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Approaching the Collapse: Don’t Panic, Go Organic
So-called “business as usual” is neither sustainable, nor even possible, for much longer. Out-of-control energy corporations, Wall Street, the Pentagon, agribusiness/biotech corporations, and indentured politicians have driven us to the brink. They tell us: don’t worry; trust the experts, things will soon return to “normal.” But reality and common sense tell a different story.
Extreme weather, crop failures, commodities speculation, land grabs, escalating prices, soil degradation, depleted aquifers, routine contamination, food-related disease, and mass hunger represent the “new norm” for food and farming. The global agricultural system, with the exception of the rapidly growing organic sector, rests upon a shaky foundation. Patented seeds, genetically engineered crops, expensive and destructive chemical and energy-intensive inputs, factory farms, monoculture production, eroding soils, unsustainable water use, taxpayer subsidies, and long-distance hauling and distribution, including massive imports that amount to 15% of the U.S. food supply amount to a recipe for disaster.
A “perfect storm” or “ultimate recession” as described by Lester Brown in his new book, World on the Edge, could develop at any time, precipitated by extreme weather and crop failures on a massive scale. A growing number of nations, including the oil giants and China, are now scrambling to secure overseas farmland to feed their domestic populations. World grocers and supermarkets, including the U.S., have, on the average, only a four-day supply of food on hand. An oil shock, global disease pandemic, prolonged drought in the American heartland, or nuclear meltdown could set off a global food panic. Supermarket shelves and grain silos would be stripped bare within a short period of time. Have you thought about this? Are you and those in your local community ready for this?
Peak Food, Peak Oil, Peak Water, Peak Soil
World grain reserves amount to less than 75 days of supply. Harvests of strategic food grains and cereals have basically leveled off or even decreased, with enormous amounts of acreage now providing fuel for cars instead of food for people. At the same time, affordable fossil fuel energy supplies have peaked (Peak Oil), with the world increasingly dependent on “extreme” oil and natural gas extraction (deep sea and Arctic drilling, tar sands, and fracking), accelerating the prices of petroleum-based farm inputs, as well as food distribution and processing costs. Billions of people in the Global South are now spending 50-70% of their household income on food (although in the U.S. it is only 11%). Hydrologists and agronomists warn that Peak Water is fast approaching, when the already limited availability of water from underground aquifers for crop irrigation, which supplies 20% of U.S. and 40% of world grains, exponentially decreases. Peak Soil is also fast approaching, with soil erosion and desertification already degrading 25% of the earth’s land. Peak Soil is directly related to unsustainable farming and forestry practices, including heavy pesticide use, chemical fertilizers, genetically engineered mono-crops, and non-sustainable grazing and clear-cutting. Meanwhile global population numbers (in direct relation to poverty and lack of education for women) and demand for food (especially meat and animal products) are accelerating.
Of course we could go on and on, citing the ever more disturbing information we read every day in the mainstream media and on the Internet. But the life or death question is: what are we going to do about it?
Crash-Resistant and Climate-Friendly: The Organic Revolution
Fortunately, over the past 40 years, a new generation of organic farmers and ranchers have proliferated, building upon the traditional wisdom and practices of indigenous and traditional farmers over the past 10,000 years. A growing corps of organic farmers and gardeners are producing increasing amounts of healthy, nutritious foods without the use of chemical fertilizers, pesticides, genetically engineered seeds, or animal drugs. At the same time, these 21st Century organic stewards of the land are consuming far less (50% or more) fossil fuels and water. Study after study has demonstrated that organic small farms in the developing world out-produce chemical and genetically engineered farms by a factor of two to one; while in the industrialized nations, sustainable organic yields are comparable in “normal” weather to industrial farms; but far superior (up to 50-70% higher) in times of drought or torrential rain, the types of extreme weather that have become the “new norm.” In other words, not only can organic farming feed the world, but it is in fact the only way that we are going to be able to feed the world in this 21st Century era of energy, water, and climate crisis.
The burning question then becomes how do we build up a stronger Movement that can promote and scale up organic, local and regional-based systems of food and farming (while complimentary green Movements do the same in the energy, housing, and transportation sectors)? How can we, as quickly as possible, build up a critical mass of organic farms, gardens, seed banks, farm schools, and distribution networks in all the local regions of North America and world? We don’t have room in this essay to go into all the details, but here are a few things that millions of us are already starting to do, that are moving us forward and preparing us for survival in the likely eventuality of economic collapse.
