Organic Farming is Actually Worse For Climate Change (technologyreview.com) 280
Organic practices can reduce climate pollution produced directly from farming -- which would be fantastic if they didn't also require more land to produce the same amount of food. From a report: Clearing additional grasslands or forests to grow enough food to make up for that difference would release far more greenhouse gas than the practices initially reduce, a new study in Nature Communications finds. Other recent research has also concluded that organic farming produces more climate pollution than conventional practices when the additional land required is taken into account. In the new paper, researchers at the UK's Cranfield University took a broad look at the question by analyzing what would happen if all of England and Wales shifted entirely to these practices.
The good news is it would cut the direct greenhouse-gas emissions from livestock by 5% and from growing crops by 20% per unit of production. The bad news: it would slash yields by around 40%, forcing hungry Britons to import more food from overseas. If half the land used to meet that spike in demand was converted from grasslands, which store carbon in plant tissues, roots, and soil, it would boost overall greenhouse-gas emissions by 21%. Among other things, organic farming avoids the use of synthetic fertilizers, pesticides, and genetically modified organisms, all of which can boost the amount of crops produced per acre. Instead, organic farmers rely on things like animal manure and compost, and practices such as crop rotation, which involves growing different plants throughout the year to improve soil health. The study notes that these biological inputs produce fewer emissions than nitrogen-based synthetic fertilizers, notably including the highly potent greenhouse gas nitrous oxide. Separately, the use of manure and longer crop rotations can increase the amount of carbon stored in soil.
The good news is it would cut the direct greenhouse-gas emissions from livestock by 5% and from growing crops by 20% per unit of production. The bad news: it would slash yields by around 40%, forcing hungry Britons to import more food from overseas. If half the land used to meet that spike in demand was converted from grasslands, which store carbon in plant tissues, roots, and soil, it would boost overall greenhouse-gas emissions by 21%. Among other things, organic farming avoids the use of synthetic fertilizers, pesticides, and genetically modified organisms, all of which can boost the amount of crops produced per acre. Instead, organic farmers rely on things like animal manure and compost, and practices such as crop rotation, which involves growing different plants throughout the year to improve soil health. The study notes that these biological inputs produce fewer emissions than nitrogen-based synthetic fertilizers, notably including the highly potent greenhouse gas nitrous oxide. Separately, the use of manure and longer crop rotations can increase the amount of carbon stored in soil.
Just stop eating animals (Score:2, Insightful)
Since animal meat production takes up 3/4 of land and 60% of crop production, the easiest way to reclaim that land for food production for people is to just stop eating animals.
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To paraphrase that French lady who totally didn't wind up headless, "let them eat bugs".
Guessing the outcome would be about the same.
Re: Just stop eating animals (Score:2)
Not from a Climate Crisis perspective ;P
Re: Just stop eating animals (Score:3, Insightful)
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I sincerely think that isn't way to solve these problems, right now: I think it's only a matter of when the planet Earth will be inhabitable to humans - the "think about the children" argument inescapably implies in "stop eating meat": question of coherency...
Re: Just stop eating animals (Score:5, Informative)
We don't have to stop eating meat to save the planet. It would help the planet and our individual health if we'd just cut down from eating 10 oz of meat per day (on average) to say 1-2 oz. (28-56 grams) of meat per day. This could be accomplished a number of ways. No meat until dinner. No meat 2-3 days a week...whatever your preference. You'll be healthier and you can still piss off those PETA idiots.
Re: Just stop eating animals (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, you're assuming
1) meat is inherently unhealthy (jury's still out on that)
2) the hole left in the diet by not decreasing meat consumption wouldn't be filled with something worse (like processed/prepared snack foods) -- my money is on that being the outcome. Remove meat, it gets replaced with bullshit
It's also a very, very big ask to tell people what they can and cannot eat -- the amount of political resistance that effort would encounter would be jaw dropping. As long as we're still using coal/oil vs nuclear, dietary adjustments are a drop in the bucket.
Re: Just stop eating animals (Score:4, Interesting)
Well, you're assuming
1) meat is inherently unhealthy (jury's still out on that) 2) the hole left in the diet by not decreasing meat consumption wouldn't be filled with something worse (like processed/prepared snack foods) -- my money is on that being the outcome. Remove meat, it gets replaced with bullshit
It's also a very, very big ask to tell people what they can and cannot eat -- the amount of political resistance that effort would encounter would be jaw dropping. As long as we're still using coal/oil vs nuclear, dietary adjustments are a drop in the bucket.
