4 ms·

While I understand that organic farming with reasonable yields requires care and expertise, at face value this just looked like amateur hour to establishment fa

While I understand that organic farming with reasonable yields requires care and expertise, at face value this just looked like amateur hour to establishment farmers--at least initially. I'm not endorsing this view, but I grew up in farm country and heard it a lot. The thinking is something like what follows. Pesticides, herbicides, and fertilizers massively increased yield, so eschewing these modern innovations due to some woo to get trash yields and inferior products (e.g., smaller, with more signs of insect predation) just seems like lunacy. Keep in mind, people who have made a living judiciously spraying their crops with these chemicals for many years aren't likely to think they've been poisoning themselves or the population for a lot of reasons, so they won't buy into the central premise of organic farming. So it's like insisting on doing all of your programming on a PD-11/20 just because it's pure. When customers start insisting on the right to buy inferior products at inflated prices, it's all the more batty.

azinman2 5y ago
Interesting. Thanks for sharing. Do you know if their perspective has shifted over time?
- arghnoname 5y ago
  I don't live there anymore and the friends I had back then all sold their farms to large farming conglomerates (another trend). I would guess that their views have moderated a bit, but probably more because organic can be good for business and it doesn't seem to be going away so there's less risk that capital expenditures and up-skilling to do organic farming is going to be wasted. To illustrate, when I was a kid I would "bean-walk," which is walking through soybean fields and cutting down weeds with a hook like tool manually. It was cheaper to pay local kids arcade money than spray, so that's what they did. In general farmers don't like spraying their crop with chemical--it's expensive. Farmers are pretty pragmatic people, but they have to plan ahead and deal with weather, etc. If organic pays enough of a premium to handle reduced yield and perhaps an increased risk premium for risk (e.g., higher insect levels due to a wet spring that organic methods don't fix) they'll do it.

azinman2 5y ago

Interesting. Thanks for sharing. Do you know if their perspective has shifted over time?

arghnoname 5y ago
I don't live there anymore and the friends I had back then all sold their farms to large farming conglomerates (another trend). I would guess that their views have moderated a bit, but probably more because organic can be good for business and it doesn't seem to be going away so there's less risk that capital expenditures and up-skilling to do organic farming is going to be wasted. To illustrate, when I was a kid I would "bean-walk," which is walking through soybean fields and cutting down weeds with a hook like tool manually. It was cheaper to pay local kids arcade money than spray, so that's what they did. In general farmers don't like spraying their crop with chemical--it's expensive. Farmers are pretty pragmatic people, but they have to plan ahead and deal with weather, etc. If organic pays enough of a premium to handle reduced yield and perhaps an increased risk premium for risk (e.g., higher insect levels due to a wet spring that organic methods don't fix) they'll do it.