I'm not anti-organic, but there are a couple of good arguments against organic food. First the end product is pretty much identical nutrition-wise. Second, organic produce requires more land, so it's unclear whether that scales to feed all people. And third, many "organic" pesticides are not shown to be better for the environment than the non-organic alternatives.
Personally I think we could achieve more by picking up some ideas from organic farming (e.g. more diversity to combat pests, better preservation of the soil) without demonizing all advances in agriculture like improved fertilizers or GMOs.
> First the end product is pretty much identical nutrition-wise.
In my own experience, organic fruits and vegetables at least taste much better.
> Second, organic produce requires more land, so it's unclear whether that scales to feed all people.
This isn't strictly true. In practice it has been, but it's not inherent to organic production in general but rather how it's been carried out so far. The agricultural system Permaculture addresses this directly and can yield on par with conventional farming.
> And third, many "organic" pesticides are not shown to be better for the environment than the non-organic alternatives.
This too isn't a strict requirement in organic farming, but I guess I'm arguing semantics here. To be more clear, non-conventional farming doesn't require pesticides.
I suspect the correlation runs the other way. Farmers willing to go through the efforts of producing higher quality produce are more likely to also go through the steps to get that produce certified organic. Not because it improves the quality per se, but because it lets them charge more.
Comparing best case scenario organic farming as it might be done in the future with worst case scenario conventional farming methods is not particularly fair.
You're right, I wasn't clear. There are already farms producing food using permaculture systems, but I meant rather that it's not the majority of what you hear about for what is organic.
A third point against "organic" is that with foreign imports it only means the seller told the import company it was "organic". So foreign food producers just say their stuff is "organically grown", even if it was smothered in pesticides, pumped full of steroids etc, because then they get to claim a premium too.
Lack of consistent standards, or authority to enforce mean it's essentially a rubber stamp.
> So foreign food producers just say their stuff is "organically grown", even if it was smothered in pesticides
Organically grown products are usually smothered in pesticides, since “organic” doesn't prohibit pesticides, just the more targeted and effective ones, forcing quantity to make up for quality.
They are now growing potatoes in the Egyptian desert, to fill demand for organic potatoes in Germany. Organic is not automatically better for the environment.
Imho the problem with GMO is patents on gene sequences.
I don't see how altering plants to produce chemicals is more dangerous than introducing new chemicals produced in a lab. We do the latter all the time, most chemicals we use in industrial processes are basically untested for safety (e.g. look at all the additives in plastics or textiles). GMOs can help reduce the need to pesticides and fertilizers so their use can help the environment. But due to overblown fears even completely harmless modifications like introducing new colors of flowers are treated as if they were literally the devil [1].
As with all new techniques it's probably good to be careful and test things for long term adverse effects, but the kneejerk reaction of GMO=dangerous does more harm than good.
> The problem with GMOs is that you can skip to dangerous islands of viability that would be impossible with standard breeding.
I don't think that's true. GMO only provides an average of 5% more production in the developed world, and that's what I've read from the studies cited on the Monsanto website, so presumably the studies which put them on the best light possible. It's a clear increase of revenue and production but it's not a game changer revolution either.
Yeah there's a weird logical disconnect amongs the people that Taleb would call IYI "Intellectual Yet Idiots", many of which subscribe to mainstream left-progressive politics.
X is bad for natural diversity. X has the potential to make it much easier to produce enough food to feed people. X might result in all insects, in particular bees, dying. The biggest danger of X is that it could trigger a positive feedback loop, a runaway process that ruins the world. Although X also happens naturally albeit at a much slower rate, we don't have enough understanding of X to ensure it's safe.
If X == "global warming", then X is bad. If X == "GMOs", then X is good. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I work for a company that has sibling companies that do GMO work.
I myself feel like there are plenty of legit discussions to have about GMOs, yet we cant have those discussions because of the startlingly large number of people that think GMOs will mutate YOU.
It is refreshing to see a comment on the topic that doesn't trigger a reflex laugh/sob.
Personally I think we could achieve more by picking up some ideas from organic farming (e.g. more diversity to combat pests, better preservation of the soil) without demonizing all advances in agriculture like improved fertilizers or GMOs.