- Step-up public education and consciousness-raising. We have now crossed a major threshold of raising public awareness: the majority of Americans say they prefer organic food, for a variety of health, environmental, and ethical reasons. After forty years of public education and campaigning, organic foods and products are the fastest growing items in America's grocery carts. Thirty million households, comprising 75 million people, are now buying organic foods and other products on a regular basis. Fifty-six percent of U.S. consumers say they prefer organic foods, citing a wide variety of reasons that we and the Organic Movement have taught them. Millions of young people and urban residents are starting to learn organic farming and gardening techniques.
http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_23801.cfm
- Step-up the campaign against industrial agriculture and genetic engineering. The more we educate people about the hazards of chemical and energy-intensive food and farming and genetically modified organisms (GMOs), the greater the demand for organic foods and products, and the greater the number of new organic farmers, young organic farm apprentices, and urban organic gardeners (now 12 million-strong). The Achilles heel or weakest link of industrial agriculture is truthful labeling, consumers right-to-know. If toxic pesticides and chemicals and genetically engineered ingredients are labeled, consumers will not buy them, retailers will not sell them, and farmers will not grow them. Even though Washington has fallen under the control of Monsanto and corporate agribusiness, we can still change public policies at the state and local level, with grassroots-powered ballot initiatives and state legislation. Even though we live in Monsanto Nation, we can still bring down Goliath. http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_23693.cfm
- Link up with other Movements, local to global. Reducing global poverty and war and stabilizing the climate go hand-in-hand. The best way to reduce global rural poverty, conflict, and war is through land reform and sustainable organic farming practices. With land reform and technical assistance, millions of organic farms in the Global South can develop and prosper, helping the world’s poorest people, especially women, to produce far more food with less or no fossil fuel or chemical inputs. This organic revolution will enable several billion peasants and rural villagers to rise up from poverty and reduce the unsustainable population growth that accompanies abject poverty. At the same time, one of the best ways to reduce fossil fuel use and naturally sequester climate-destabilizing greenhouse gases is to change our current land use practices, to go organic. For 10,000 years indigenous people and traditional farmers fed the world with organic farming and animal husbandry practices. By converting the world’s 12 billion acres of farmland and pasture land back to organic soil management we will be creating, instead of destroying, soil fertility, as well as restoring the soil food web’s amazing ability to permanently sequester enormous amounts of climate destabilizing CO2 through increased plant photosynthesis. With organic soil management spreading across the world’s 12 billion acres of farmland and pastureland, and a global mobilization to replant the 10 billion acres of forest that industry and agribusiness have destroyed, we can literally reverse global warming, bringing atmospheric concentrations of CO2 back down to a safe level of 350 parts per million from the current dangerous level of 390 ppm.
The hour is late, but there is still time to prepare ourselves and our communities before the economy collapses. Educate yourself and get active. Start to make preparations for an end to “business as usual.” Step up your efforts. Help link the issues and different constituencies in the body politic. Don’t panic. Go organic.
50 Comments so far
Show AllI'm not competent to give an opinion on some of the subjects that the author discusses, but there are good reasons to believe that the situation, overall, is as grim as he says.
The worst thing is that the scientific and governmental entities that are supposed to find out what the situation is have been thoroughly corrupted by the interests whom they're supposed to be monitoring or regulating. We simply can't trust what we're told by any of them.
That being the case, I think the author's advice is the most-rational response. I live in Mexico, and support efforts such as he describes.
It seems the collapse crisis will lead to the solution; an FDR-style government will be the only economic "game in town", replete with 21st century versions of TVA/CCC/WPA/NAWAPA etc...Then we can recreate the soils, the forests, the fresh water supplies, agricultures and industries sanely tailored for living & creating, instead of killing and destroying.
I hope Inb is right, but an FDR-style government would require a mass marketed leader that can excite and redirect the country in those directions. A collapse, surely a strong likelihood, would more likely lead to a militaristic martial law takeover or a slide into a tribal anarchic shot-'em-up free-for-all. Right now nobody is there who can assume the kind of leadership role that Inb's version of the only game in town would require.
