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Letters: The non-organic future
Letters in a computer with red mailbox flag
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Kai Ryssdal: OK -- your turn. The story on the broadcast that got the most comments over the past week -- by far -- was one that went in search of the answer to this question: Can organic farming feed the world? We took as our point of departure a report from the British government that said, no, organic agriculture by itself can't do it. Chemical fertilizers and, yes, genetically modified crops (GMOs), are going to have to be used as well.
That's when the emails started. Most in defense of organics, like this one, from David Robinson of Denver.
David Robinson: Sustainable organic farming creates jobs, produces better quality food, reduces the need for shipping food long distances, reduces the dependence on oil, has no need for chemical herbicides, pesticides and fertilizers, returns more prosperity to local economies and contributes more to overall health.
Amanda Heyman of Minneapolis wrote to detail some of the drawbacks of GMOs: farmers having to buy new seeds every year, and herbicides building up in waterways.
Amanda Heyman: What is actually needed is funding for localized crop breeding that will produce seeds best suited for particular environments. Those seeds will have the best shot at weathering climate change and feeding the world, not GMO seeds.
Not everybody was critical. Tyler Martikainen-Watcke of Reading, Penn., says the shift from subsistence farming to agribusiness has been a boon overall.
Tyler Martikainen-Watcke: I agree we need to move away from petroleum-based fertilizers, but I fear that compost and mined nitrates will not be enough. Instead, I think scientists will come up with a GM solution. It's the low labor input required in 'conventional' farming that has allowed many to move away from the farm, and led America to prosper.
One last thought about that story. No small number of the emails about it -- about a third or so -- said we ran it just because we used to get underwriting support from Monsanto. That was more than a year ago. And just for the record, underwriters have no say in what goes on the air.
Here's an editor's note explaining why we actually did run the piece.
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Wow, I cannot believe the ideological comments to this story and to this article. It goes to show that ideology over facts is not an exclusive trait of the right. You all sound like a bunch of Climate Deniers: "I don't believe it, I don't want you to talk about the other side, I don't want to hear any facts because that would attack my ideologically-held beliefs."
John Anderson: now you sir are pure ideology.
Jeff Wood: the story was about feeding the world, not what is more nutritious and better tasting.
Carri Craver: How about some facts that GMOs will 'kill more people, more quickly' instead of must making pronouncements.
Beau Beauchamp: Be honest, you are really upset because they said something you didn't wan't to hear. But I do agree, interview everyone, and let's get the facts out there. I think a UN report of experts (which actually cite an expert in the organics movement; did you check out the whitepaper?)gives some pretty stark facts.
M. Mosely: please provide sites of your claims. Because the cliam that they 'cause mutations' is just plain false.
Ridiculous, organic is the future, food grown with organic spectrum nutrient fertilizers are not only safer, they contain more nutrients and hence satisfy a persons appetite better, I would expect more from American Public Radio than this slanted propaganda that barely passes for critical journalism!
It seems that we need large scale farming to fill all the supermarkets of this country, so we need tractors, and we will burn lots of fossil fuels doing weed control if we do it all organically, contributing to global warming and depleting our oil supply. I don't know which is worse, one application of roundup, or many passes through great acreages with a tractor pulling a mechanical weeder. One poisons the soil, the other contributes to global warming. Another thing that hasn't been mentioned is peak oil and the likelihood that fuel prices will go so high it will be very hard to farm economically. This will affect the cost of synthetic fertilizer as well. Soon many (smaller) farmers will go virtually organic simply because they can't afford the inputs. And when gas prices get to high they will probably have to stop all together I think what we have coming probably sooner than we think is a real sh..t sandwich--the problem 9 billion people are not sustainable on this finite planet that is already beginning to rebel against what we have done to it in the last 200 years.
Whether or not organic farming currently feeds the # of people on the planet is not an argument for GM products. GM products will certainly kill more people, more quickly. Monocropping ensures we will have more severe famines and less nutrition.
