re: Those People Anti Organic Foods

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Ever heard of crop rotation? It's a standard part of even conventional (non organic) farming. Land use efficiency in farming isn't what you'd think...how you use it depends on available water, soil chemistry & composition, etc. Poor soils are a production problem worldwide--merely dumping fertilizers won't magically create productivity.

Have you read Howard Buffett's (Warren's son) book "Forty Chances: Hope in a Hungry World"? He's a farmer...intensive monocrop midwestern farming, right in the middle of the corn & soybean heartland. He's also a philanthropist, conservationist, and supporter of improving agriculture in the hungriest parts of the world. You mentioned efficient land use, and he funds several large-scale experimental farms (including a big one in South Africa), where various techniques are tested.

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I'm certainly aware of crop rotation. But the majority of organic hacks don't fertilize or make maximum efficiency out of their rotated crops either. Its one big vicious spiral. Lets grow this inefficiently and we'll fertilize/crop rotate with this inefficiently acquired material too. All the while needing more and more land to meet the demand for this inefficiently raised produce. Or worse yet, they get those vermiposted bean vines/fish heads/corn stalks from a producer who didn't raise them organically at which point the whole organic model becomes a sham.

There's no two ways around it, as of today and this very moment there is not an organic growing method that rivals commercial intensive farming. When there is I'll be the first to jump aboard.

Here locally in Florida heaven forbid you actually grow organic on a farm previously using intensive farming methods. The Whole Foods mafia will be there any time to remind you that just a year before you were using herbicides, pesticides and nitrogen based fertilizer and that those things will be there for years to come. The organic zealots here have even thumbed their nose at inner city vertical farming and hydroponics. Both of which seem pretty promising for remedying hunger across the world.

Addressing the third world is a problem of its own. If they had access to modern farming equipment, suitable farmland and modern intensive farming materials such as fertilizers you can bet that they'd be using it. I applaud Buffett's efforts but those starving Africans could give a shite if the produce is organic or not and if Buffett committed his monies and energies to bringing them time-tested intensive farming methods and a sustainable model they may be better off.

I mean let's be honest here, is reverting to the farming methods used by Squanto and Pilgrims really in the best interest of a growing human population? Is this what a few thousand years of human civilization and advancement has taught us? Just one mans opinion but at its most elemental level the whole organic movement seems preposterous in year 2014.

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Addressing the third world is a problem of its own. If they had access to modern farming equipment, suitable farmland and modern intensive farming materials such as fertilizers you can bet that they'd be using it. I applaud Buffett's efforts but those starving Africans could give a shite if the produce is organic or not and if Buffett committed his monies and energies to bringing them time-tested intensive farming methods and a sustainable model they may be better off.

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Umm...no. "Time tested intensive farming" in the midwestern American model is predicated on deposits of topsoil hundreds of feet thick. These soils, a result of glaciation, are a geologic anomaly with few geographic peers. Those soil reserves make the US the breadbasket of the world.

Sadly, those fertile soils simply don't exist where hunger is most concentrated. It is not possible to farm the Sahel region (edges of the Sahara) or incredibly thin & nutrient poor tropical rainforest soils in the same fashion as Iowa, Illinois, etc.

Even in the nation's heartland, "intensive" farming is evolving. No till farming, intercropping, and soil building have become necessities after several generations of intensive farming. Topsoil washes away down the MS river by the tons & tons each year due to poor ag practices. Adding chemical inputs won't combat erosion or drought.

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Two posters who obviously know a lot and for whom I have a great deal of respect that disagree.

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I never advocated all organic...I'm just pointing out that "better living through chemistry" doesn't always apply. We need to be better stewards of our planet, and closing our minds to alternatives doesn't advance humanity. The more we learn about soil science, the more it becomes clear that we need to manage for longer-term healthy yields rather than pushing each field to the max every season. Fertilizers can't fix everything.

Try growing a carrot in heavy clay: all the Osmocote in the world ain't gonna fix it.

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Try growing a carrot in heavy clay

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hey I live in Georgia. you don't need to tell me about clay.

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It's too expensive and I haven't died from eating non organic yet.

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Same here.

As soon as I die from eating non organic, I am switching.

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the difference is there isn't a practical and more efficient alternative as there is with organic farming.

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Seize all the cattle ranches and turn them into organic farming collectives........comrade.