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[MetalSlimeHunt]

Organic food is also consistently rated as having superior taste, but that's at least partially placebo.

...I'm almost certain that that's entirely placebo, but nonetheless.

I've never seen any hard studies, but there's nothing unusual about the prospect that a food plant raised in different conditions ultimately having different taste. It is entirely possible that organic farming does, in fact, produce food with stronger or superior taste.

Yes, but the human taste buds are ridiculously influenced by perception, to the point where there is no real way to objectively measure taste.

That applies to all sense, do not go there, you are teetering on the sophist/simulationist perception vacuum. Trust me, nobody wants to have that discussion again.

And you are taking in data when you use your senses, so by definition it does matter even if you can shape your perception of that data.

[hector13]

Lots of farming talk 

In other news, anti-feminist party manifesto.

[Dutchling]

Lots of farming talk 

In other news, anti-feminist party manifesto.

oh boy

did i just stumble upon <random reddit thread>?

yes, yes i did

[Bohandas]

Well, to be fair, organic food doesn't cause as much ecological damage due to a lack of pesticides/herbicides/fungicides, which prevents bioaccumulation in the local ecosystem. Also, no fertiliser will result in no runoff, resulting in no algal blooms. And, AFAIK, using manure as fertiliser will be less likely to induce the whole bloom problem.

It uses more land to produce the same amount of food though, and that's bad for the environment too.

[redwallzyl]

Well, to be fair, organic food doesn't cause as much ecological damage due to a lack of pesticides/herbicides/fungicides, which prevents bioaccumulation in the local ecosystem. Also, no fertiliser will result in no runoff, resulting in no algal blooms. And, AFAIK, using manure as fertiliser will be less likely to induce the whole bloom problem.

It uses more land to produce the same amount of food though, and that's bad for the environment too.

but land isn't the problem really. if we stopped using all the corn to feed animals and just ate it ourselves we could easily supply enough food without excessive use of pesticides and such. id rather use more land then pollute the watershed and poison the ground.

[Bohandas]

Well, to be fair, organic food doesn't cause as much ecological damage due to a lack of pesticides/herbicides/fungicides, which prevents bioaccumulation in the local ecosystem. Also, no fertiliser will result in no runoff, resulting in no algal blooms. And, AFAIK, using manure as fertiliser will be less likely to induce the whole bloom problem.

It uses more land to produce the same amount of food though, and that's bad for the environment too.

but land isn't the problem really. if we stopped using all the corn to feed animals and just ate it ourselves we could easily supply enough food without excessive use of pesticides and such. id rather use more land then pollute the watershed and poison the ground.

You're moving the goalposts now.

I'm talking about specific methods being inefficient, you're talking about the net production of the entire food industry, and about hiding the deficit produced by the inefficient methods by making cuts elsewhere.

[scriver]

Organic food is also consistently rated as having superior taste, but that's at least partially placebo.

...I'm almost certain that that's entirely placebo, but nonetheless.

If organic food is more likely to be sold locally and not have to travel halfway around the world, then it's also more likely to he harvested when it's ripe rather than before. That matters a whole lot when it comes to how it ends up tasting.

[quote author=redwallzyl but land isn't the problem really. if we stopped using all the corn to feed animals and just ate it ourselves we could easily supply enough food without excessive use of pesticides and such. id rather use more land then pollute the watershed and poison the ground.

Not quite. As I said earlier, the main variety of grown corn nowadays is high-starch and inedible raw- it's the corn used in making high fructose corn syrup. We actually don't grow that much edible corn- most of it is to be processed one way or another.
[/quote]

His point was that it requires much more land to grow crops to feed livestock than we would need it we used it to feed ourselves. The corn part is only rhetoric.

[Sheb]

Bohandas: As far as I know, the best organic practitioner have yield comparable to the best non-organic farmers. Their produce however tends to be far more labor-intensive.

