Organic foods

[NAOS]

Dude no one knows exactly what the safe limit is for most pesticides. It's an educated guess at best but more likely an industry claim. When people start getting sick and it is successfully linked to a specific chemical we ban it. We don't do 30 year studies in advance to protect from long term risks. The EPA and the FDA can only be somewhat confident of short term risks. Beyond that they are just watchdogs.

It astounds me how few people recognize this.

 

[NAOS]

All human activities have an environmental cost. Organic farming is 25%-35% less efficient (in yield) than conventional farming, and thus have a higher land and resource cost. Nor can organic farming support the world population due to need of more resources and higher cost of products. But that's neither here nor there. I was simply responding to the claim that conventional food is less healthy than organic food because it's sprayed with pesticide. That's not really true. The health risk of pesticides on food is small if handled properly. If not handled properly, then both conventional and organic foods carry a risk, as demonstrated by the e.coli cases that spring up now and again from manure use in organic produce.

who's facts are you regurgitating right now? Why are you doing them this favor?

But then we use countless chemicals in practically every modern product. How do you know these chemicals in <insert a product that isn't essential for survival here> are safe over decades of use? Since we cannot rely on current knowledge on chemical safety as very few are tested in all concentration over lifetimes, none of it can be considered perfectly safe. The rational stance is to evaluate the information given the evidence at hand, not according to some arbitrary threshold of negative proof.

Ok then. Let's stay on topic....: why don't you share with us your direct experience with different farming methods and yields? tia

 

[NAOS]

Not very different from what I've been saying, though. Levels generally deemed by the FDA to be safe, but there might be long term effects. I wrote a longer response, but then I decided against it. Our disagreement is a bit pedantic. I'm disagreeing with the mentality of shunning something for being synthetic because of unknown long term effects, without any direct experience in food production, because that would apply to everything we use. I don't disagree that such chemicals exist, or that they might have unknown long-term effects.

And hey, haven't we had discussions about futurism and transhumanism? I would've pegged you as a little less risk averse.

fixed.

 

[Siro]

fixed.

So I shouod refrain from speaking about food because I'm not a farmer, like you're suddenly pretending to be?

Cute.

 

[NAOS]

Fresh milk (raw) isn't allowed to be sold in the US, has to be pasteurized. Pretty sure that's how it is.

Reason the tomatoes from your garden taste better is BC they're on the vine longer. Natural sugars that we can't replicate.

I buy raw milk every week at the farmers' market

 

[NAOS]

Most of the time I hear this debate between organic yields and conventional yields, I can hear the same imagined field in both instances. The argument always asks that you imagine the same rows and parcels: a strip of this food, maybe more; a strip of that food; a strip of another. Then, there's the irrigation, and it works basically the same in all instances, blah blah

Meanwhile, different farming methods that are totally organic are producing super high yields.

I agree with Hantlers, though. Nonconventional organic methods are hard (probably impossible) to scale up. That hardly feels like a condemnation, though.

 

[NAOS]

So I shouod refrain from speaking about food because I'm not a farmer, like you're suddenly pretending to be?

Cute.

you know my history of farming?

 

[Siro]

you know my history of farming?

Not as well as you so clearly know mine. But no, really, don't let me interrupt your playact about being the last word on food production. Do carry on.

 

[NAOS]

Not as well as you so clearly know mine. But no, really, don't let me interrupt your playact about being the last word on food production. Do carry on.

If you'd had any direct experience you certainly would have mentioned in the interaction you had with salt13. It seems a safe bet to count absence of evidence as evidence in this case; no way you can just carry on like you were if you'd tried your hand at it.

Look, we live in a world where we arm wave like that all the time. Sometimes, though, the arm waving doesn't work as well.

I'm not trying to be the last word, brough. lol at that.

 

[RandyForRubio]

I buy raw milk every week at the farmers' market

Yeah I was wrong. Discussed that earlier. My bad.

 

[RandyForRubio]

Most of the time I hear this debate between organic yields and conventional yields, I can hear the same imagined field in both instances. The argument always asks that you imagine the same rows and parcels: a strip of this food, maybe more; a strip of that food; a strip of another. Then, there's the irrigation, and it works basically the same in all instances, blah blah

Meanwhile, different farming methods that are totally organic are producing super high yields.

I agree with Hantlers, though. Nonconventional organic methods are hard (probably impossible) to scale up. That hardly feels like a condemnation, though.

One thing people have to realize with yield results is there's a difference between the amount you harvest and the amount you can sell. What I've witnessed with a lot of these so called high yielding plots are that while the harvestable yields may be high, the quality is low enough that it's difficult to sell. Makes a difference. Not saying that's always the case of course.

There's a lot of good ideas we can take from organic practices. We still don't have a perfect system, but we're working on melding conventional and non-conventional practices. Organic growers don't bother me. What bothers me is when people (primarily organic supporters) blast conventional practices with no knowledge of what's going on (like Dala).

You made good points on pairings and soil chemistry and how it can help with pests. Takes years to get the soil right though, most people aren't that patient when they should be. Lots of natural bio controls that can be used as well in a garden, but kind of impractical large scale. Maybe someday though, that's the goal. Trust me, I would love to not use chemicals. They're expensive.

 

[NAOS]

One thing people have to realize with yield results is there's a difference between the amount you harvest and the amount you can sell. What I've witnessed with a lot of these so called high yielding plots are that while the harvestable yields may be high, the quality is low enough that it's difficult to sell. Makes a difference. Not saying that's always the case of course.

There's a lot of good ideas we can take from organic practices. We still don't have a perfect system, but we're working on melding conventional and non-conventional practices. Organic growers don't bother me. What bothers me is when people (primarily organic supporters) blast conventional practices with no knowledge of what's going on (like Dala).

You made good points on pairings and soil chemistry and how it can help with pests. Takes years to get the soil right though, most people aren't that patient when they should be. Lots of natural bio controls that can be used as well in a garden, but kind of impractical large scale. Maybe someday though, that's the goal. Trust me, I would love to not use chemicals. They're expensive.

yeah, I also mentioned time. In my experience, it takes about 5 years to see the boost in yield that comes from good, biodynamic farming practices. (That's a super rough number, for the record. It's based on the two 5-year-plus experiences I have working the same bits of land.)