The collapse is certain (in progress already, in slow-motion. The gods work slowly but thoroughly). We will go "up" or "down" from there. You're right. We can indeed "go down" into chaos and hell. Hopefully, a leader will emerge during the emergency. History's "great leaders" weren't known as such, during their own time. We can also end up with a hitler-esque figure.
Seeing how Nader and other progressive candidates get less than 4% of the vote in recent national elections (past 20 years) it is apparent that too many Americans are dialed into the corporate propaganda machine to elect an FDR style government.
The only hope for transformation is on a state-by-state progression. Historically, progressive legislation at the national level only occurred after several states created the momentum.
Good point, as FDR started in New York.
An FDR style government would be terrible! He presided over years of Alcohol Prohibition, and enacted federal cannabis prohibition. The two policies that killed the American (mostly organic) farms in the 1920s and 30s.
We had over 5 million more farms back then. Imagine that rate of growth with population over the years, growing sustainable organic fuel in hemp methanol and ethanol for our country's fuel source.
There is a job waiting for you, ergoat, at the FOX network, THE MASTERS OF REVISIONIST HISTORY !
Prohibition ENDED in 1933 within weeks of FDR moving into the White House.
FDR DOES have SOME blood on his hands with respect to the 1937 law making hemp illegal nationwide, however, most states had already made it illegal prior to FDR showing up in DC.
The Great Depression (that started nearly four years prior to FDR taking office), not hemp laws, bankrupted family farms, giving momentum to agribusiness. Mnay of FDR's other actions kept the situation from being even worse.
Because Fox News is peddling pro-hemp stories now...?
The bill FDR signed criminalized hemp (and all cannabis) in a way that no state law did. To this day. It was an evil act, and all of your centrist liberal hang-wringing about your Democratic hero doesn't change the fact that FDR was a centrist of the times, pacifying a majority populist leftist movement.
A people's movement that could have been shored up by what Popular Mechanics called a "Billion Dollar Crop" in 1937, but what the oil barons and plutocrats knew for decades prior would be a threat to their dirty energy monopolies.
So pick the nits off of the given example, and use what is good and useful. It at least has the advantage of being historically familiar, and FDR is generally regarded by people as a good thing for the commoners. Winning the hearts & minds of the people is no small thing. It's not a good idea to LEAD with das kapital, or some other thing that's not GENERALLY well received by the people.<
That is, assuming you want to find solutions. Or is your purpose something else?
No, I do want to find solutions in agrarian organic land reforms. It is worth pointing out in this context that FDR was the antithesis of that, and his era brought forth entrenching of petroleum barons, non-biodegradable plastics, and industrial agriculture with petro-chemical fertilizers.
And for all of this author's good points about how organics are good for the planet and health, he offers little in the way of ideas of how to get American farmers back on (their stolen) land for a more than living wage and benefits.
It's rather the methods, than the actual programs. That's why there is talk of a "green new deal". What ever the solutions will be, will probably need course corrections later on anyway. That's just how life is; a problem-solving "adventure".<
One thought occurs to me. I'm getting on in age, and my ideas may be too conventional. I do believe a thorough-going change is coming down upon us, and seeking to maintain continuity with the good that had gone before just may not be an available option. New thinking from newer generations may be what is needed.
ergoat, (Aug 25 2011 - 2:03pm)
The man saved the US middle class, kept the country from falling into the same kind of fascism as Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain, and other countries... We are even more likely to suffer the same fate because of climate catastrophe, peak oil, multiple ecological collapses, and the increasing gambling problem of the wealthy, and what you're worried about is keeping your pot and booze supply line going? Boy, talk about having an addiction...
I was clearly talking about fuel, you dumb SOB!
you weren't clearly talking about anything.it won't help your cause to start calling people names because you are being obtuse. and have no sense of humor.
An excellent article, adressing the most important issues facing us today Oilbomber's acrobatics and pretty speeches are nothing but a distraction from those issues.
As I have been saying for a long time here on CD, we have entered The Long Emergency, and we are now in the wobble phase of said emergency. The next phase, as I see it, will that of scarcity industrialism. All of this is painful and will be even more so, as the situation becomes more dire. However, we can mitigate the pain by following the author's suggestions.
