What is with this organic bashing/ignorance?

I know exactly what you mean. i used to work produce at Safeway and damn did people get on my nerves.i hat it when someone cant tell the difference between organic and non-organic foods. in true honesty, working in the food retail industry sucks.

 

And some of the credit lain upon him are saving 1/7 of the worlds population from starvation. Nor is implying that all cancer is enviornmental or due to changes in agriculture responsible.

Of course with the major changes with in agriculture over the past century, their are going to be problems. Is our system of agriculture ideal? No.

Is it better then the world undergoing massive famines, with half of it consisting of slash and burn cropping. Obviously.

If overpopulation you mean creating a sustainable method of providing food for the exploding population, then yes, Borlaug is also responsible for that.

Is the alternative massive famines? Ludicrous.

And yes, I enjoy gardening. Right now, I'm in a place where I cannot grow my food, as are a large population of the earth. Like most people who live in cities.

Food is abundent and plentiful in the US, I'm not going to starve because I live in the city now. Most of the people in the world who suffer from malnurtition are farmers and other laborers.

This is because they do not have access to sufficient trade networks to produce diversity in their food. Not because they don't have soil and water and sun. They don't have modern tools and methods to effectively produce and distribute large varities of food.

 

Of course it's propaganda, but so is everything he spews.

 

It's hard to present evidence to those who won't listen to anything that not xeroxed from the back of a bar coaster.

 

oh, wow...great argument against growing organically and consuming locally...

 

alright, so where in the part of boston i live in, will i be able to grow enough food that will sustain not only my lifestyle, but my family...please. share the secret to growing enormous amounts of food throughout the year, while dealing with the type of seasonal changes we have.

we had a tomato plant; what we got off of it lasted maybe - MAYBE 2 weeks. thats pretty much all the room we had to grow. so, where am i supposed to be able to grow enough food when the land i live on is pretty much all landfill. it aint happening, period!

 

well, if you really want to know how it's done, there are people right here on this board who grow food organically and consume it locally in urban areas. if you're just looking for excuses not to try, i'm sure you'll find people here to help with that too.

 

i don't need excuses.

i know what reality is

 

I wasn't reffering to you.

And I already presented my argument. Organic farming is in no way a viable alternative to replacing our present agriculture system on a large scale.

The alternative is to use much more farm land to meet the larger populations growing needs. Your knee jerk let them use their lawns is a very 'let them eat cake' response.

If you want to grow your own food, that's fine. Not everyone has the same priorities you do, and if that upsets you, you're going to feel frustrated a lot.

 

you've got that right. i live in a culture where the majority of people think that growing their own food is beneath them, that wastes incredible amounts of energy and resources driving and flying food all over the planet, and where people would rather spend their 'leisure time' entertaining themselves in a wasteful, plastic society than being concerned with feeding themselves. the reason large populations have ended up suffering from malnutrition is because they live out of balance with nature. they allow their populations to spin out of control and they destroy their ecosystems. you can't blame organic farming for that, and conventional farming won't rescue them either...it just seemed to be a fix to those who didn't see the larger trends.

and it's not just about the pesticides you know. the world doesn't have an endless source of materials to produce artificial nitrate fertilizers, but we do have a problem finding a place to dispose of our organic waste products every day. it doesn't make any kind of sense to keep dredging rock up out of the earth, barging and trucking it to plants throughout the world, and producing nitrate fertilizers with heavy toxic wastes as byproducts when we could use what we throw away down drains and in landfills every day to grow our food. of course we couldn't stop our dependence on conventional growing worldwide instantly, but we could and should gradually make the change to a wiser use of our resources.

 

Large portions of the population have always undergone major famines. Throughout human history. It's not a current phenomenon, and has nothing to do with being in or out of balence with nature. Droughts, wars, and crop disease, changes in weather, political instability. These are the reasons for famine. Not being 'out of touch with nature.'

As general health and food supply increases, so does population. A larger population will have ecological impacts. While we should focus on mitigating those as much as possible, it will happen.

The solution is to use new efficient methods to be able to sustain and increase global food production while mitigating ecological patterns. The best way to do this is to use the most technological and efficient means possible for agricultural output.

By the way, the problems of starvation in the world are not caused by there not being enough food anyway. Their caused by distribution problems.

For example, a Farmer is growing wheat in Kenya. He has more then enough wheat to feed himself and his family.

But he cannot sell the wheat. Export subsidies on European wheat has made it much cheaper in Kenya then local wheat. His wheat rots, and his family is impoverished.

Export subsidies are a major problem.

Infrastructure is a major problem. There is much food being offered from Asian nations to help Myanmar, which has a major problem with starvation due to the country being pillaged by the military government. But Myanmar doesn't have the roads or refrigeration to accept this aid.

Their people lack the farming tools, fertilizers, and equipment to grow enough diverse food for themselves.

Rather then blame all this on people getting away from what's natural, or whatever your point is, we need to find a way to help make agriculture more efficient.

Organic food, as it is here, is a fad. It won't help make agriculture more efficient, quite the opposite if it was used on large scale, it isn't any healthier for you, and is overpriced.

It'll go the way of The Locomotion.

 

i don't need less meat - i wish i could have more, and i get plenty of veggies and fruits, nuts.... i'll put it out there that i eat way more veggies than any vegetarian i know in my life - family and friends; excluding people on this site because i don't really know you, nor do i care to know the ins and outs of your whole diet each and every day.

 

Going to Bali does sound like a good idea.

But Bali is a sequestered Island. The population there hasn't grown rapidly, and they live in a place that is an island paradise. Bali's ideal for rice, fish, and fruit.

Most of the world however, has a growing population, and cannot live in an ideal place for agriculture and fishing.

As for those assumptions.

Of course a farmer has the option of growing several crops. It's just more efficient for him to specialize. This has been going on for thousands of years in agrairian socities.

What's different now, is the fact that trade networks influence the prices of crops. As long as the nation of Kenya is willing to import grain, it's grain prices will reflect the grower. In one sense, it helps them to buy as much cheap grain for their population as possible to feed growing populations. On the other end, no farmers can sell (not export) their crops.

And wheat will rot if it's not sold fast enough, which is the new dynamic. These new dynamics (global markets aren't always positive. such as in this case.) if trade policies were in place to prevent export subsidies on food crops, this could be controlled.

 

And you'd have to come up with some pretty concrete proof for me to believe anything close to your apocalyptic mass starvation claims.

There are problems with monoculturing. There are also huge dietary problems with eating food crops that only grow in your local regions. Such as the large number of case of blindness associated vitamin a deficiency in Southeast Asia.

To say that in other times in human history we had sustainable farming would be inaccurate. Claiming that half the worlds population will die because of plot diseases sounds like a scenario those hoping for the rapture would claim.

 

Yeah, I actually left to pick up my roomates broken car halfway in the middle of my response. Appologies.

Kenya still relies on markets, and I agree. Kenyan food does need to be kept local. One of my major problems with our current agriculture system is export subsidies on crops.

Artificially lowering the prices on them, so they can be sold cheaper overseas then their own local food can. It's a way of pushing off excess and lining farmers pockets, and it's wrong.

Actually, it's evil, IMHO, as the effects it causes on foreign markets are horrible.

I don't think however, that your apoclyptic claims of massive famines are reasonable.

 

we have to die. we're just too sentimental and sweet to allow people to go naturally. that's all. it's not stupid, it's sweet and mentally deficient.