Let's say that we are all forced to go vegan. Let's say in their infinite wisdom, the vegan mafia is right - with an incredible savings in land, and the incredible health benefits allowing the newly vegn population to live much longer, and with the newly vegan populations being overall more healthy.....
We'll just overpopulate the world more and more.
The answer is not going vegan. Shall we make the world into a planetwide version of India?
Re: Just stop eating animals (Score:5, Insightful)
We'll just overpopulate the world more and more.
This is not supported by evidence. As people have more resources, and their standard of living rises, they have fewer children, not more.
Most animals expand to fill the available environment. Modern humans do not.
Shall we make the world into a planetwide version of India?
India has a birthrate of 2.33 and it is rapidly declining. It is even lower in prosperous urban areas such as Mumbai and Bengaluru.
Re: Just stop eating animals (Score:5, Insightful)
We'll just overpopulate the world more and more.
This is not supported by evidence. As people have more resources, and their standard of living rises, they have fewer children, not more.
Most animals expand to fill the available environment. Modern humans do not.
Yeah, and you just made the assumption that everyone's standard of living will increase. Explain how veganism will increase everyone's standard of living. Here's the world population clock, https://www.worldometers.info/... [worldometers.info] You need to tell those people that they are wrong, You will notice that while it is impossible to give an exact number because it changes as you watch it, but it is pretty clear that we are adding well over twice as many people over time than are dying. So far we've added over 114 million people this year, with about 48 million deaths. Canada has only 37 million people. It'll be two Canada's by the end of the year.
That's my point in all of this. Humans are so intent on proving Malthus wrong, that they speak of declining birth rate while we are placing over twice as many humans on earth every day as are leaving it. Sustainable? Going vegan will help? We might find out. Let's go eat worms?
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That's my point in all of this. Humans are so intent on proving Malthus wrong, that they speak of declining birth rate while we are placing over twice as many humans on earth every day as are leaving it.
Meh. The annual world birthrate is declining, not increasing. The only reason the population is going up is because of the age distribution. We're already on track to hit peak population about 2050 and then start declining. Granted that we will need to deal with a peak population of over 10B, but the trends are quite clear that as standards of living rise (and there's no reason to think that won't continue, unless climate change slams us really hard), the long-term population problem is already solved.
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I"ve seen some documentaries that seemed to indicate that humans came to be the top of the food chain and grew our larger brains, etc...largely from becoming MEAT eaters.
Too much of anything for the most part is bad for you, but we evolved the way we did, IMHO, largely due to meat consumption....so, it can't be all bad for you.
On the other hand, I'm still trying to find a single "essential" carb out there that humans need.
Re: Just stop eating animals (Score:4, Insightful)
I think we can't "save" the planet, but stopping to eat meat is necessary to make the planet habitable for our kids: argue otherwise seems plain egoism to me.
Check your own ego. If you are so concerned about going vegan because of population pressure, why on earth are you having children?
Re:Just stop eating animals (Score:5, Insightful)
Myth.
Raise meat in pastures, not CAFOs. This will not only be more sustainable but also produce healthier food.
Yes it will be more expensive to the consumer god help us. But the ecological problem is not meat. It is cheap meat.
Re: Just stop eating animals (Score:2)
Citation needed
Re:Just stop eating animals (Score:5, Insightful)
Animals can live on land you can't farm (Score:3)
you can pasture cows in forests, foothills and regions of the southwest that lack much distributable water and they do just fine. Can't grow crops there.
Wrong (Score:5, Interesting)
Since animal meat production takes up 3/4 of land and 60% of crop production,
Lots of cattle/sheep/lamb ranching happens on land that isn't really suitable for farming anyway, and they are mostly eating plants that are naturally occurring.
Also farming can introduce a lot of bad chemicals into the surrounding ecosystem, ranches are much less impactful on the area outside of the ranch.
Crops are the worst way to use land, but we do all need to eat something... hopefully eventually most crop production can be moved inside using hydroponics, and some of the cropland can be taken over by farm more green cattle raising.
