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This article seems to conflate organic farming with sustainability. Organic farming resorts only to non-synthetic pesticides and fertilizers. Unless these are
by chicob 7y ago
This article seems to conflate organic farming with sustainability.
Organic farming resorts only to non-synthetic pesticides and fertilizers. Unless these are provably bad, in which case some synthetic substances are allowed.
It feels awkward having to state, in the most technological age mankind has seen, that the divide between organic and synthetic is not the same as the one between sustainable and unsustainable, nor between safe and unsafe for human beings.
I suspect one of the Portuguese wineries mentioned in the article to be Esporão, that has recently converted to Organic Farming. This was not, coincidently, done in a inconspicuous way, but rather publicized by corporate PR in sustainable farming venues, rather disingenuously I should say.[1][2]
On one occasion, and for lack of time for QnA, I didn't get the opportunity to ask a very simple question:
- Once engaged in Organic Farming, a farmer is limited in the range of permissible practices, and synthetic pesticides are off limits. On the other hand, if engaged in Integrated Farming, a well known farming standard in the EU, a farmer can still proceed according to the precepts of Organic Farming if one so chooses. Why, then, is that company committed to Organic Farming?
I suspect the reason is the possibility of labelling their products as such.[3] Marketing - not love for the environment - is behind the move.
So regarding the headline question, soft PR avoids the accusation of greenwashing in a world of corporate virtue signalling.
[1] https://www.esporao.com/en/ https://www.esporao.com/en/
[2] Search results for organic farming: https://www.esporao.com/en/?s=organic+farming https://www.esporao.com/en/?s=organic+farming
[3] Example of label: https://www.esporao.com/en/olive-oil/organic-olive-oil-2017/ https://www.esporao.com/en/olive-oil/organic-olive-oil-2017/
- addicted 7y agoThe article is not conflating organic farming with sustainability. It’s citing a specific example where a company switched to organic farming because it was more sustainable, specifically making the soil more sustainable.
- chicob 7y ago"In the case of the Portuguese wineries, both already had good reputations for quality. All they wanted to do was to keep giving consumers great wine at a good price, without degrading their soil. They hadn’t increased the cost of making wine as they shifted to organic practice." My interpretation comes from this kind of phrasing, were it is assumed that the shift towards organic farming was a move towards sustainability.
- addicted 7y agoYeah but it describes what that organic practice was. Which was changes to improve the sustainability of the soil. It’s again referencing a specific organic practice which is sustainable.
- FartyMcFarter 7y agoIt is conflating the two. For example, the paragraph starting with: > This phenomenon is not limited to the clothing industry. The UK organic groceries market has been expanding steadily for the past eight years. Without any explanation given of how this relates to sustainability, they imply that the relationship between organic and sustainable is obvious. That looks like conflation to me.
- addicted 7y agoExcept that isn’t doing that either. The this here refers to “whereby innovations are silently enacted and kept from the rest of the industry” which is not sustainability. Further, it calls this practice “secret sustainability” and the article itself encloses it in quotes indicating it’s using this term out of convenience, and that it’s not actually a precise term. The use of quotes around secret sustainability is the article explicitly pointing out that it does not consider this an accurate term, and is using it extremely loosely.
- eeZah7Ux 7y agoThere is a huge overlap between organic farming and sustainable farming. Its starts from soil depletion. Then, oil-derived fertilizers. Next, aggressive pesticides that harm useful insects and bees. The list goes on.
- pfdietz 7y agoOil-derived fertilizers? What are they? Do you mean NATURAL GAS derived fertilizer? Would that be ok if the hydrogen to synthesize the ammonia were instead sourced from renewable energy? It would be the same ammonia!
- eeZahZUx 7y agoYes, I meant gas. And using renewables for farming is only a partial solution. Farming can be extremely energy intensive or less so depending on the methods used. Animal farming is more than order of magnitude worse. A lot of industrial farming developed that way due to access to cheap energy - but this is not sustainable.
- pfdietz 7y ago| Farming can be extremely energy intensive or less so depending on the methods used. In the US, we use less energy growing and harvesting food than we do cooking food. Total ag energy use is a tiny fraction of the total energy use in the economy. Energy-intensive agriculture is perfectly sustainable. There's more than enough renewable energy available. The one resource I would worry about is phosphorus, but this will be a problem for "organic" farming too. The solution there is to minimize erosion, recycle phosphorus-bearing wastes, build up sparingly soluble phosphate reserves in soils (and don't let erosion wash those away), and ultimately make up for losses by exploiting very low quality phosphate ores (crustal average is 0.1% P).
- AngryData 7y agoDoes this account for the massive amount of energy we 'cheat' out of natural gas derived fertilizer? If we eliminate natural gas, the energy costs of fertilizer production go up near 10 times what it is now.