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Many years since I had relatives in agriculture and horticulture, so I may be embarrasingly outdated. Monoculture tends to encourage everything we don't want.

Many years since I had relatives in agriculture and horticulture, so I may be embarrasingly outdated. Monoculture tends to encourage everything we don't want. Needing fertilisers or rotation, pesticides, disease has many acres to spread easily through etc. There's good organic and bad, and efficient and inefficient., but look into polyculture[1]. An old mixed farm would mix crops and sometimes livestock in the same space. The yields were lower, but there were often more yields across the farm to compensate. Thus the yield difference is often not as advertised. Sympathetic planting could actively reduce likelihood of disease and pests. Not everything scales to large farms. It's also expensive because it's expensive. People expect and treat organic as a premium product. Supermarkets charge accordingly, in no small part because they can. If less industrial approaches to agriculture became widespread, prices would fall. Though unlikely to remove the difference completely. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyculture https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyculture (Doesn't consider organic polyculture)

jki275 8y ago
I agree that it is a more sustainable method of farming to mix crops across growing seasons. However, that is "dealt with" in modern farming by using fertilizers and such -- and as you say, it doesn't scale well. Organic is certainly a premium product, and where there are consumers that can afford it, it will thrive. Unfortunately it seems to me that right now the cost to produce it is simply too high for it to come out of that premium category and be the norm.
- NeedMoreTea 8y ago
  Polyculture also mixes during the season. A field of onions and carrots as they discourage each other's pests. Or interspersing some height for a harvestable canopy. Or an orchard where chickens are under the trees, picking up grubs and fertilising. (Don't know if that works in practice, take as a for instance). Some of these were just the standard old way of doing farming. Not so amenable to the largest scale, but if less scale is what's required to keep a working planet... You're probably right about organic right now, but before the recession, all the UK supermarkets were going crazy over organic throughout the 00s. Organic versions of most things became available and prices fell to a point where some were only 10% or 20% more. The trend was clear enough, but stopped dead by 2008.

jki275 8y ago

I agree that it is a more sustainable method of farming to mix crops across growing seasons. However, that is "dealt with" in modern farming by using fertilizers and such -- and as you say, it doesn't scale well. Organic is certainly a premium product, and where there are consumers that can afford it, it will thrive. Unfortunately it seems to me that right now the cost to produce it is simply too high for it to come out of that premium category and be the norm.

NeedMoreTea 8y ago
Polyculture also mixes during the season. A field of onions and carrots as they discourage each other's pests. Or interspersing some height for a harvestable canopy. Or an orchard where chickens are under the trees, picking up grubs and fertilising. (Don't know if that works in practice, take as a for instance). Some of these were just the standard old way of doing farming. Not so amenable to the largest scale, but if less scale is what's required to keep a working planet... You're probably right about organic right now, but before the recession, all the UK supermarkets were going crazy over organic throughout the 00s. Organic versions of most things became available and prices fell to a point where some were only 10% or 20% more. The trend was clear enough, but stopped dead by 2008.