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We should acknowledge that there's a problem with terminology and lumping too many things together. There are fertilizers and pesticides that come from a chemic

We should acknowledge that there's a problem with terminology and lumping too many things together. There are fertilizers and pesticides that come from a chemical plant, and there are those that come from recycled biomass. I've worked on both kinds of farms and alongside chefs. I've done blind taste tests, and the trend is that the richer ecological systems produce better flavor, especially with meat. What that study you linked to shows is that people interpret flavor with high suggestibility for the food's origin. They were misrepresenting origin to tasters--not just blindly tasting things. Plus, they were only looking at tomatoes. I guarantee if you run a completely blind experiment (with no suggestion bias) with peaches, gourds, or any meat product--factory system loses. But the main point is that farmers have to make choices. To the extent that subsidies make factory-model decisions more viable--this leads to more food that is artificially cheap. And unpriced negative externalities are a form of subsidy. You can exploit a farm's ecological endowment or invest in it. If prices were perfect--investing in ecological richness would be more heavily rewarded.

TheMagicHorsey 10y ago
But the fundamental issue with taste is that of varieties and of soil quality. It is completely false that the use of fertilizer and pesticide (even from a factory) when judiciously used, will affect the soil quality more adversely than organic cultivation. I would argue, that using some pesticide and fertilizer is BETTER than pure organic methods, because you will not only grow delicious crops, you will have the luxury of trying some varieties which, while delicious, are too sensitive to disease to exploit commercially otherwise. Edit: There are many methods championed by organic farmers that do produce tastier food. But those methods are not tied to not using fertilizers and pesticides from factories. And while I credit them with introducing those methods. Those methods can be hybridized with the use of fertilizer and pesticide to get both yield and taste up. In the case of meat, its clear that factory farmed chicken is garbage. Free range chicken tastes much better. We can use some scientific methods to discover what makes the free range chicken taste better, rather than accepting like religion that just putting them in a free roam yard is the reason for the flavor.
- rojobuffalo 10y ago
  Again, I think because of the limits of terminology and the forum, it seems like we're arguing past each other. But we probably agree on more than we disagree on. "Judiciously used", by the meaning of the words, limits what it describes to cases where it is in fact the right set of decisions. The injudicious cases are the ones I'm interested in picking out. If you have a pest or pathogen problem that is recurring, applying RoundUp or some other chemical combatant is not as good as introducing a rotation or a biological competitor or predator. If you're soil is consistently deficient in certain elements--the overall better strategy is to introduce organic matter that feeds life in the soil (rotations, compost, etc.), rather than applying a factory-made fertilizer. The factory input just isn't as sustainable season-to-season as feeding biological matter into the soil. There are also several perspectives from which to measure outcomes, that may have conflicting interpretations--flavor, nutrition, ecological impact, short-term vs long-term economics, etc. So to the point that Denmark encourages good long-term economics, ecological impact, flavor, and nutrition--it's a good, sustainable project.

TheMagicHorsey 10y ago

But the fundamental issue with taste is that of varieties and of soil quality. It is completely false that the use of fertilizer and pesticide (even from a factory) when judiciously used, will affect the soil quality more adversely than organic cultivation. I would argue, that using some pesticide and fertilizer is BETTER than pure organic methods, because you will not only grow delicious crops, you will have the luxury of trying some varieties which, while delicious, are too sensitive to disease to exploit commercially otherwise. Edit: There are many methods championed by organic farmers that do produce tastier food. But those methods are not tied to not using fertilizers and pesticides from factories. And while I credit them with introducing those methods. Those methods can be hybridized with the use of fertilizer and pesticide to get both yield and taste up. In the case of meat, its clear that factory farmed chicken is garbage. Free range chicken tastes much better. We can use some scientific methods to discover what makes the free range chicken taste better, rather than accepting like religion that just putting them in a free roam yard is the reason for the flavor.

rojobuffalo 10y ago
Again, I think because of the limits of terminology and the forum, it seems like we're arguing past each other. But we probably agree on more than we disagree on. "Judiciously used", by the meaning of the words, limits what it describes to cases where it is in fact the right set of decisions. The injudicious cases are the ones I'm interested in picking out. If you have a pest or pathogen problem that is recurring, applying RoundUp or some other chemical combatant is not as good as introducing a rotation or a biological competitor or predator. If you're soil is consistently deficient in certain elements--the overall better strategy is to introduce organic matter that feeds life in the soil (rotations, compost, etc.), rather than applying a factory-made fertilizer. The factory input just isn't as sustainable season-to-season as feeding biological matter into the soil. There are also several perspectives from which to measure outcomes, that may have conflicting interpretations--flavor, nutrition, ecological impact, short-term vs long-term economics, etc. So to the point that Denmark encourages good long-term economics, ecological impact, flavor, and nutrition--it's a good, sustainable project.