Methods that can provide the most stable, nutritious, long term and consistent access to healthy food should be pursued most. Just because organics cannot currently feed the world with the few farmers using them does not mean that they would fail if a larger portion of the population was also farming at least part time. Our quick fix culture of idiots is just getting more moronic by the day.
I disagree with the argument that organic farming solves any of our current food problems. It does not create any new jobs, it has not been scientifically demonstrated to produce better quality or more nutritious food and it has little or nothing to do with localized farming. The only impact it could have on farming is reducing the use of chemical pesticides and nutrients, which would actually reduce jobs since these products are made here in the U.S. The vast majority of support for organic farming is not based on scientific research, but a faithful devotion to the vague ideas that "natural" is always better.
Pretty embarrassing story for those of us that like to get some factual education from APM. Now I'll talk story. This all goes to the Story our Dominionist culture has been telling us since the dawn of farming. This Story supports the current "Prime Directive of our Culture" which is to: Grow more food to grow more people to sell more stuff to enslave more souls at all costs. This rises directly from that Dominion Story of deeding land to Cain and Abel, what they did on that land and what Cain did to Abel. We turned the Garden into the Farm of Eden. We can choose to return to that Garden as all other living things have never left and are provided for with abundance when man does not interfere. A realization (apocalypse) that there is no such thing as sin, only consequences, can help us make this choice. Spending our whole lives chasing money to unlock food has proven to be pretty unhealthy for the whole of life on the planet. Regenerative practices are the only way to make a food web of any kind sustainable. Stop moving stuff around and depleting the ability of other ecologies to regenerate. Become part of nature again and live in collaborative bioregions verses competitive political divisive regions. Resistance to nature will continue to be futile. There is a growing body of researchers and farmers alike that are ascribing to the fact that tilling the soil is the worst thing we do to the earth. Can you guess why? A rebuttal or otherwise is called for or we will all know the taking of the public airwaves is complete. This forum is not enough!
I would like to add to this conversation that organic is not the only alternative to conventional agriculture. I am a farmer in Colorado and recently earned a masters degree in sustainable agriculture. Agroecology (supported by the UN in their recent report on the right to food), permaculture, and biointensive production all have much higher yields than conventional or organic, without the pollution and erosion. All three methods deviate from the mono-cropped, bare soil production common to both conventional and organic production and imitate the stability and diversity of a wild ecosystem. Furthermore, none of them are fossil fuel dependent and they are extremely applicable in the hungriest corners of the world due to low input costs and reliance on climate appropriate perennials. We can't feed the growing world with either conventional or organic agriculture, but we can teach hungry communities to feed themselves with these simple and creative methods.
I am sad to say that this "news" story was WAY OFF BASE. This was a story that I would have expected from traditional commercial radio and NOT from a public broadcast radio program. I would have expected APM & Market to do further investigation into the story and intervied the Organic Trade Association, Gary Hirshberg, Jeffrey M. Smith, etc to get more of a perspective on what Organic Farming truly means. As a Nutrition Professional, I was very upset by this story so much as to cancel my sustaining membership to my local public radio station. As long as biased stories like this one are produced, I will not take part supporting it.
The comments made by the people who were interviewed for this information is totally out of line and off base. If anyone had done any actual research they would know that. Organic may mean something else in Columbia, but good organic growers use trace minerals (over 80 of them), with adequate major minerals and nitrogen in the form of natural fertilizers like compost. They usually use soft rock phosphate or lime in addition. They get compost from animals who are fed all the trace minerals so their manure is higher in nutrients anyway and maybe add the rest to the compost pile in the form of rock dust. Organically grown (properly) can have so much more nutrient value for the person consuming it too. It just makes good sense. It is usually a little more labor intensive but much, much healthier, for people and the planet. GMO crops are killing animals and making people sick. It can cause mutations. I'm infuriated that this lop-sided and incorrect coverage of an important topic such as this was done.
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