Industrialism is a plague upon the Earth. It is destroying us and our home, Earth, no less than the Amerikkan Empire and its Pentagon, the most beliicose and life-averse organization on the planet.
If there was a sudden shortage of food here in the USA there would be little time to start over organically. Heavily armed fat people would would prowl the streets like zombies, seeking calories from everything and everyone. Gun fights erupting at the potato chip aisle at WalMart. French fries cooked in used motor oil. Corn dogs made from real dogs. We have already passed peak intelligence.
philiphoko -- what a great comment. I loved it.
The sad reality, though, is that when the collapse occurs, the supermarkets will empty fast and roving bands of "heavily armed fat people" will prowl the neighborhood organic gardens.
As if that's not scary enough, we organic gardeners are not growing our sustainable veggies in a bubble. The destruction of the air and water will make it far more difficult, if not impossible, to grow our own. Global climate change is not helping. Two years ago our tomato and potato crop was totally wiped out in a matter of hours by late blight.
Dropping out cannot be the only action. This insane system has to be destroyed before we can be saved.
Most of those "heavily armed fat people" won't want to eat what you are growing. They are more likely to steal other stuff from you at gunpoint that they can readily liquidate so they can afford to pay the premium prices for whatever junk food scalpers are selling.
Junk food has a long half-life so you can bet people are stocking up on it so they can make a killing when the crash comes.
ditto on philipholo post.
Same here in my area with climate struggles. potato crop blighted in a few days. Tomatoes starting to get it. So a bit of the Irish potato famine here - late blight is the same as the famine blight.
Drying what I can into powders for emergency soups.
Point - many of us are trying the goals of this article and learning daily it is getting harder. Step one is critical - the education and consciousness raising. That was what helped turn things in the late 60s.
Z-Man, (Aug 25 2011 - 1:15pm)
isn't the system destroyed when enough people drop out?
This apocalyptic vision almost made me choke on my pork rind.
That's a hilarious and all too true vision of the coming apocalypse. Everybody likes the idea of growing your own food if and when the diesel trucks shut down and the food stops flowing to the supermarkets. However, there is one important factor that we always seem to overlook. Any prolonged interruption of power can knock out a nuclear power plant. And, although the media have managed to downplay the consequences of Fukushima, it's becoming increasingly obvious that radiation pollution is spreading worldwide as a result. Whether you're growing tomatoes in Tokyo or potatoes in Toronto, there's nothing like a little Cesium fallout to ruin your harvest.
philiphoko
(Aug 25 2011 - 11:24am)
Isn't that the point of the article? that we have to organize and start planting BEFORE anything more collapses?
I write the following reply to a comment that seems to have disappeared while I was writing. I thought I'd post the "reply" anyway.
** Here's the quote from the comment to which I was replying: **
"The Hudson Institute's Center for Global Food Issues estimates that modern high-yield farming has saved 15 million square miles of wildlife habitat, and that if the world switched to organic farming, we'd need to cut down 10 million square miles of forest. Less-productive farming could also lead to even less food for the world's undernourished."
** Here's my reply. **
That used to be my argument against going organic, until I had my epiphany in a 7-11 store: the "food" there was nothing but junk, and most of the customers were at least 30 pounds overweight. So much for the crocodile tears about the world's undernourished.
Organic's advocates have never -- to my knowledge -- said that organic farming either could or should support the grossly wasteful, unhealthy lifestyle to which the US has grown accustomed. I wonder whether the Hudson Institute calculated what's needed to support *that* lifestyle organically, rather than what's needed to provide a simple, healthy diet.
It is also entirely possible, and "do-able", to better manage our world's water resources, and green the world's deserts. Besides reforestation projects, we can turn desert sands into rich croplands/grasslands/woodlands. It would take massive/intensive investments in labor and capital and technology, on a "WWII"-scale of effort. That's better than sitting, doing nothing, and dying, while waiting on "the market" to come up with a solution. It will never happen that way.
Also beats fighting one another over the decaying scraps of a collapsed civilization. There are just too many good ideas out there to go that way, into the dark.
"That's better than sitting, doing nothing, and dying, while waiting on "the market" to come up with a solution. It will never happen that way."
My sentiments exactly.
