Organic Farming

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While the case for organic farming is strong - improved soil retention, decreased water use, little or no pesticide use, no unsustainable fertiliser use etc. - many "serious" agricultural scientists and commentators still sneer at it because of alleged low yields, and, incredibly, accuse organic supporters of putting the world at risk of starvation.

Having absorbed such "Green Revolution" propaganda for years, it was therefore surprising to find that yields of early potatoes from my small organic garden were the equivalent of 150-300% of the Irish commercial maincrop average of about 9-10 tons per acre. This was in spite of sowing old, low yielding (but good tasting) varieties and a fairly casual attitude to sowing, planting and aftercare. Luck? Maybe. Maybe not. The following quotes are from the Ecology Action website.

"...miniaturization of agriculture is not new. Small-scale, sustainable agriculture has supported such widely dispersed civilizations as the Chinese 4,000 years ago, and the Mayans, South Americans, and Greeks 2,000 years ago.

"Ecology Action has dedicated almost a quarter-century to rediscovering the scientific principles that underlie these traditional systems. The people in Biosphere II in Arizona have been using techniques based on those outlined by Ecology Action: they raised 80 percent of their food for two years within a "closed system." Their experience demonstrates that a complete year's diet for one person can be raised on the equivalent of 3,400 square feet!

"This is an improvement over traditional Chinese practices, which required 5,000 to 7,200 square feet. In contrast, it takes commercial agriculture 22,000 to 42,000 square feet to grow all the food for one person for one year, while bringing in large inputs from other areas. At the same time, commercial agricultural practices are causing the loss of approximately six pounds of soil for each pound of food produced.

"Biointensive mini-farming techniques make it possible to grow food using 99 percent less energy in all forms - human and mechanical, 66 percent to 88 percent less water, and 50 percent to 100 percent less fertilizer, compared to commercial agriculture. They also produce two to six times more food and build the soil."

And on the labour-intensive nature of organic growing, normally considered a "downside", even in this era of growing unemployment and lack of fitness, Ecology Action have this to say : -

"Rather than shirking human labor, trying to reduce...it or to increase its productivity..., we need to exult in its proper use and in the maintenance of the very muscles involved in an effective human life. Properly performed, labor is not tedious, but strengthening and rewarding."
End of Ecology Action Quotes

Chemical companies have spent the last 50 years happily flogging as much fertiliser and dubious pesticide as possible to farmers. They have repeatedly dismissed legitimate concerns about the use of such chemicals. Irrespective of who's right and who's wrong in that debate, and despite all the fine talk of global capitalism being the servant of the consumer, when these companies have been repeatedly TOLD by consumers that their chemicals are not wanted in food, like some demented nanny they insist "Oh but they're perfectly safe. Eat up and stop complaining." At a time when even hi-tech junkies like Bill Joy (Sun Microsystem cofounder and chief scientist) are belatedly warning of the dangers of GNR technologies , consumers who again dare to say "No, thanks, we just don't want this stuff. We want organic food.", are insulted as backward and ignorant, and liable to cause worldwide famine.

Chemical companies have now transmuted from Genetic Engineering to Genetic Modification to Genetic Enhancement companies to "Life Science" companies, with the brass neck to warble on about "sustainable" agriculture and "choice" and the need to reduce pesticide use (!) (But you must buy their latest dodgy products).

Now that organic farming is slowly gaining ground, these established interests have stepped up their hysterical counter-attacks. Although these protests are a bit like elephants shrieking about the assaults of mice, the huge resources and cynicism of these industries can create long-running stories from lies and half-truths. One example is the famous Organic Food is 8 times more likely to poison you story.

Genetic Mutilation companies are trying to get a tighter lock on farming by controlling or even owning genes, as well as seed, fertiliser and pesticide. They are stealing, and claiming as their own, organic techniques such as Bt and crop rotation/intercropping. In justifying all this, a favourite tactic is to express concern for the third world. Given the history of Big Business/Big Science/Big Government (Thalidomide, Smoking, Nuclear Power, Love Canal, Bhopal, CFCs, Acid Rain, BSE, Foot and Mouth disease etc etc, not to mention chronic malnutrition in the third world), it is entirely understandable that ordinary people doubt both the sincerity and competence of such companies.