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I believe you're 100% wrong. Crop land is an excellent use of land when it's done correctly and sustainably. Hydroponics indoors requires an enormous amount of power. "Green cattle raising" still uses an enormous amount of water per useful calorie produced compared to pla
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We count natural rainfall in water usage.
Incorrect (Score:4, Informative)
"Lots of cattle/sheep/lamb ranching happens on land that isn't really suitable for farming anyway, and they are mostly eating plants that are naturally occurring."
That's not correct at all. At least for cattle ranching (I'm not as familiar with what is common in sheep ranching) the vast majority of American cattle don't graze to any meaningful extent anymore, they are packed into feed lots and fed corn and soy which do indeed need to be grown on farm land. This is why if you go into a Whole Foods or similar grocery store you'll see a separate section in their butcher department for "grass fed beef" that costs substantially more than their conventional beef.
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>the vast majority of American cattle don't graze to any meaningful extent anymore, they are packed into feed lots and fed corn and soy
Thankfully, the rest of the world doesn't follow the american model
Re:Incorrect (Score:4, Informative)
What you state may occur, but reality is most of the time cattle is left out on cheap/free land like BLM to graze, and are gathered for birthing, harsh winter, moving to different land to let this one heal, or time to slaughter.
At those times they pack them and feed them. Why? Because it's cheaper.
In places with less cheap/free land available to graze on they would do as you suggest, but most the time when you see cattle as you describe it's because they've gathered them.
Dairy cattle are different as they need to be milked 2-3 times a day. And what's funny about that, where I grew up huge fields were given to cattle, but the cows congregate in one area and turn it into a mud/poop pit.
So why waste the space if the cows rarely go more than 50-75 meters from troughs. We even try getting them to disperse and setup salt licks and the like far away.
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The obvious long term solution is to simply stabilize population. Exponential population growth is not sustainable. Period. But any growth is ultimately unsustainable. At some point you reach every spot of land shoulder to shoulder in people stacked 3 high.
If we can stabilize population, the advance of technology; I'm optimistic, will be enough to sustain current levels.
It might be beneficial in the long term to even reduce it, preferably by simply voluntarily reducing the birthrate to just below replenish
Re:Wrong (Score:4, Informative)
Luckily, the population growth curves are flattening nicely, as more and more people find they don't need lots of kids. In the last thirty years or so, growth rates worldwide have dropped by half. If more of the Third World were pulled into the First World, the population growth would almost disappear....
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The obvious long term solution is to simply stabilize population. Exponential population growth is not sustainable.
Continuous population growth is not sustainable, and it self-restricts to carry capacity. Carry capacity is sort of gated by employment availability, so minimum wage increases can control that (although I'm starting to re-examine that theory, as I've come up with new theories on productivity in reference to minimum wage that are likely in conflict--and my new theories of productivity are more-likely than my population theory to be correct if there's a conflict).
Re:Wrong (Score:4, Informative)
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Re:What? Cattle raising is not "GREEN" (Score:4, Interesting)
Who modded parent up? Another person who can't accept the reality that eating meat really is not good for the environment?
I'm getting really tired of you ignorant assholes prattling about your religious convictions that have no basis in reality at all.
In North America, you have completely forgotten the existence of the bison. When humans are not meddling with the Earth, absolutely gigantic herds of bison are the natural state of things. Bison are nothing but cows that are 30% bigger than domesticated cows. Whether anyone eats them or not, they were there, marching across the continent, consuming vast quantities of grass, burping and farting and pooping on everything. There were more than 100 million of them, by best estimates. Which is higher than the number of beef cattle on the continent today. If you add in dairy cattle, there are somewhat more cattle than there were bison, but the weight of bison still exceeded the weight of cattle today.
So stop your stupid blathering. Beef cattle have zero impact on the precious fucking environment. We know this because thousands of years of bison caused no climate change at all.
Re:What? Cattle raising is not "GREEN" (Score:5, Informative)
There were more than 100 million of them, by best estimates. Which is higher than the number of beef cattle on the continent today.
Citation required. You just make up numbers. The number of cattle [cornell.edu] in the US and Canada exceeds 10^8.
The number of bison pre-Europeans was 30 million. [pbs.org]
Unfortunately the mods around here don't check sources.