The Hudson Institute Lies, in my humble opinion. I've read that integrated family farming, (organic or otherwise) is more productive than agribusiness and yields far more per acre than "modern high-yield farming". True, it is usually more labor intensive, but the output justifies the effort. Also, agribusiness, with it's monoculture plantings is suspected of contributing to the bee CCD (though not proven).
Perhaps Webwalker will weigh in on this ( I certainly value his opinions on farming issues). It has been my experience here in Maine that the farmers using organic methods seem to have more wildlife than some of the factory farms... In my own garden I can see dozens of types of butteflies and bees each day. (I plant rows of flowers between vegetables). I am NOT "certified organic" per se, but do subscribe to the organic methods and have supported MOFGA for nearly three decades.
Has anybody else experienced difficulty getting onto Organicconsumers.Org? For the last three weeks I've not been able to reach that site even though I still get their news letter and still see Mr. Cummins' reports on Natural News and here at Common Dreams. (Organic Bytes just arrived in my in box as I was typing). I suspect that I'm not the only person having a problem.
The Hudson Institute lies. Here's a couple tid-bits from a quick internet search:
A brief IPS analysis of this right-wing Zionist think-tank:
http://www.rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/Hudson_Institute
A list of funders of the Hudson Institute from their 2002 annual report, very heavy on big Ag and big Pharma:
Ag Processing Inc
American Crop Protection Association
American Cyanamid
Archer Daniels Midland
Cargill
Ciba-Geigy
ConAgra Foods
Conrad Black
CropLife International
DowElanco
DuPont
Eli Lilly and Company
Exxon Mobil
Fannie Mae
General Electric Fund
Heinz
IBM
Lilly Endowment
McDonald's
Merck
Microsoft
Monsanto
National Agricultural Chemical Association
Nichols-Dezenhall Communications Management Group
Novartis
PayPal
PhRMA
PriceWaterhouseCoopers
Procter & Gamble
Sunkist Growers
Syngenta Crop Protection
United Agri Products
Westfield Corporation
right. Much more produce per acre with personal farming - organic or not. Wendell Berry speaks clearly on the subject. My experience supports it. Goes the same in the forest. Much less "mass" in planted, industrial forestland, and the diverse range ...a real web of life.
Posted by SSJJ
(Aug 25 2011 - 11:35am)
Not to mention that organic farming produces just as high yields as chemical farming, so doesn't use any more land to produce the same amount of food. In fact, when done well, organic yields are actually higher.
Since people who eat organically are statistically less likely to use corn syrup, eat meat, and eat many of those useless products found in...well, everywhere...the move toward organics would actually increase the land available for wildlife, etc. Organic permaculture, with the use of food forests and complex communities of plants and animals, would probably increase organic yields even more and would be land that's already part way on the way to being wilderness.
*Comment deleted by site administrators for spamming*
see: http://www.commondreams.org/comment-policy
It takes a few years of soil preparation for an organic garden to be productive. Learning to farm organically takes time. Purchasing and saving seed, pest management, selecting and mixing crops effectively, effective watering procedures and water capture, organic fertilization, composting, and acquisition of necessary tools and supplies. Beginning now would at least insure that these items are available and affordable. Planting fruit trees is important too.
OK, we should all eat organic. Let's see: about seven percent of total food sales were organic last year. Only ninety-three percent to go. Of course, growing organic means you have to put composted animal and human waste on fields--how long will it take to change the present system to enable that? And then, pesticide control will be a bitch--organic farmers don't "do nothing" in the face of insect depredations. You will have to create a hell of a lot of organic sprays and breed a hell of a lot of ladybugs to solve that problem. Then you will have to have enough seed to grow organically--where will that come from? Beyond that, you will have to convince people that vegetables and fruits don't have to be "perfect", an educational challenge, to put it mildly. And how will we store food without preservatives? No, organic food is fine for a niche market, but it will not feed the majority of people, not ever.
My strawberries haven't done half as well this year as last, because we had rain into July and we've only gotten temps in the 90°s the latter half of August. And looking at what's been happening in the eastern part of the country this year; if it's any indication of what we may expect to continue, I'd say that gardening as we know it will have to change. I remember years ago when a Si Fi show was on, the people on this very long spaceship filled with people looking for another world after losing theirs (I think), had this huge hydrophonic garden that fed all the people. That method, and greenhouse gardens, may be the necessary ways to grow foods in the near future. As for preserving foods, our ancestors did it to survive, and never used preservatives. My mother canned enough veggies from our garden to get our family of seven through the winter and into the following summer when the garden started producing again. Salt and water was all that went into the jars. She also canned fruits bought at local orchards, using only a syrup she made with sugar and water for them.