Some of the public insults used by chemical company mouthpieces here in Ireland against those opposed to Genetic Engineering - most organic farmers would be opposed - are "anti-knowledge knownothings", "witless fanatics", "people-hating ecofascists", "Ignorance and magic are their shield and their armour....the right to be invincibly stupid is inalienable" (Another tactic of Gene Mangling lobbyists is to claim a monopoly on science and knowledge).
So, although neither intelligence nor commonsense are determined by the letters or lack of letters after one's name, the following list of Ecology Action's Board of Advisors may reassure those who need qualified scientists to judge a case.

Ecology Action's Board of Advisors

Bob Bergland - Former U.S. Secretary of Agriculture, 1977-1981

Everett Dietrick, Ph.D. - Director and Entomologist, Rincon-Vitova Insectories

Ed Glenn, Ph.D. - Research Scientist and Head of the Bioresources Unit, Environmental Research Laboratory, University of Arizona

Joan Gussow, Ph.D. - Former Chair and Professor Emeritus, Program in Nutrition, Columbia University Teachers College; and Chair, Board of Directors, Jessie Smith Noyes Foundation

Polly Noyce - Founder, Manor House Agricultural Centre, Kenya

David Pimentel, Ph.D. - Professor, Department of Entomology, College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, Cornell University

Jennifer Raiser, M.B.A. - Director, Raiser Senior Services

Hugh Roberts, Ph.D., M. Div. - Former Executive Director, League for International Food Education; and Methodist Minister

Eric Rusten - Former East African Program Officer, Ford Foundation

Lenz Schaller - Director, KUSA Seed Foundation

Juan Manuel Martinez Valdez - Director, Ecologia y Poblaci6n, Mexico; and Ecology Action's Sustainable Biointensive Mini-Farming Latin American Representative

Alejandro Zaffaroni, Ph.D - Co-Founder, Syntex Corporation; Founder and Co-Chairman, Alza Corporation; Founder and President Affymax Corporation

Look at all those Ph.Ds and workers for the developing world. What were people with concerns about genetic engineering called again? "People-hating invincibly stupid knownothing witless ecofascist fanatics", wasn't it?

Dr. John Reganold at Washington State University found "that organic orchards can be more profitable, produce tastier fruit at similar yields compared to conventional farming, and be better for the environment at the same time", according to an article published in Nature magazine.

In another study, organised by Oregon State University plant pathologist Chris Mundt and colleagues, reverting to the classic organic technique of crop diversity brought results in China.
"Chinese farmers who abandoned the modern practice of planting a single type of rice in their paddies and adopted the more natural course of mixing varieties were rewarded with bigger harvests, and they no longer had to spray expensive fungicides. While the benefits of genetic diversity were known to Darwin, the study serves as an important reminder at a time when agriculture is increasingly looking to high-tech solutions, said Martin S. Wolfe of Wakelyns Agroforestry in Pressingfield, England. 'This deceptively simple experiment deserves wide attention, partly because of the principle that it illustrates, and partly because it may never be repeated on such a scale,' Wolfe wrote in a commentary on the study, published in the journal Nature...." Details

Critique of Modern "Scientific" Farming by American poet and philosopher Wendell Berry.
Samples : -
"Let me outline...the characteristics of these opposite kinds of mind. I conceive the strip-miner to be a model exploiter, and as a model nurturer I take the old-fashioned idea or ideal of a farmer. The exploiter is a specialist, an expert; the nurturer is not. The standard of the exploiter is efficiency; the standard of the nurturer is care. The exploiter's goal is money, profit; the nurturer's goal is health - his land's health, his own, his family's, his community's."

