Food: Organic vs Sustainable
Seed Magazine starts by questioning at our shopping habits. Organic food at Trader Joe's, Whole Foods and the like certainly is presented well, and seems less prone to spoil as soon as we get it home than some other supermarkets. But can we really shop our way to better agriculture?
Unfortunately, what may have begun as a revolt against fake food or, for many, the horrors of concentrated animal feed lots, has given way to a culture that increasingly fetishizes organic, natural, and whole foods with little agreement on what such terms even mean, outside of an emphatic devotion to what they are not: They aren't in any way related to industrial-scale farms or big-box grocery chains; chemical herbicides or pesticides; biotechnology or its subgenre, genetic engineering. And by those criteria, they are deemed to be safer, more nutritious, and less damaging to the environment.
Nutritionally, there is no clear evidence that organic foods trump conventional ones. ...
Nor are they part of a plan for sustainable farming. And we can't escape our expanding population and resulting overconsumption:
Today, agriculture--thanks to deforestation, nitrous oxide, methane from cattle and rice paddies--is considered by many experts to be an overlooked environmental disaster. Speaking at a special Earth Institute symposium earlier this month on how to improve global agriculture, economist Jeffrey Sachs told the audience, "Agriculture is the main driver of most ecological problems on the planet. We are literally eating away the other species on the planet."
Sometimes, the tomatoes at our little super taste like...no taste at all.
Some are marked as 'organic'...still on the stem. Taste better.
but hell, they are taking veggies and infusing them with genes to colorize them.
has nothing to do with taste or nutrients.
we have a food problem.
BUT WHO IS IN CHARGE?
November 6, 2009 11:40 PM | Reply | Permalink
Thanks for raising this issue, though I think this is a distraction from the true ecological monster in the room which is commodity corn and the strangle-hold it has over the vast majority of our food supply system.
I found the referenced Seed article to be more than a little dismissive and overly combative in how it approaches why one would choose to eat local, organic fruits, meats and vegetables versus the "chemically-induced" food from "current guidelines" that the author appears to prefer.
Further, he discounts the ecological impact of more sustainable practices because our food distribution systems are global. Those are two totally different arguments and conflating the two is intectually dishonest in my book. Organic farmers are changing the discussion from rape, pillage and plunder to a more old school sensibility.
How those goods get to market doesn't make that paradigm shift some sort of exercise in mass sublimation.
November 7, 2009 11:33 AM | Reply | Permalink
Years ago I read in Rodale's "Organic Gardening" a piece about ag in terms of work calories v produce calories. Traditional rice growing in Asia netted 50 calories of food for every one calorie of work. The Milpas in Southern Mexico (traditional managed slash & burn) netted 20 calories for each work calorie. US mechanized agriculture "gained" 1 calorie for every 50 calories of work.
Obviously agribusiness isn't sustainable over the long haul. However, civilization as we know it is structured around this enormous negative expenditure (growth capitalism?), so trading it in for positive efficiency is nothing less than sedition. Help stamp out potatoism!
I like to fantasize about the impact of a significant revolutionary movement to replace our lawns with vegetable gardens on our economy. With 32 million acres of turf grass in the US, it is our largest irrigated crop. We spend around $1,200 per household, or $28.9 billion annually, in lawn care. Somewhere between 50% and 70% of urban water consumption is poured on our lawns. We use three times as much pesticides per acre on lawns than we use on ag crops. We burn 58 million gallons of gasoline mowing lawns. So what if those lawns were converted to, say, raised-bed gardens?
I've always loved the ending of Voltaire's "Candide." All the characters of the adventure, including some that he had killed-off in the novel, ended up in Istanbul "tending their gardens."
November 7, 2009 2:29 PM | Reply | Permalink
Donal, this is an important issue. I think the linked article makes a very good point. The author does not dispute that organic farming practices have some value, but instead seeks to point out that those who see "organic" as the answer are missing a couple of much bigger issues.
Local and sustainable are more important than "organic". And yield matters, as our population continues to explode. So I think the point is that a big part of the "organic" movement is just a backlash, part of the "science is bad" mindset, when, in fact, science (and its common sense application) is probably the only way to save the planet.
-- ARG
November 7, 2009 2:36 PM | Reply | Permalink
um, those veggies appear to be glowing.........
November 7, 2009 4:30 PM | Reply | Permalink
hahahahaah. SEE I TRIED TO WARN EVERYBODY.
BUT WHAT IS A MOTHER TO DO?
HAHAHA
November 7, 2009 6:00 PM | Reply | Permalink
A little goosing of the saturation slider in Photoshop is my guess.
November 7, 2009 6:53 PM | Reply | Permalink
We have some friends who bought some land from an Amish farmer - and on it the Amish are building them a weekend cabin. But the neat thing is they are leaving the majority of the land they purchased to be farmed by the Amish guy - who could not afford to pay for all the land he needs, but neither could he afford to live if he sold all the land he needed to sell. It's a unique arrangement, but our friends are getting to know the Amish. And it's a win-win both ways! They did it to support sustainable agriculture. And this something more of us might consider.
November 7, 2009 4:41 PM | Reply | Permalink