Dr. Osera,
You very plainly do not have the foggiest idea what you are talking about.
Farmers have lots of solutions to pests that do not involve "a hell of a lot of organic sprays and a hell of a lot of ladybugs." Rotation, inter-planting, careful attention to variety selection and local ecosystems and climate, and careful attention to the growing things themselves, are key to successful agroecology, Permaculture, and organic agriculture. Decentralized processing and distribution systems and strengthening local and regional food systems are also important to restabilizing our food production and reharmonizing our relationship with the Earth.
Fact is, study after study has demonstrated, loss under organic farming methods is similar to loss under chemical farming methods.
Study after study has demonstrated that organic farming methods actually OUTPRODUCE chemical industrial farming methods on food produced per acre. Yes it takes closer attention and more labor / more jobs. The UN just published a report recommending widespread adoption of sustainable organic methods:
http://www.srfood.org/index.php/en/component/content/article/1174-report-agroecology-and-the-right-to-food
What organic methods do NOT produce is higher profits and increased control for predatory corporate industrialists.
Also NO ONE in the organic movement is using "composted human waste on fields." Sewage sludge is not accepted in organic certification, and anyone using it will not be certified. In our chemical industrial culture, human waste accumulates toxins, on top of the fact that it is a vector for pathogens. In an organic culture, with careful composting, we could safely return to the age-old practice of putting human waste into agricultural fields, but not in our present economy. The chemical / industrial ag sector tried to get treated sewage accepted into the organic program, and activists fought back and stopped them. Sewage sludge IS used on chemical industrial farms. Read "Toxic Sludge is Good for You."
Chemical food WILL destroy civilization through the continued onslaught against the natural balances of the living systems of the Earth. So many tipping points have been passed, and the destabilization of the Earth's living systems has reached a likely "point of no return" that we are currently experiencing the early "wobble" phase of the breakdown of these living systems. The ONLY hope for the future is a widespread adoption of human systems that work WITH natural systems, rather than human systems that seek to ignore, control, or destroy natural systems in the name of short-term profit.
Your knee-jerk insistence that we simply will never change our culture so therefore no effective change of our agricultural practices is possible speaks more to your defeatism than to any actual impossibility of adopting systems and practices that enable our survival. Your refusal to see the utter UNSUSTAINABILITY of our present system is not a logical argument, but an emotional reaction. Not only CAN we change our culture and our systems, we WILL change them! The only question is: Will we wrest control from the predatory chemical industrialists in time to restabilize the living systems of the Earth? Or will we all crash and burn together?
Yeah, I agree with basically everything you say above. I would only add that new forms of social and community organization will be necessary to deal with the challenges resulting from the collapse that is well under way. Global aggregate economic growth is coming to an end, and this is going to cause massive distortions and dislocations in the way our current (unsustainable and irredeemable) economic system operates. Adapting economic functions to sustainably and humanely allocate resources is going to require thinking far outside the boxes that we in the West are accustomed to. But there are answers and solutions and some pretty damned innovative low-tech systems that should give us cause for hope.
Ultimately it is going to be up to us crazy upright-walking primates to figure out how to live together in peace and sanity. This is going to be a process and the transition from here to best case (or decent case) scenario isn't going to be easy by any stretch of the imagination. In answer to your questions at the end, it will be some of both restabilizing and crashing and burning- it will depend on where you are. But ultimately, until we admit that growth is dead, and try to figure out new solutions that are adequate to our new reality, we will only be digging ourselves a deeper hole. So get busy accepting reality and spreading the word- the wider world needs to hear this repeated over and over and over again: Growth is dead, now let's adapt. Growth is dead, now let's adapt.