"Why should our universities sponsor an active criticism of the fine arts...but no criticism of farming or forestry or mining or manufacturing? This question, of course, can be answered by a crude evolutionism - those who survive do not bite the corporations that feed them."

"If we can’t know with final certainty what we are doing, then reason cautions us to be humble and patient, to keep the scale small, to be careful, to go slow."

"The sciences are sectioned like a stockyard the better to serve the corporations."

"Without such a vigorous conversation originating in the universities and emanating from them, we get what we’ve got: sciences that spread their effects upon the world as if the world were no more than an experimental laboratory"

"If a tree falls in the absence of a refereed journal or a foundation, does it make a sound? The answer, in the opinion of the imitation corporate executives who now run our universities, is no."

"The 'cutting edge' (of science) is not critical or radical or intellectually adventurous. The cutting edge of science is now fundamentally the same as the cutting edge of product development."

Critique of Steve Milloy and JUNK SCIENCE
Sample : On his well-known "Junk Science" website, the apparently independent Steve Milloy apparently debunks one scare-story after another.....

Article by Dr. Charles Brummer, Ph.D, of Iowa State University's Agronomy Department.

SAMPLE : - "Shouldn't things be getting easier? If we've been attacking a problem with all we've got for the past fifty years, shouldn't the problem have gone away by now? If problems that weren't present under an old system keep appearing under a new, improved system, shouldn't we be wondering if the new system is really that "improved"?...

"...despite years of intensive effort to eradicate them, weeds, insects, nematodes, and diseases are more prevalent, more costly, and more difficult to control than ever. Soil erosion still exceeds the regenerative ability of parent material in most areas of the world; water supplies tainted with nitrates, herbicides, and manure are commonplace. In fact, one of the major reasons behind the massive biotechnology expenditures in agriculture over the past twenty years is the perception that problems are getting more difficult to solve...

"....We are repeatedly told that diseases and insects are about ready to overwhelm our crops. We have been combating pests for a long time; for the past 50 years, we've used an incredibly deadly (and expensive) chemical stew that has been spectacularly unsuccessful in providing long-term relief. If we research pest problems with any degree of seriousness, we can find many examples of simple cultural methods to solve most (and possibly all) of our most serious pest problems, not to mention our soil, water, and animal health issues. Why are these immediately applicable techniques persistently overlooked?...

"....Over the past century, we have been amazingly adept at producing food with fewer people. The upshot of this has been the devastation of rural communities....When agricultural decisions are driven not by biology and ecology but by economics, bad things are bound to happen down on the farm. Thus, the diversification of crop species on a farm, which at one time held pest and weed problems in check, has long since vanished throughout vast tracts of the nation, to be replaced by simplistic one or two crop monocultures. This conversion of farm landscapes has created new pest problems, such as corn root worm, soybean cyst nematode, which, properly managed through appropriate crop rotation, constitute no threat to our cropping system. We already know this, yet we are attempting, at great expense, to find a biotechnogical solution to get genes that may help us to beat these pests so that we can prop up this unstable system for a few more years. Never mind that we have never beaten a pest yet; we will pay the price that biotechnology requires in our drive to solve our problems.....

"....But we already have the solution: that's the really aggravating part of our research and policy agendas. The biology and ecology have given us ready made solutions. For example, integrating forage crops into our corn-soybean rotation would solve simultaneously (!) the root worm and nematode problems mentioned above. Weeds can be completely controlled when establishing forage crops by using a small grain (usually oat) nurse crop....

"....We can greatly reduce operating costs in the process....ah, but there is the rub. We are now letting the biology drive our system; the economics is suddenly raising its head. If we cut operating costs, we will be purchasing fewer inputs. That is not a positive development for our economy, dare I say, our "global economy"....

