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Last time I looked into organic produce it seemed quite clear that it's a net negative for the environment. This is mostly due to land usage (up to 2x than conv

Last time I looked into organic produce it seemed quite clear that it's a net negative for the environment. This is mostly due to land usage (up to 2x than conventional. Yeah let's cut down more rainforests so that the West can eat healthier sounding food...). The articles I read also mentioned eutrophication of water bodies caused by organic farming. This is because the nutrient content of organic manure has high variance, so farmers always over-fertilize, producing excess nutrients that seep into groundwater. This is one article I read a while back: https://ourworldindata.org/is-organic-agriculture-better-for-the-environment https://ourworldindata.org/is-organic-agriculture-better-for... Can someone point to more good literature on this topic?

ip26 6y ago
The rain forest is not being cut down to grow organic heirloom tomatoes. From what I know, it's being razed to grow palm oil, bananas, and cheap corn/soy to feed cattle. In that vein, see your own link: The organic-conventional debate often detracts from other aspects of dietary choices which have greater impact. If looking to reduce the environmental impact of your diet, what you eat can be much more influential than how it is produced. The relative difference in land use and greenhouse gas impacts between organic and conventional systems is typically less than a multiple of two. Compare this to the relative differences in impacts between food types where, as shown in the charts below, the difference in land use and greenhouse gas emissions per unit protein between high-impact meats and low-impact crop types can be more than 100-fold. If your primary concern is whether the potato accompanying your steak is conventionally or organically produced, then your focus is arguably misplaced from the decisions which could have the greatest impact.
- exfalso 6y ago
  Very true, dietary choices have much larger impact (I'm currently eating broccoli as I'm typing this because of that very reason). However the claim that organic produce is better for the environment seems false nonetheless. Happy to read literature that proves otherwise.
  - ip26 6y ago
    I don't have literature one way or the other, it's a very hard question that depends a lot on your criteria... But I don't think organic will ever take over completely, I mainly hope that it demonstrates to producers that consumers value attributes other than $/lb, trials a different way of doing things, and leads to industrial ag adopting the best parts. While we are talking hopes & dreams, I also have my fingers crossed that a growing higher-end market for fruits & vegetables could push back on some of the consolidation & commodification happening in US farmland, which has not been good for small farmers.
    - exfalso 6y ago
      I don't know whether that change can originate from consumers alone. Maybe I'm just jaded, but imho any plan that starts with "we need to teach people..." is doomed from the start. Take a capitalistic system and leave it running for a long time, company structures will inevitably gravitate towards these giant over-optimized organizations living off the tiniest margins that no smaller competitor can compete with. Try to change things locally, your neighbour will blow you out of the water. I think our best chance is utilizing the social contract. Push for legislative change, taxes/subsidies to control for changes that no single individual/organization would ever have incentive to make. It seems like a boring and daunting task, but isn't this the only way to effect actual change? And we need the changes on a global scale. How should we make our markets less efficient if other countries don't? I think this over-optimization/homogenization is a general problem of humanity now, and it appears in seemingly unrelated areas too like social media, advertising, even music and tv. Perhaps our best chance is to try to introduce some sort of fragmenting force that reintroduces heterogeneity. Inefficiency is not such a bad thing, it's more robust to change, redundant, and ultimately just more interesting. Getting quite philosophical and ranty now, but I was also thinking, didn't this very change happen already, in nature, many millions of years ago, when lifeforms evolved the ability to die naturally? Species that don't die have smaller chances to survive environmental changes and adapt to resource scarcity. Doesn't this hint at the kind of decisions we need to make as a species? Introduce some notion of organizational death, or renewal, or limiting force, to make room for differentiation?
robocat 6y ago
Cow manure: where do they get it from? I suspect that the input of cow manure is not sustainable, or not scalable, or not economic. That part of the article is a bit whiffy-washy to me.
- kickout 6y ago
  There is plenty of cow poop, so the scale isn't a problem. Having that cow poop stay where you put it (in the soil) rather than running off in the nearest creek/river or seep into the groundwater--that's the hard part. Using cow poop is actually very smart. We (society) want meat so it is good to ensure efficient use of everything in that supply chain, using cow poop as a fertilizer is a great way to do that.

ip26 6y ago

The rain forest is not being cut down to grow organic heirloom tomatoes. From what I know, it's being razed to grow palm oil, bananas, and cheap corn/soy to feed cattle. In that vein, see your own link: The organic-conventional debate often detracts from other aspects of dietary choices which have greater impact. If looking to reduce the environmental impact of your diet, what you eat can be much more influential than how it is produced. The relative difference in land use and greenhouse gas impacts between organic and conventional systems is typically less than a multiple of two. Compare this to the relative differences in impacts between food types where, as shown in the charts below, the difference in land use and greenhouse gas emissions per unit protein between high-impact meats and low-impact crop types can be more than 100-fold. If your primary concern is whether the potato accompanying your steak is conventionally or organically produced, then your focus is arguably misplaced from the decisions which could have the greatest impact.

exfalso 6y ago
Very true, dietary choices have much larger impact (I'm currently eating broccoli as I'm typing this because of that very reason). However the claim that organic produce is better for the environment seems false nonetheless. Happy to read literature that proves otherwise.
- ip26 6y ago
  I don't have literature one way or the other, it's a very hard question that depends a lot on your criteria... But I don't think organic will ever take over completely, I mainly hope that it demonstrates to producers that consumers value attributes other than $/lb, trials a different way of doing things, and leads to industrial ag adopting the best parts. While we are talking hopes & dreams, I also have my fingers crossed that a growing higher-end market for fruits & vegetables could push back on some of the consolidation & commodification happening in US farmland, which has not been good for small farmers.
  - exfalso 6y ago
    I don't know whether that change can originate from consumers alone. Maybe I'm just jaded, but imho any plan that starts with "we need to teach people..." is doomed from the start. Take a capitalistic system and leave it running for a long time, company structures will inevitably gravitate towards these giant over-optimized organizations living off the tiniest margins that no smaller competitor can compete with. Try to change things locally, your neighbour will blow you out of the water. I think our best chance is utilizing the social contract. Push for legislative change, taxes/subsidies to control for changes that no single individual/organization would ever have incentive to make. It seems like a boring and daunting task, but isn't this the only way to effect actual change? And we need the changes on a global scale. How should we make our markets less efficient if other countries don't? I think this over-optimization/homogenization is a general problem of humanity now, and it appears in seemingly unrelated areas too like social media, advertising, even music and tv. Perhaps our best chance is to try to introduce some sort of fragmenting force that reintroduces heterogeneity. Inefficiency is not such a bad thing, it's more robust to change, redundant, and ultimately just more interesting. Getting quite philosophical and ranty now, but I was also thinking, didn't this very change happen already, in nature, many millions of years ago, when lifeforms evolved the ability to die naturally? Species that don't die have smaller chances to survive environmental changes and adapt to resource scarcity. Doesn't this hint at the kind of decisions we need to make as a species? Introduce some notion of organizational death, or renewal, or limiting force, to make room for differentiation?

robocat 6y ago

Cow manure: where do they get it from? I suspect that the input of cow manure is not sustainable, or not scalable, or not economic. That part of the article is a bit whiffy-washy to me.

kickout 6y ago
There is plenty of cow poop, so the scale isn't a problem. Having that cow poop stay where you put it (in the soil) rather than running off in the nearest creek/river or seep into the groundwater--that's the hard part. Using cow poop is actually very smart. We (society) want meat so it is good to ensure efficient use of everything in that supply chain, using cow poop as a fertilizer is a great way to do that.