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The problem with a vegetarian diet, is the amount of work is needed to make sure we are getting the proper nutrients. Can you do it, yes there are a lot of vegetarians who have a proper diet where they are getting the right food into their bodies for them to function properly. However for most vegetarians, they are either very overweight from too much carbs in their diet, or skinny with a prematurely aged appearance, as they are not getting enough protean in their diet.
Most people in first world nations
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This is just straight up wrong info. Not one single piece of scientific research corroborates your position. Omnivores are deficient in their diet in virtually every nutrient category except protein and fat, both of which they could stand to eat much less of, which is one reason the supplement industry is so big and why most people are recommended by their doctors to take vitamins (which mostly don't work). Humans the world over have been doing fine on vegetarian and vegan diets for millennia. Half of Ch
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The countries eat things that naturally are not available in other countries. So you are comparing apples with white kraut (cabbage).
Unless you have a medical condition or do close to extreme sports, supplements and vitamiens are completely unnecessary.
Re:Just stop eating animals (Score:4, Informative)
Humans the world over have been doing fine on vegetarian and vegan diets for millennia.
Darwin's Finches.
Omnivores are deficient in their diet in virtually every nutrient category except protein and fat, both of which they could stand to eat much less of
Scientific research on cherry-picked data and poor methodology has always implicated fat. Modern research keeps suggesting fat can be a large component of your diet but starch needs to not be so high (25%-40%, not 70%!).
I've always been amused at how very balanced meat-based food is. Hell, even fast food, processed food, is nutrient-balanced. A McDonalds hamburger usually doesn't have its full nutrition balance listed; digging around enough finds a decent amount of most vitamins and minerals, excluding Vitamin C. Plant-based foods are often devoid of everything except one or two major nutrients (8%DV in 200kcal is considered "high" in a nutrient), or have a lot of nutrients at 0.01%DV (whole-grain wheat is like that).
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The problem with a vegetarian diet, is the amount of work is needed to make sure we are getting the proper nutrients. Can you do it, yes there are a lot of vegetarians who have a proper diet where they are getting the right food into their bodies for them to function properly. However for most vegetarians, they are either very overweight from too much carbs in their diet, or skinny with a prematurely aged appearance, as they are not getting enough protean in their diet.
Sure, and all the meat eaters are rosy-cheeked pictures of health.... right?
Nope. I've been out on the streets and seen them. The problem isn't vegetarianism, it's lack of basic education and too many companies trying to sell food at the cheapest price possible.
Cooking. It's not difficult, it doesn't need much time.
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But probably not completely. Lots of regions started keeping cattle because of the manure and off course for the traction. That said, we can eat a huge lot less meat.
Clearing additional grasslands or forests to grow ...
That is insane. You don't grow food by killing. People in the western world could learn a lot from the Indians before Columbus arrived. The Indians did not grow food on dedicated fields, they managed their entire environment. So anywhere they went was food. If we really think that food is scarce, we can do a huge lot about it. In our cities, we
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Of course, there were very few of them, so you don't get the technological advances that even let us have this debate. That includes medical techs that stop you dying of disease by the time you're 30 and so forth.
Pulling leaves of lettuce leaves it open to disease itself, so can kill the plant. And if you don't use pesticides, they end up full of parasites that render them inedible anyway if you grow enough in one place to sustain people. Well, you could devote all your time to looking after those lettuc
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The Indians did not grow food on dedicated fields, they managed their entire environment.
Yes they did. You are mixing up north american normadic prairie indians with the rest of them. Most indian tribes lived in settlements, small villages and cities, basically on a level of the roman empire. They lacked metal tools, especially iron. They had scripts, schools, fields anything you can imagine. They died mostly from diseases. Wikipedia is your friend.
Re: Just stop eating animals (Score:3)
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Agreed! People taste much better
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Since animal meat production takes up 3/4 of land and 60% of crop production, the easiest way to reclaim that land for food production for people is to just stop eating animals.
We could still eat a few animals. There's just no need to have a portion of animal with everything .
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No need? That is for me to decide.
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No need? That is for me to decide.
No, it’s not. You may desire to have meat with every meal (and I sympathize, as I do it and have no intent to stop), but there is, strictly speaking, no need.
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Only if you're redefining "need" to mean the same thing as "want". The rest of us who speak English understand that they are two different words that mean two different things.
