Organic farming has led many people to think and consider healthy eating habits. Nowadays, you can find more people asking for organic produce in the supermarkets. It has created quite a stir in society since it got so popular lately. Organic farming has become a trend.
The figure 34% is drawn from a recent paper in nature journal "Comparing the yields of organic and conventional farming" by Seufert, Ramankutty and Foley. They concluded that while organic farming could come close to scientific farming in some food types, notably fruits, they fell to 34% less productive when comparing similar techniques in staple food production.
Some organic farmers not only love to take care of their soil, but they believe that they have received some sort of divine revelation from Gaia about how to farm. These farmers have deliberately rejected modern farming techniques and have tried to reinvent the wheel.
Anyone who thinks top dressing their fields with a bit of Urea and Superphosphate alone is sufficient to keep soil depletion at bay is just not farming well. You would think that scientific farming is too different from organic farming. The truth is, they are closely similar. Good farmers have always ploughed in vegetable matter to replenish the tithe of their soil. But if you are going to continuously remove vegetable matter (produce) from the soil, you must replace the nutrients taken out of the system. Inorganic fertilizers are the most cost effective method of doing so.
To improve soil quality, farmers use all sorts of organic techniques. Most of these techniques are not as inventive as they seem to believe. On the other hand, an organic farmer dismisses the use of inorganic fertilizers altogether. This can be based on any factual reason. It seems instead to rest on some sort of religious belief system.
We cannot judge other people's religion. It is none of our business. But those who do believe in organic farming should not pretend that they are somehow morally superior because they didn't use evil technology to grow their food. Evil technology is what keeps millions of people from starving.
The figure 34% is drawn from a recent paper in nature journal "Comparing the yields of organic and conventional farming" by Seufert, Ramankutty and Foley. They concluded that while organic farming could come close to scientific farming in some food types, notably fruits, they fell to 34% less productive when comparing similar techniques in staple food production.
Some organic farmers not only love to take care of their soil, but they believe that they have received some sort of divine revelation from Gaia about how to farm. These farmers have deliberately rejected modern farming techniques and have tried to reinvent the wheel.
Anyone who thinks top dressing their fields with a bit of Urea and Superphosphate alone is sufficient to keep soil depletion at bay is just not farming well. You would think that scientific farming is too different from organic farming. The truth is, they are closely similar. Good farmers have always ploughed in vegetable matter to replenish the tithe of their soil. But if you are going to continuously remove vegetable matter (produce) from the soil, you must replace the nutrients taken out of the system. Inorganic fertilizers are the most cost effective method of doing so.
To improve soil quality, farmers use all sorts of organic techniques. Most of these techniques are not as inventive as they seem to believe. On the other hand, an organic farmer dismisses the use of inorganic fertilizers altogether. This can be based on any factual reason. It seems instead to rest on some sort of religious belief system.
We cannot judge other people's religion. It is none of our business. But those who do believe in organic farming should not pretend that they are somehow morally superior because they didn't use evil technology to grow their food. Evil technology is what keeps millions of people from starving.
About the Author:
I started writing Tom Grafton blogs and novels as a way of letting off steam when the touchy feely brigade got too much for me to handle rationally. If you ever feel the same, visit www.tomgrafton.com and try a Tom Grafton novel to refresh you.
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