Organic farming has created quite a stir since it got popular lately. When choosing restaurant, many would nowadays choose to eat "healthy" and go to a place where they offer organic food. It did not only create a new trend but it has paved the way to promoting healthy diet. Looking at the process, there may be some issues about how organic farming is done.
"Comparing the yields of organic and natural conventional farming" by Seufert, Ramankutty and Foley is a recent paper in nature journal which concluded that organic farming could come close to scientific farming in some food types, notably fruits, and fell 34% less productive when comparing similar techniques in staple food production.
If you have come across some radical farmers, you would notice that they 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. They have a way of deliberately rejecting modern farming techniques. They try to reinvent the whole process.
Scientific farming is in no way opposed to using many of the techniques also employed in organic farming. 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. 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.
Most techniques used by farmers to improve soil quality are not as revolutionary as they seem to think. They try to explore different ways of doing so. But an organic farmer rejects 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.
Not using evil technology to grow food is not an excuse for organic farmers to pretend that they are somehow morally superior. There is no room for us to judge other people's religion. It is none of our business, but the point here is, evil technology is what keeps millions of people from starving.
"Comparing the yields of organic and natural conventional farming" by Seufert, Ramankutty and Foley is a recent paper in nature journal which concluded that organic farming could come close to scientific farming in some food types, notably fruits, and fell 34% less productive when comparing similar techniques in staple food production.
If you have come across some radical farmers, you would notice that they 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. They have a way of deliberately rejecting modern farming techniques. They try to reinvent the whole process.
Scientific farming is in no way opposed to using many of the techniques also employed in organic farming. 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. 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.
Most techniques used by farmers to improve soil quality are not as revolutionary as they seem to think. They try to explore different ways of doing so. But an organic farmer rejects 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.
Not using evil technology to grow food is not an excuse for organic farmers to pretend that they are somehow morally superior. There is no room for us to judge other people's religion. It is none of our business, but the point here is, evil technology is what keeps millions of people from starving.
About the Author:
I have written 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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