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Since animal meat production takes up 3/4 of land and 60% of crop production, the easiest way to reclaim that land for food production for people is to just stop eating animals.
p. No.
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Re-read the parent post - you're the only one saying that people would be killed off. People can die of natural causes while a solution is transitioned to (eg. birth limits).
Forget grasslands (Score:2)
Re: Forget grasslands (Score:3)
From the Nature article:
Organic farming might contribute to this through decreased use of farm inputs and increased soil carbon sequestration, but it might also exacerbate emissions through greater food production elsewhere to make up for lower organic yields.
So they are talking about the transport carbon. I think forests whip grasslands for sequestration. Not disagreeing with your point btw.
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The ones with heavy metal ground contaminants and the like? I suspect they'd not pass safety inspections.
Plus, the land most likely isn't great for agriculture (which is why it has been rated for industry). And those really don't cover the excess space that's needed to expand agriculture to the extent needed (on good land).
It's a general fallacy that intensive farming uses 'bad practice'. In fact, the more I've looked into it, the more I see industrial farming adopting organic practice that makes sense (
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In b4 "but food waste!" (Score:2)
Food waste matters, and is worth combating. But it's a classic wicked problem. If we can somehow solve it by changing mass behavor, we can logically make numerous other behavioral changes that also ameliorate climate change.
Not news (Score:2)
That's not the point of Organic farming (Score:2)
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It fails in that regard as well, though. Organic farming still uses pesticides, just less effective ones. Whether that really makes the food any safer than the standard approach is not fully understood.
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I would say part of the idea is to reduce the use of pesticides, which seems like a good idea given the studies on the reductions in insect populations. Another part is to reduce the use of oil-based fertilizers. Even if, as seems to be the case in this study, the use of organic techniques leads to an overall increase in carbon emissions, it may still be better than potentially eliminating a huge part of the food chain, not to mention pollinators.
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Also, pyrethrins vs pyrethroids.
Oddly, the organic farming industry says the natural pyrethrins are better for you, as they don't stay in the ground (or in your system) as long.
Pyrethroids do stay around longer before they biodegrade (about 30 days, compared to days for pyrethrins). This can result in lesser spray for pyrethroids (synthetics pesticide).
The kicker is that for mammals, pyrethrins (the organic pesticide) are toxic at spray doses, and tend to bioaccumulate. Pyrethroids (the synthetic pesticid
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Sorry but non-organic farming also uses copper sulfate.
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No, they're not misinformed. Many of the current organic pesticides are a lot worse for humans (and other mammal groups) than the synthetic.
Pyrethroids and Pyrethrins for example. Both widely used (the organic Pyrethrins are toxic to mammals, the synthetic Pyrethroids are not).
I wish Spock were here (Score:2)
He'd explain to the grass-fed Khans out there to stop with the two dimensional thinking. Why couldn't you have a large apartment type building made into a multi-level farm? Same amount of space with many times the amount of food.
These buildings could be specially designed to collect solar energy and rainwater.
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There is a carbon impact that you need to factor in. Such as the fact a Multi Level farm will have areas that will be covered to stop sunlight, or rain from hitting it. Unless you have mechanical pumps to move water (just as bad as irrigation today). Unless you want to attach magnets to cows feet, and have them in some hyperbolic 3D building. As most animals have spent the last dozen of millions of years, working in a plane 2d type of environment.
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I was talking about non-animal organic farming.
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He'd explain to the grass-fed Khans out there to stop with the two dimensional thinking. Why couldn't you have a large apartment type building made into a multi-level farm? Same amount of space with many times the amount of food.
These buildings could be specially designed to collect solar energy and rainwater.
And as long as they don't use pesticides, artificial fertilisers or DMA crops that could still be organic. Organic is not about combating climate change, organic is was and always has been about eating as little toxic gunk as possible and not have to worry about e. coli, salmonella and friends.
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Organic farming is full of pesticides. Many of which are far more toxic than the synthetic versions.
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Perhaps in your country, no idea why it is then legally allowed to be called organic.
In Europe organic means organic. Can not be so hard to grasp, so: no pesticides, no herbicides, no artificial fertilizer ... and many more noes. And bottom line the yield is not much less than 'traditional industrial agriculture' nor is the food in the stores significant more expensive.
Fix your laws, so language means what it is supposed to mean.
