Let Them Eat Organic
Katherine Mangu-Ward | December 18, 2007, 3:52pm
Sure, they're keeping Manhattan's greenmarket well stocked, but can organic farmers feed the world?
The question is hotly contested. Right now, about two percent of the world's farmland is organic, so there's long way to go. Still, some say it's do-able, citing stats about the high productivity of small organic farms. But the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, which has every PR and political motivation to agree with organic boosters, reluctantly declared that the world simply can't get by on organic farming alone in the near to mid-term.
“We should use organic agriculture and promote it,” [Dr. Jacques Diouf, FAO Director-General] said. “It produces wholesome, nutritious food and represents a growing source of income for developed and developing countries. But you cannot feed six billion people today and nine billion in 2050 without judicious use of chemical fertilizers.”
And the FAO isn't going it alone among world organizations:
In its annual World Development Report, the World Bank noted this year, that “low fertilizer use is one of the major constraints on increasing agricultural productivity in Sub-Sahara Africa”....Much of African soil suffers from constraints such as acidity and lowered fertility and is greatly in need of soil amendments and nutrients.
More on the organic food fight here and here.
Ventifact | December 18, 2007, 6:19pm | #
rho and Fluffy --
Sorry. The organic label exists primarily as a marketing tool that large "agribusiness" uses to 1) sell products at a premium price and 2) EXCLUDE SMALL BUSINESSES FROM THE MARKET. There is much debate over the value of organically labeled food vs. normal stuff (and thus the validity of a higher price for organic food), but I'll put that aside and focus on how the organic label is specifically designed to favor large businesses.
• Pesticides may be used, but only on the perimeter of a field and only with a buffer (~10 ft?) of space between the pesticide application and the soil on which the food is growing. This buffer space requirement means that a small plot will lose a large proportion of its area to the buffer if the farmer wants to spray the perimeter, but that a vast field will lose a much smaller portion to the buffer. Interestingly, standard integrated pest management (IPM) calls for maintenance of vegetation and arthropod (insects, spiders, etc.) populations around the perimeter of a field, not for blasting them with chemicals.
• Extensive paperwork is required to attain and maintain the organic certification. For a small operation, the manpower required to complete the paperwork represents a substantial increase in the overall overhead of a farm, whereas for a large operation the cost is easily absorbed.
• There is a multi-year time delay between using exclusively "organic" practices and obtaining an organic certification. The conversion to organic practices requires a sizable investment in terms of learning new techniques, buying new equipment, buying new seed, etc. It also entails an immediate drop off of harvest quantities. Thus the conversion requires a big payout and a drop in harvest, multiple years before a farm will be granted the organic certification that enables it to charge enough to make up for its lower yields. Family farmers do not have the resources to absorb this cost, but large companies do.
There are a range of other reasons "organic" is largely bull. There is no requirement for crop rotations, for example, and what many people think of as a nice little farm growing a few squash and a few radishes is in reality vast, 10,000-acre fields growing a single plant. Furthermore, consumers have NO reason to expect organic food travels a shorter distance "from farm to fork." For an organic food producer/distributor, shipping is just another cost to weigh against income as it is for any other company.
Ventifact | December 18, 2007, 11:06pm | #
rho-
As I'm becoming self-conscious about posting so much on this thread, I'll try to end it after this post for now. First of all, you are right about sustainability. Mainstream modern techniques are not sustainable. The carbon and nitrogen content of U.S. soils has, for example, been continuously declining since those soils were put to agricultural use. Many people don't realize it, but the carbon lost from natural soils after the soils became agricultural has contributed a major chunk of the overall anthropogenic atmospheric carbon spike that is getting us into global warming right now.
As sustainability goes though, I maintain that the value of organic food is debatable. Other practices such as no-till agriculture show more promise, at least to my knowledge.
Also, as what most would consider a very moderate libertarian in favor of public lands etc., I agree with what you say about pesticides and fertilizers ending up somewhere. Honestly I believe that this and similar issues with analogous atmospheric phenomena (coal smoke, e.g.) make it clear that an absolute notion of private property is untenable, and furthermore that a more moderate notion of private property requires recognition that one person's runoff hurts another person and his property, thus requiring appropriate regulation by the government. I can't stand on my own land and shoot my rifle randomly, and then bear no responsibility if a bullet happens to leave my property and kill a neighbor -- so with pollution.
As for the value of "organic" labeling with regards to local-ness, from what you are saying I would suggest that the real benefit you are deriving is from paying the premium to have co-op members vet products for you, not to simply find items labeled as organic. If the organic label went away, co-op managers would still go through the same process of receiving/finding info about food products from vendors who specialize in that kind of food. If your co-op is buying items specifically because of the "organic" label, it's off the mark, and if it isn't, then at best the label is as you say a good place to start. For the majority of folks getting groceries from supermarkets, they
really are just buying something for the organic label without investigating further.
