working scientist I am always on the lookout for sites I can refer people to that debunk bad work. I had a hunch about the quality of this site from the tone of the post, but being the enquiring type I am off I went. JunkScience seems very selective in the issues it describes as examples of junk. I looked at the sites definitions of who uses "JunkScience", and was entertained to read that gun-control advocates did, but not anit-gun control advocates. I have seen statistics from both lobbies that are flawed. I fear "JunkScience" is a blatantly political site that has a (not very) hidden agenda. The point is to reinforce political views, not debunk bad statistical practice. For an exmaple of a site that does demolish bad science try http://www.badastronomy.com/ This is the sort of tenor I would expect from a site genuinely concerned with debunking the abuse of science. Compare and contrast.
      • thanks... junkscience seemed so promising a concept... but then I went and looked at it. Man, why can't people just get things straight without adding in their politics? And usually a high level of indignation ("the amphetamine of the emotions"TM)

  • Agriculture is an ~8,000 year old undertaking. Most of the changes in agriculture have occured in the last hundred years. In that time much of the arable land has been developed or paved over. We have increasing food production demands and a decreasing quantity of land with which to produce food on. Hence the need for food science.

    Brief segue: I read an article online [maybe here?] about research for food/air/water/waste systems for a mission to Mars. The major requirement is that the systems on the spaceship must use the waste from the other systems to minimize resources used and to keep the human cargo alive for the entire trip. Planet earth can be thought of as a space ship--and it has [bfi.org]--and that puts everthing into a more clear perspective.

    Will our spaceship be able to sustain its human cargo? Our current system of chemo-geneto-monoculture guarantees high yields for now, but has problems of its own. For example, monoculture requires high levels of fertilizers. Most chemical fertilizers have a chloride content in the teens percentagewise--eventually the salt content in the soil will become high enough to render the soil infertile. The lack of rotting organic matter in the soil causes the soil to hold very little water, which calls for additives to increase water holding. Other posters have pointed out the production costs which are borne by the rest of society--such as fertilizer runoff and cross breeding by GM crops--so I won't elaborate on that. There is also the practice of using Roundup-ready GM crops which can survive high doses of that product. What happens to that soil once the GM crops are banned or if Monsanto pulls the plug on that product? The soil becomes poisonous and incapable of growing any crops.

    There is only one system of agriculture that employs sustainability in the heart of its philosophy: organic. Yes, it is labor intensive. Yes, it is expensive. However it does appear to be the only way to travel. Call me a hippy or engage in whatever ad hominem attack that your threatened sensibilities deem necessary, but don't raid my crops when your farming methods fail.

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