Re:I wish Spock were here (Score:4, Informative)
What planet are you on? I know Organic farmers throughout Europe (my other half is from a farming family, and we're European).
Almost ALL organic farms use organic pesticides: https://ec.europa.eu/info/food... [europa.eu]
They don't use synthetic pesticides (which are often far less harmful than the organic ones), they use pesticides that are licensed for use in organic farming. You really don't know what organic farming is, from that. Herbicides are a subset of pesticide (pesticide being insecticide and herbicide).
Correct that there's no artificial fertiliser though (though often the organic fertiliser is manure, which often comes from intensively farmed livestock, which amuses farmers intensely).
So, this organic means organic? What on earth do you mean? Of course Organic means organic: It means grown using natural based pesticides and fertilisers. And yes, the yield is much less than intensive farming, as there's a lot less leeway on use of GM products (Bt GM etc.) that themselves reduce pesticide use, and various pesticides that are known to be very efficient and effective.
Farmers I know of that produce both organic AND intensively farmed goods treat organic as a 'cash crop' as margins are a fair bit higher than they are on intensively farmed goods, though both are nutritionally the same.
Fix your actual knowledge of the topic before you start telling anyone to change their language, as you have shown yourself to know nothing at all.
What I find doubly amusing is that your sig says "Unite behind the science". When you've shown yourself to be entirely lacking in any kind of knowledge, most especially the science, that lies behind both industrial and organic farming.
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Read on Pyrethrins (Organic, toxic to mammals at spray doses, has involved human fatalities, used in Organic farming) vs. Pyrethrins (Synthetic, used in intensive farming, has no human fatalities due to toxicity).
You seem to be under the misapprehension that because something is natural, it's therefore safe. Nature's one big job is to kill you if you're not fit. Most of human endeavour has been to stop nature doing what it wants in that regard, and has been quite successful.
You're missing out copper sulph
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Organic 'pesticides' are stuff like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] put in water. Or from tobacco plants.
So done right they are in no way more dangerous. And in most organic guidelines stuff like tobacco is forbidden anyway.
There are all kinds of approved organic pesticides [ecfr.gov], all of which are toxic to humans in high enough doses. Some are more toxic than non-organic ones, others not. A lot has to go awry in either agricultural pipeline to leave several grams of pesticide residue on your dinner table.
And no: the yield is comparable. A huge amount of European farmers, especially the Swiss, are organic or mostly organic farmers.
Basically all German beer is made made from organic grains.
A meta-analysis of 71 studies [academia.edu] comparing European organic and conventional systems (see 2.1 Literature search) found that "organic farming requires 84% more land compared to conventional farming" (see 3.3 Land use). Where are you get
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bollocks
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He'd explain to the grass-fed Khans out there to stop with the two dimensional thinking. Why couldn't you have a large apartment type building made into a multi-level farm?
Where does the light come from for everything below the roof?
Same amount of space with many times the amount of food.
These buildings could be specially designed to collect solar energy and rainwater.
So are you putting solar panels on top to collect energy and then use that for grow lights? Because this building sounds like a big power drain. Collect rain water? That's what rivers do.
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Reality (Score:2)
Like housing, we are going to have to convert to a vertical farming system. Farming subsidies will have to end in order to make it economical though.
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Like housing, we are going to have to convert to a vertical farming system. Farming subsidies will have to end in order to make it economical though.
Subsidies, and exploiting cheap imported foreign labor that is another way of externalizing the costs onto society.
Automation will help a lot with that, at least. The other factor will need to be abundant and inexpensive energy.
I like the idea of hydroponic towers located in dense population areas. It cuts down on the need for transporting the product, and allows for tastier veggies/fruits instead of those optimized for shipping. Year-round production with light/dark cycles optimized for plant growth is an
Another Over population article in disguise (Score:2)
Well, for all you people that feel that way. How about you use yourself and your family as the inspiration for cutting back on overpopulation. And remove yourselves. By the way doom Sayers
Yes, mod parent up! (Score:2)
Breathing causes more CO2 production! So stop breathing people!
Everything should be organic and farmed by robots. Aquaponics should be allowed too. GMO products should be completely banned for sale.