My point was that it would be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to increase the scale of organic agriculture such that the majority of human beings eat organic. There is a valid concern about where the fertilizer will come from, how pests will be controlled by purely organic methods, and how organics can provide the calories required for the world's population of eight billion people. Certainly organic agriculture provided for the needs of three billion a hundred years ago, but the game is different now. I'm surprised you organic enthusiasts can't see how difficult a transition to organic food production will be--and how much more expensive food will become for the poor of the world. It seems obvious to me.
Your refusal to see the utter UNSUSTAINABILITY of our present system continues.
i'm surprised you industrial agriculture enthusiasts can't see the spike in atmospheric carbon (not only from burning fossil carbon but also from destroying topsoil through UNSUSTAINABLE industrial ag practices) has knocked the climate crazy and the game is different now. Not to mention the widespread degradation of ecosystems, spreading "dead zones," dying forests, desertification, spike in extinctions, wake up from your dream because reality is breaking down your door.
Get ready for a hell of a ride my friend because the wheels are coming off your beloved industrial systems including agriculture, and we'll be forced by that reality to change our systems very soon, no matter what "seems obvious" to you.
Also you should get outside of what "seems obvious" and study real reporting and analysis on agroecological, Permaculture, and organic productivity. You are mistaken in your assumptions. And if you find yourself reading some Hudson Institute report on how organic agriculture is going to kill us all, look at who is paying for that report. The oil, pharm, and industrial ag "think tanks" are purposefully polluting the cultural awareness with high-priced professional distortions (and polluting the political process with high-priced professional "lobbying") because they "earn" billions of dollars in short-term profits under the present long-term UNSUSTAINABLE system of destroying natural systems to turn them into money.
You think the price of food under a sustainable production system will be high? Just hang on for the ride my friend, because the price of existence in a cascading destabilized natural world will be too high for you or Warren Buffett to pay.
I'm also baffled by drosera's refusal to see or admit, even after being told, that organic yields are just as high as chemical agriculture. Whether it's feeding 1 million or 9 billion doesn't matter; organic yields can be just as high or higher than chemical ag. yields. For example some studies suggest that using permaculture communities can increase caloric yield 20% over chemical monocultures (Cornell agronomist Jane Mt. Pleasant's 3 sisters research, Gaia's Garden - 184). There is no physical or technical reason why we can't avoid the worst of climate change effects and survive, even thrive, while we adjust to new realities and after we form a new kind of civilization---if we get started now. The only thing holding us back is the fears of people on the far right.
From one farmer to an obviously experienced expert ---- thank you for telling me that what I do and have done for the past many years doesn't and can't work. When you pick and sell a few dozen crops of fruits and veggies, get back to me on this one. dh
DH,
I assume you’re talking about chemical industrial farming. Either you're confusing 2 meanings of "what works" or you're lying for some reason we can’t discern for sure here (I’m not interested in which it is). What may seem to be working for chemical farmers in the current circumstances is OBVIOUSLY NOT working for the vast majority of humans or the Earth. It doesn’t take a farmer to know that, although people who are farmers certainly ought to be able to tell. People of any profession who profess not to know that, are again, either lying, crazy, or pathologically insensitive. Defensiveness is not going to help any of us and is a large part of what's keeping us on course for utter destruction by climate catastrophe, peak oil/peak everything and the larger ecological collapse they're a part of.
What part exactly of the diagnosis do you disagree with, and do you have any credible references to back your opinions up? (your expertise in digging and lifting boxes notwithstanding. (Not to demean farming, of course)).
i think perhaps you misunderstood Donkey Hote's comment.
i believe DH is replying to drosera, rebutting drosera's attack on organic practices.
“...organic food... will not feed the majority of people, not ever.”
But it did, for roughly 10,000 years, 99.4% of the time that we’ve been horticulturalists and agriculturalists. Since organic yields are just as high as chemical, there’s no “feed the world” argument here.
Yes, transforming agriculture will take work, creativity, cooperation, and probably courage and determination after repeated failure. So what? It’s not exactly that we have to do it, as that it will happen whether we choose to do it or not. Climate catastrophe, peak oil, peak soil, peak phosphate and multiple ecological/economic collapses will make organic the only farming in the future as it was in the past. It’s been a wild party, (wildly destructive, anyway and not that much of a party for those who were paying attention) but it’s almost over. We are switching late but maybe just in time.