"....We've had 50 years of a dominant paradigm which has given us the wholesale subversion of agriculture into an input driven enterprise, based on fossil fuels and chemicals, that will produce what we need. It hasn't worked. Yes, we have produced enough. In fact, we have produced so much that we need to find other uses for it all!....all our agricultural research is not about feeding the world (we have enough food to do that if we really wanted to) and it is not about making a sustainable agriculture (we have good ideas on how to begin to make one). The destruction of a reasonably productive and stable agricultural system in the mid-20th century to develop our current system of surpluses and increasingly intractable pest and conservation problems may stand as one of the most short-sighted developments in United States history. The only reason that can be given for this debacle is its positive effect on commodity and stock markets....

"....Our agricultural paradox is that even though we can produce lots of stuff, the infrastructure needed to solve emerging problems is becoming so expensive that a catastrophic collapse of the current system is a real possibility....

"....Genetically modified crops are usually touted as the savior of our systems... Building an expensive house on sand is not advisable; why would we build a research megalith on it? GM crops, like failed strategies before...., do not address the fundamental question: WHY do we have a problem? Our monocultural system is constructed so that pest problems are absolutely incapable of NOT arising; pests just find them irresistable. Annihilation strategies, like Roundup Ready soybeans, simply don't work; they never have, and there is no reason to think they ever will...

"....The problems weeds, insects, erosion are there because we only grow a few crops in large monoculture. Until we change that, we cannot eliminate the pests... If we know that crop rotations, green manure crops, and livestock manure provide better control of weeds, improved soil and water quality, and reduced input costs, why not work within that system to optimize it for ease of use, environmental stability, productivity, and profitability for the farmer? Our current paradigm is to ignore all agricultural knowledge from Pliny forward because we have high technology ideas and methods that will render that information moot. However, in doing so, we set ourselves up for an inevitable fall, when the current solution leads to even greater problems....

Full Article by E. Charles Brummer, Ph.D at University.

Ten reasons why biotechnology will not ensure food security, protect the environment and reduce poverty in the developing world
from the Food First/Institute for Food and Development Policy

Summary : -

1. The real causes of hunger are poverty, inequality and lack of access.

2. Most innovations in agricultural biotechnology have been profit-driven rather than need-driven.

3. The integration of the seed and chemical industries appears destined to accelerate increases in per acre expenditures for seeds plus chemicals, delivering significantly lower returns to growers.

4. Recent experimental trials have shown that genetically engineered seeds do not increase the yield of crops.

5. Recent evidence shows that there are potential risks of eating such (GM) foods as the new proteins produced in such foods could: act themselves as allergens or toxins, alter the metabolism of the food producing plant or animal, causing it to produce new allergens or toxins, or reduce its nutritional quality or value.

6. Transgenic plants which produce their own insecticides closely follow the pesticide paradigm, which is itself rapidly failing due to pest resistance to insecticides.

7. The global fight for market share markets is leading companies to massively deploy transgenic crops around the world (more than 30 million hectares in l998) without proper advance testing of short- or long-term impacts on human health and ecosystems.

8. There are many unanswered ecological questions regarding the impact of transgenic crops.

9. As the private sector has exerted more and more dominance in advancing new biotechnologies, the public sector has had to invest a growing share of its scarce resources in enhancing biotechnological capacities in public institutions including the CGIAR and in evaluating and responding to the challenges posed by incorporating private sector technologies into existing farming systems. Such funds would be much better used to expand support for ecologically based agricultural research, as all the biological problems that biotechnology aims at can be solved using agroecological approaches.

10.New rural development approaches and low-input technologies spearheaded by farmers and NGOs around the world are already making a significant contribution to food security at the household, national and regional levels in Africa, Asia and Latin America (Pretty l995). Yield increases are being achieved by using technological approaches , based on agroecological principles that emphasize diversity, synergy, recycling and integration; and social processes that emphasize community participation and empowerment (Rosset l999)....Failure to promote such people-centered agricultural research and development due to diversion of funds and expertise to biotechnology, will forego a historical opportunity to raise agricultural productivity in economically viable, environmentally benign and socially uplifting ways.

Full Text - Ten reasons why biotechnology will not ensure food security, protect the environment and reduce poverty in the developing world

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