If people starve; so be it. Sorry, but physics is going to limit humanity at some point and the die off will be greater (for humans and everything else.) It's not like you nice people are doing anything to stop the starvation today of 2/7 of humanity despite our excess food production (that is we make more foo
Like UI design, history will repeat itself (Score:3)
People love to "burn it all down" and personally rediscover how things work. Huge progress was made in the 20th century in figuring out how to feed billions of people effectively, and yes there were/are some problems with those methods. But for fun and profit, some folks were keen to throw the baby out with the bath water.
The only real solution is fewer people, and that may soon enough (in any non-teenage sense of time) be a new problem.
It's not all about corporate profits (Score:2, Interesting)
Modern Mythology (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, organic farming is bad for the environment. Similarly water is wet.
Despite modern beliefs, "Organic" does not mean "Better". It doesn't even really mean Organic, but instead is a claim that the food was produced without certain pesticides and fertilizers made from inorganic methods.
Food is full of modern mythology. Most of our food descriptors are not literally true, and have come to represent concepts, many of which are dis-proven.
Organic is supposed to mean 'derived from living organisms'. Which means that all food is organic, with the possible exception of salt.
Similarly, almost all food is processed. Even fruit is washed, often with some kind of cleanser as well.
Most foods labelled "Low X" are actually high X, only being low relative to other versions of the same food (I.e. no one calls water low sodium or low calorie, but they will claim to sell low calorie ice cream and low salt pretzels.)
The general attempt is to imply that foods with these kinds of labelled (organic, unprocessed, low, etc.) are better. But these claims are generally not trustworthy.
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Various initiatives are driven by different reasons. People get confused.
1. Organic -- Intended to be healthier than industrially-farmed produce. (Evidence is iffy but that's the theory.)
2. Green farming (environment) -- Less pesticides, whatever.
3. Green farming (nice to animals) -- Free range, etc.
4. Don't bury yard waste in landfills -- born of 1970s innumeracy about running out of landfill space, and works with composting initiatives, actually works to increase global warming. It was a ready-made car
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Oh, forgot one of my favorites;
5. Buy local fam produce -- Help local farmers (presumably driven by meme transfer of corporate-farms-as-evil, from organic issue), actually also harms gw because pleasant country drives on Saturday burn more carbon than a trip to the grocery store + mass transit delivery, per vegetable.
No till farming (Score:4, Informative)
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Re: No till farming (Score:2)
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Bashing organic vegetarians... really? (Score:2)
Or maybe we could focus on burning less oil and coal rather than debating the relatively small delta between organic and non-organic farming practices. How about that? Let's worry less about how we're all gonna eat organic, and maybe just STOP BURNING SHIT to power our technology and industry! Let's get our wind, solar and geothermal tech really flying and then maybe worry about farming.
Some one please explain to me... (Score:2)
"Clearing additional grasslands or forests to grow enough food to make up for that difference would release far more greenhouse gas than the practices initially reduce"
Some one please explain to me how clearing grassland would be problematic here. Sure, clearing forests sounds like it would be problematic as a forest would likely have a hire density of CO2 absorbing plant life than an area we grow food in but I don't see that with grassland.
BREEDING is worse for climate change. (Score:3, Insightful)
All these discussions are always so pointless, as they make a taboo out of the elephant in the room: ALL those problems we have, stem ultimately from overpopulation!
* Destroying the planet by using unsustainably many resources and piling up waste, while expecting exponential growth to magically work. ... and all the secondary and tertiary effetcs of the above, from vegans and SJWs over Trump, Russia and China, to meat factories, nasty unnatural crops and industrial junk food.
* Being anti-social dicks to each other due to being too many people to be able to feel empathy or even get to know one another. In states, companies, cities and the Internet.
* Wars (= resource fights + no empathy)
*
I hate to say it, but all we need to do, is maybe not have more than 1-2 children!
Which is already the case in modern states. And only isn't the case in more backwards states because lifeforms in danger make more children so at least some survive. So getting them to our level would automatically curb overpopulation. No contraception needed. No cruel policies needed.
The only problem to solve, is what to do when we can't afford to give a good life to all the third world people but can't kill them either until we get there.
Then stupid superficial window dressing like this badly misled artifact-solution-of-an-artifact-problem article can finally die.
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We could start eating children
Re:BREEDING is worse for climate change. (Score:5, Funny)
This is a modest proposal.