(Also, I apologize (I'm sorry?) if the word "sorry" came off snide. I meant it. I always feel guilty about breaking people's organic bliss when I tell them the reality about organic labels. But now I feel pompous, like I'm some grand messenger of truth... By the way, when I refer to "organic bliss" I don't mean to suggest you in particular are enthralled by the organic label, but many people are; they speak of organic food with a face of rapturous satisfaction, and I feel obligated to explain that it's not so appropriate to feel that way.)
Also, I never 'insist[ed] that the "organic" label is completely worthless.' I commented, for example, that I consider organic cotton to be worth buying. I suspect you think I disagree with you much more than I actually do. I happen to consider myself somewhat more knowledgeable about these and similar issues than the average consumer so I try to point things out that others might not know or think of. This is a message board for basically that purpose, I thought.
Finally, I'm not sure why you make certain claims about my understanding of the market. For the many consumers mindlessly buying organic food under the assumption it is better but without knowing that fact in any reliable way, the market has finished responding: it is giving them their bliss, and little more. It would be difficult to imagine the organic label improving in meaningfulness while it is being enthusiastically patronized by so many people. Maybe you don't understand the market?
It is good to know, by the way, that you are not prejudiced, and that you are willing to tolerate fools such as me. Also, it's good to know you would get so indignant about me saying "sorry" and then call me names. It makes me glad to be a fool, considering the apparent alternative.
Ventifact | December 19, 2007, 5:11am | #
Neu Mejican--
Yes, I am definitely saying that:
hippy co-ops are actually libertarian free-market solutions. I am just not so willing to say that organic certification is also a free-market solution success story. As I said, any co-op buying its stuff just because of an organic label is not doing its job, at least not the way its customers (members) expect.
Anthro--
The carbon in plants comes from the air (where it exists as CO2), not from soil. The carbon that is in soil originated as plant debris -- roots, leaves, etc. that died and decayed. When this debris is in the soil, it is decaying and soil organisms are turning this debris back into CO2, as humans and cars turn their own food into CO2. Here is an overview:
air-->plants-->soil-->air
(Note that some of the carbon that goes into plants also gets eaten by bigger animals and goes elsewhere, possibly eventually into the soil as poop or dead animals etc.)
Now, the carbon-bearing compounds in soils are in a state of slow, perpetual decay, as they are consumed by soil organisms and eventually converted to CO2, at which point the energy contained in those compounds is exhausted and the CO2 escapes through pores into the soil, entering the atmosphere. The decaying carbonaceous soil matter is replenished by continual additions of dead tissue as organisms die and return to the soil.
So the overall amount of carbon in soil is a result of a balance of inputs and losses. (A common term for this is a "carbon budget.") This equilibrium can be shifted toward increasing carbon "storage" in a soil if conditions change to increase carbon additions to soil, e.g. by increasing the amount of dead plant matter that goes into the soil,
or by decreasing the rate of decomposition of carbon-containing (ORGANIC*) compounds in the soil.
Conversion of a soil from a natural state to agricultural use shifts the equilibrium point of carbon storage way down; in other words, it favors an overall decrease in soil carbon levels, resulting in a net emission of CO2 from soil, until a new, lower equilibrium point is reached. Agriculture does this by both decreasing the amount of plant debris that goes to the soil, and by increasing the rate of decomposition. Harvesting crops is the reason less plant material goes to the soil -- in a natural state, no one comes along right at the end of the growing season and removes almost all above-ground vegetation (at least not without shitting most of it back out nearby) as is common for major crops like alfalfa, wheat, and corn.** The reason carbon also decomposes faster in farmed soil is mainly because of tillage, which stirs up soil and in so doing exposes buried organic matter, which decomposes very slowly underground where there is little available oxygen, and exposes that material to surface air, allowing decomposers to break it down much faster.
As for the question of meat vs. vegetable production -- you are right that herbivores can digest plant matter that we can't eat (cellulose, specifically). However, the current meat industry is not at all based on a practice of grazing animals sustainably on non-arable land. It is mostly about using land that could feed 10 people to produce enough animal feed to raise livestock that can feed 2 people, in the process tightening the overall food supply and raising international food prices. Very little meat is produced in a way that makes the greatest use of our planet's food-producing capacity, rather than in a way that diminishes it. Also, much of the cellulosic feed (the stuff humans couldn't eat) that is used is leftover plant matter from crops harvested for human consumption; e.g. pea vines, wheat straw, corn silage. This goes back to the earlier issue of carbon loss from agricultural soil systems. The overall dynamic to note here is that the predominant methods of meat production squander Earth's food production capacity.
Now, all that is not to say I consider eating meat to be robbing poor people of food. Everyone from above has been more to the point in addressing economic problems in countries that lack food. This is just another facet of the problem to keep in mind, even if it's not the main one.
* Hah! This is what the word "really" means...
** Also, although plants do not get carbon from soil, they get everything else from the soil. So they take up other nutrients like nitrogen from the soil, but those nutrients are trucked off every year at harvest instead of being returned to the soil as plants die or are eaten. Thus soils become depleted.
Cheers.