But more to the point, apart from regulatory reasons, there is no reasons why there should be a huge divide between organic and non-organic farming. Plenty of techniques that were developed by organic farmers, such as planting multiple plant species in one field, using cover crop for the winter, etc etc, are just plain better then the alternative. You don't have to embrace the whole organic movement (which has plenty of issues) to appreciate the fact that pouring tons of pesticide on your fields no matter what is a good way to breed resistance to those pesticides for example. Or that leaving the ground bare in winter cause erosion and flooding problems. Or that overgenerous application of fertilizers cause algal bloom. Or that monocrops are more susceptible to disease than more complex systems.

[Helgoland]

Organic food is also consistently rated as having superior taste, but that's at least partially placebo.

...I'm almost certain that that's entirely placebo, but nonetheless.

If organic food is more likely to be sold locally and not have to travel halfway around the world, then it's also more likely to he harvested when it's ripe rather than before. That matters a whole lot when it comes to how it ends up tasting.

That's a fair point, although I doubt that the tomatoes I can buy here in January are locally grown. Non-organic locally produced foods should have the same advantage however.

Bohandas: As far as I know, the best organic practitioner have yield comparable to the best non-organic farmers. Their produce however tends to be far more labor-intensive.

And those additional people consume additional resources, etc etc. Plus labor's expensive.

But more to the point, [...] more susceptible to disease than more complex systems.

Pretty much this. Generally speaking non-ideological pragmatic approaches tend to work best.

[Phmcw]

Not to mention that we have scores of arable land anyway : we have to pay farmer so they produce less, just to keep prices from flatlining.


On the other hand, biodiversity is in a very rough shape and bio agriculture definitely help in that regard. Now if france could be a tad less corrupt and silly with how they give their subsidies it would be wonderfull. They subsidize extremely unprofitable and destructive fishing method, and keep on doing their stupid specialisation of agriculture by region (cows in Normandie,...) that is very bad for the environement.

[Helgoland]

Not to mention that we have scores of arable land anyway : we have to pay farmer so they produce less, just to keep unprofitable famrs from going out of business.

FTFY. The subsidies as they currently exist are a travesty.

[MarcAFK]

Organic food doesn't automatically taste superior to that raised with fertilisers, however there's good evidence that fast growing varieties of certain crops contain lower levels of various aromatic compounds, flavornoids antioxidents, vitamins, even minerals, etc, and since most organic farming methods are incompatible with these varieties (as they require nutrient levels that are virtually unattainable without chemical fertilizers ) it's certain that organic means slower growing crops, which usually means more flavour, but not nessicarily so. For most fruits picking and ripening properly has the highest impact on flavour however.

[miljan]

Euro hits 11-year low against the US dollar.
http://www.cnbc.com/id/102342803#.

http://www.xe.com/currencycharts/?from=EUR&to=USD&view=1M

[scrdest]

If you want to minimise ecological damage through farming, it certainly would be a good first step to stop with livestock except where the ground is unsuitable for crops, but grass can grow there. Something like 10-20% of energy is lost per step of the food chain (excluding the first step (plant to animal) because of how much energy is indigestible. That raises it to 80-90%) and the methane they produce is fairly bad too, then probably minimising fertilisers and pesticides due to the fact their effects go well beyond the immediate area around the field.

Then it'd probably get into the whole use of hydroponics and vertical farming and such to minimise field usage.

This isn't taking into account GM foods that can increase yield and such, as I'm completely unsure as to how MUCH they increase yield.

Heh, one of the things I had to memorize for today was that both producing and using biochemical energy has efficiency of about 30% tops. And THEN there's the fact of efficiency of consumption.

[Bohandas]

If you want to minimise ecological damage through farming, it certainly would be a good first step to stop with livestock except where the ground is unsuitable for crops, but grass can grow there. Something like 10-20% of energy is lost per step of the food chain (excluding the first step (plant to animal) because of how much energy is indigestible. That raises it to 80-90%) and the methane they produce is fairly bad too, then probably minimising fertilisers and pesticides due to the fact their effects go well beyond the immediate area around the field.

You're moving goalposts again. We're talking about efficient farming, not less farming.