Environmentalism Isn't Just Climate Change (Score:2)
This article is another example of looking at environmentalism from the single dimension of climate change. Yes, it's the big crisis facing us today, but it's not the only one. Pesticides have caused huge drops in the insect populations, and not just in bees (though they get the most attention). Storm runoff carries excess fertilizer into streams, messing up the ecosystems of our wetlands and waterways. And there are many others.
Really the whole organic movement is based on a lack of trust between consu
Don't have kids (Score:4, Insightful)
You know one of the best ways that I combat climate change? I'm not having kids.
That means in 5 generations I will have prevented the addition of over 55 million pounds of global-warming carbon into the environment.
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someone hasn't watched Idiocracy
Spitting in the wind (Score:5, Interesting)
If you want to reverse global warming the only long term solution is next negative global population growth. As long as population growth is positive it doesn't matter what you do, you're merely postponing the problem.
As far as farming is concerned, meh. Total methane production from US animal based agriculture is equivalent to or less than historic emissions from natural herds of bison, elk, deer etc. It's not a net contributor over the last 200 years. Sure you can reduce emissions now but you're not correcting a problem you're simply correcting some other contributor (e.g. vehicle emissions).
Missing the Forrest for the trees (literally) (Score:2)
I understand the value of soil biodiversity, and accept that organic may be better in that narrow me
Preposterous headline (Score:2)
The answers are simple (Score:3)
It isn't going back to natural and it isn't inorganic pesticides. Organic vs chemical nutrients is a non-issue because the plant converts them into 100% organic output either way. So go dense hydroponic vertical farming in greenhouses and focus more on microgreens. Pests are dramatically reduced if not eliminated because of the lack of soil for them to grow in. Use the big outside crops to produce the heirloom seed.
Will it shift what the selection looks like at grocery store? Quite a bit. It also will be more nutrient dense (according to early analysis) with more consistent year round production of uniform quality and quantity. Most microgreens don't need to be cooked with stems all soft, corn becomes something you can digest, and sauces and dressings are wicked up by a mass of microgreens and a tiny amount spreads even across them with little effort while providing a lot more flavor due to increased surface area.
With a 2ftx4ft shelf and a window or 20w led light you can grow enough microgreens to replace a typical omnivore familes need to buy regularly perishing plants. And you can harvest every 10-12days or so. With a few careful selections like corn for calories and hemp for complete protein and fat profiles I imagine you could go fully vegan for about $500. I have a setup sized like this, 80w worth of lights. If I ran at full capacity I'd produce about 40lbs of produce every couple weeks. I buy the seed in bulk but I could easily grow a garden patch in the yard for seed crop. Seed yield is much higher than fruit/vegetable yield. Actually you CAN grow microgreens with no additional nutrient at all, just water but it negatively impacts yields vs a weak seedling strength nutrient.
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It boils down to trust issues. They don't trust corporations. Mostly they are overreacting, but corporations have given them very little actual reason not to trust them (they given plenty of PR, but not much as far as actual reasons.) Personally I'm mostly pro-GMO (with scientific supervision and accounting), pro fluoride, pro-vax, but I still don't quite trust American corporate culture to responsibly run a nuclear plant.
With these subjects it's not about the current state of the facts as much as the c
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You should divide "anti-nuclear" up into A) people who oppose it because they're afraid that living anywhere near one is going to kill them with radiation, and B) people who oppose it simply because it's an incredibly expensive, incredibly slow way to add new generation capacity.
But this organic issue highlights a lot of complexity to issues that can look simple on the outside. Here's one: reforestation to reduce carbon. Forests embody more carbon, both aboveground and belowground, than most other biomes.
Gen IV nuclear (Score:2)
Using liquid fuel or laser driven reactions, and not using the transuranic cycle will make Gen IV Nuclear none of those things you mentioned.
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The over runs and costs you're talking about is old style nuclear. I'm not saying pursue that.
And you have no evidence that the same thing won't continue with new nuclear tech, and I have all the evidence that it won't with renewables.
I also didn't say something would happen in the next ten years.
No. You don't have a timeline, because nuclear anything takes decades. I was being generous and giving you a decade timeline. New nuclear technology is more likely in the 30-50 year range.
I also didn't say don't use renewables.
No. You talked all about using something that's massively more expensive, takes orders of magnitude longer to deploy, and in your case, doesn't currently exist. Why you would go there