4 ms·
Organic food worse for the climate
- mark_l_watson 8y agoSure, the article makes a good point on land use, but two things bother me here: 1) I think that people who favor organic food tend to eat less meat or are vegetarians or vegans. Don;t forget that a predominantly meat diet uses an order of magnitude more energy and water compared to vegetarian. 2) I think people should have the personal freedom to decide on organic vs. non-organic and on whether they eat meat. However, I dislike the huge US government subsidies for meat production: people should pay the real production costs for meat (I eat meat sometimes, full disclosure).
- dagw 8y agoDon't forget that a predominantly meat diet uses an order of magnitude more energy and water compared to vegetarian. The articles does cover that as aspect well “The type of food is often much more important. For example, eating organic beans or organic chicken is much better for the climate than to eat conventionally produced beef,”
- toasterlovin 8y agoPlants have a 50x range in the amount of calories they provide per unit of resources. Grains, starches, and legumes are generally less resource intensive than meat. But most meats are less resource intensive than leafy greens and fruits. If you want to lessen the environmental impact of your diet, then you need to optimize cost, not simply exclude animal flesh.
- remify 8y agoAlso organic meat is really expensive
- jefflombardjr 8y agoWell yeah, factory farmed monoculture anything is worse for the environment - organic or not... time to plug permaculture once again: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permaculture https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permaculture Anyone interested in learning more - this is a great free introduction: https://open.oregonstate.edu/courses/permaculture/ https://open.oregonstate.edu/courses/permaculture/
- toasterlovin 8y agoIt’s worse for the environment except the part where it feeds the same amount of people using less resources.
- FlyMoreRockets 8y agoIt seems you have not researched permaculture. It uses very little resources compared to common industrial agriculture. Edit: the article makes the argument that organic farming leads to increased deforestation. Permaculture incorporates trees into the production cycle.
- toasterlovin 8y agoLook, no offense, but I'm going to trust the ruthless profit seeking motive of industrial-scale farmers, who are not pursuing permaculture, over the postings of internet denizens who've read some blog posts.
- 67632589712 8y agoNo offense, but your argument is an attribution fallacy. You need to go research permaculture instead of posting chippy comments about your ignorance if you want to contribute. Permaculture means permanent agriculture. It's a way of farming multiple types of plants, animals, and fungi in a way that is sustainable from a standpoint of soil health.
- toasterlovin 8y agoMany ideas/techniques/whatever are good in theory. But for something to actually work, it needs to be good in practice. Right now, all of the practitioners are voting with their feet. That is strong evidence about the (non-)viability of permaculture. I'm open to being wrong about this, but there is a huge chasm between what works on paper or in small scale experiments and what works in the real world, at scale. If permaculture is a viable way to produce food at the scale necessary to feed 7 billion people, we would be in the midst of a wide-scale roll out. But we're not. So I remain skeptical.
- symlock 8y agoThis headline is incorrect for how little is actually measured in this study. It's like staying that rammed earth houses are bad for the environment because they use more dirt that otherwise might be growing plants - so everyone should build with lumber instead. They invented a new metric called "Carbon Opportunity Cost" and only looked at one thing: some types of organic farming require more land area which might be otherwise left for forest. There are so many things that go into farming and a true evaluation of "climate" impact. Synthetic chemical production, environmental contamination, soil depletion, shipping, chemical runoff, farming equipment production and emissions, etc... Even the researcher understands this: "The type of food is often much more important. For example, eating organic beans or organic chicken is much better for the climate than to eat conventionally produced beef"
- techbio 8y ago> "The type of food is often much more important. For example, eating organic beans or organic chicken is much better for the climate than to eat conventionally produced beef" There's something strange about that quote, maybe a PR sound? I imagine conventionally produced beans and chicken would have less impact than organic beef as well.
- burfog 8y agoMaybe the chicken is better than the beef, but the beans are more questionable. Methane is a very strong greenhouse gas.
- rini17 8y agoCompletely ignores unsustainable soil depletion, groundwater depletion and pollution, carbon emissions to run machines and manufacture chemicals, etc.etc.
- FlyMoreRockets 8y agoThe article states "...organic food is so much worse for the climate is that the yields per hectare are much lower, primarily because fertilisers are not used." It uses this metric to assume organic agriculture increases deforestation and is thus worse for the environment. The flaw in this reasoning? Fertilizer manufacture is responsible for the majority of our current atmospheric CO2 emissions.