And you apparently haven’t eaten much organic food. If you had you would know that the Joni Mitchell song no longer applies. Organic fruits and vegetables are as cosmetic as chemically-grown in addition to all their other fine qualities—taste, health, soil improvement (with the carbon sequestration that that entails), farm worker safety and health, and so on.
if you haven’t even tried it, why are you so determined to hate organic farming?
Organic gardening and farming require knowhow, but it is the only game in town.
To think that peaceful liberals, the bulk of organic food consumers and small farmers, will have to protect their crops with guns, seems strange
Not only should we all eat organic, we should all eat vegan. I can hear the moans. But if you want to do something really effective in helping the planet and societies, go vegan. Not only will you help the planet, but you will help yourselves. Have type II diabetes? A change in life style and diet could reverse it in a matter of weeks. http://www.diabetologia-journal.org/Lim.pdf
see also http://drhyman.com/new-research-finds-diabetes-can-be-reversed-6187/
Are you a rickety and creaky American with declining health? Do the planet and yourself a favor -- eat green, park your car and exercise, and really get a life. Not only will you help save the planet, but you will help save yourself and you will feel much, much better.
I know a lady who doesn't eat meat, and she has diabetes. She said that she got it from drinking too much juice which is full of sugar; even carrot juice. So, if you don't mind, I will eat a little meat, fish and eggs; lots of vegies, brown, black, and mahogany rice. Being vegan is not the answer for me. I'v heard it before. If one is going to do garden work, one must eat to sustain ones self.
Is she a doctor? Or was she told that by someone who is?
I know a man--in fact I know thousands of men and women--who eat meat and are extremely unhealthy. In fact some of them are dead. Does that prove something?
Many people do sustain themselves on vegan diets. Whether it's the answer for you or not doesn't matter to them. We need to stop confusing personal anecdote with universal truth.
"The hour is late."
Sounds like Paul of Tarsus. (1 Cor 7:29)
The article is further evidence that "organic" is a belief system, and an apocalyptic one at that. It's not surprising the "organic" cult has hooked up with the peak oil "doomers." While the peak oil phenomenon is real, it's clearly not the catastrophe its early followers advertised it as being.
Like Comet Kohoutek in the 1970s, peak oil is turning out to be much ado about nothing.
As for an "agricultural revolution": The idea that civilization is going to go backward is simply absurd. Evolution moves in one direction, and it builds upon what has come before. Requisitioning fuels away from recreational uses and earmarking them for agricultural uses will go a long, long way, whereas "organic" will only bring suffering and poverty.
The agrarian romanticism in this article is just appalling:
"Fortunately, over the past 40 years, a new generation of organic farmers and ranchers have proliferated, building upon the traditional wisdom and practices of indigenous and traditional farmers over the past 10,000 years."
"Indigenous and traditional farmers" repeatedly failed to stop famine, disease and environmental catastrophes.
Not only that, contemporary "organic" farming bears little resemblance to "traditional" farming. The "traditional indigenous" farmer did not have plastic mulch, poly greenhouses and PVC piping; electricity powered irrigation systems; diesel and gasoline powered tractors, chainsaws, mowers and trucks; heating oil fired greenhouse furnaces; and expensive, imported "botanical" pesticides.
On we will go, inventing our way out of catastrophe, while the "organics" crowd wag their Smith & Hawken stirrup hoes in resentment.
The industrial romanticism in your comment is just appalling:
"On we will go, inventing our way out of catastrophe..."
"The idea that civilization is going to go backward is simply absurd. Evolution moves in one direction..."
""Indigenous and traditional farmers" repeatedly failed to stop famine, disease and environmental catastrophes..."
Boy, it sure is wonderful how famine, disease and environmental catastrophes have been turned into nothing but dim cultural memories by our industrial systems! No environmental catastrophes or famines here folks, nothing to see here, everyone move along! Everything moves in one direction, no destabilized climate or collapsing ecosystems are going to get in the way of progress!
Cling hard to your fantasies my friend. They won't really serve you well, but they're all you've got.
Oh wait: "The article is further evidence that "organic" is a belief system..." Whereas you don't have a "belief system" you just express the revealed reality of industrial progress and evolution? There is no science behind whole-systems theory, climate and ecosystem tipping points, "the sixth extinction," these are only products of some dubious "belief system"? Well you cling hard to your "not a belief system" my friend!