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Organic Farming Not So Sustainable?

Discussion in 'Environmental Discussion' started by zenMachine, Jan 2, 2012.

  1. 2k1Toaster

    2k1Toaster Brand New Prius Batteries

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    If you're in an urban megatropolis, you can find anything including organic and actual farmers selling their wares. If you are in rural middle of nowhere, then you can do the same. When you are in po-dunk towns of a few thousand people to less than a million, you usually don't have that choice. There is 1 farmers market within an hours drive of me, and the produce is crap most of the time. If I drive an hour in any direction away from the mountains, I hit farm land. There is a disconnect somewhere.

    When I go to NYC I can find farmers markets everywhere, and even the local grocery stores carry more local produce than imported even though there is no farm land in sight.
     
  2. zenMachine

    zenMachine Just another Onionhead

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    After eating organic kale for a few weeks, we can no longer tolerate the non-organic kind because they just taste so bland. I wonder what kind of nutrients were removed, and how it's done by commercial growers.

    Btw, buying from local farmers does not necessarily guarantee you'll get organics. Some are certified, some are not.
     
  3. xs650

    xs650 Senior Member

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    I think it depends where you live. There are at least 5 or 6 farmers markets with 15 miles of my podunk town of 30,000. Only 2 or 3 are open all year though and the pickings get slim in the winter. There are a also a bunch more roadside stands selling crops during growing season, mostly orchard and berry crops.
     
  4. Politburo

    Politburo Active Member

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    You can go to the Union Sq. Greenmarket and get local strawberries, in season.

    But there's the rub. The strawberry season is only a couple weeks long, and oftentimes people want strawberries outside of that time period.
     
  5. xs650

    xs650 Senior Member

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    Reality bites:D
     
  6. zenMachine

    zenMachine Just another Onionhead

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    All the farmers markets around my area close during winter. Which makes perfect sense.

    In the old days people had to stock up for winter - dried food, jams, pickles etc. But nowadays they expect to be able to get everything year round, including organically grown vegetables that are not in season. This shift in expectation and demand is what drives commercial farming (organic or otherwise) into an ecologically unsustainable state.
     
  7. DaveinOlyWA

    DaveinOlyWA 3rd Time was Solariffic!!

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    i have LONG since questioned "Organic" as a buzz word.

    i have eaten only grass fed beef and pork for more than 7 years now and the key thing is its not delivered. we go get it. its about 19 miles from my front door. so its a drive but i "Leaf" it so it costs me a quarter in fuel to pick it up

    Colvin Ranch

    i eat fast food (like everyone else. well, not everyone. 90% of us eat it, but only 50% will admit to it) so we do Burgerville 2-5 times a month. they use ONLY regionally produced food so the carbon footprint is greatly reduced and they do have some awesome seasonal milkshakes...some to die for!

    [ame=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burgerville]Burgerville - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia[/ame]

    also have several local organic co-ops. one is Left Foot Organics. they are expensive but also local (about 15 miles away) and besides being green, they do a lot of good work for the community so definitely a great place to support.

    Left Foot Organics: Homepage

    i rather do locally produced and am lucky enough to live in an area where it can be had. but lately the prices have really jumped in the past year along with everything else in my life. will be about 3 months from making a decision on Beef. prices are up more than $2 a pound from the last purchase and it makes it tougher and tougher for most people to continue to support the local farmer
     
  8. MontyTheEngineer

    MontyTheEngineer New Member

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    Organic does take more land and more water, to the point where there's not enough farmland on earth to feed all of us organically. There's a reason farmers stopped being "organic" in the first place.
     
  9. DaveinOlyWA

    DaveinOlyWA 3rd Time was Solariffic!!

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    for every pound of food the US eats, it throws away 4 lbs. maybe we just need to eat what we put on the plate then we would buy less, the demand would be less and we could go back to "less economical" ways of producing the food

    Dive! The Film - Living Off America's Waste

    problem is; we produce so much of it, we can "afford" to waste it...or can we?
     
  10. MontyTheEngineer

    MontyTheEngineer New Member

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    Yes, we should be more efficient with our food, but there's still not enough farmland on earth to feed 7 billion people with organic methods. If we switched back tomorrow, 2-3 billion people would starve to death.
     
  11. DaveinOlyWA

    DaveinOlyWA 3rd Time was Solariffic!!

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    i think we need to re evaluate our land use processes, period. a big reason why we have such limited resources to produce food has nothing to do with the # of people we have to feed.

    it has to do with piss poor decisions in land management, and "resource management" that really becomes the ultimate definition of an oxymoron when concerning, water, soil nutrients, etc.

    its a cascading joke from top to bottom
     
  12. SageBrush

    SageBrush Senior Member

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    I wonder about Monty's claim, given just how much agriculture is wasted in processing the core product into processed shit and meat.
     
  13. DaveinOlyWA

    DaveinOlyWA 3rd Time was Solariffic!!

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    Well it is only numbers but it its estimated that the food thrown away in the US alone could feed 2 billion people. That is a hard number too swallow. But the other half of the equation is that food production its the 4th or 5th leading cause of GHG. The throwing of food away in landfills is also a leading cause of GHG
     
  14. xs650

    xs650 Senior Member

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    4 times that eaten being thrown away is a rather remarkable number. So is enough food thrown away in the US to feed 2 billion people a remarkable number. Do you have a reliable source for that information that you can cite?

    FWIW, I agree with you that there is a problem.
     
  15. DaveinOlyWA

    DaveinOlyWA 3rd Time was Solariffic!!

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  16. Politburo

    Politburo Active Member

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  17. xs650

    xs650 Senior Member

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    We waste very little food at home. Usually because of a miscalculation that results in something spoiling, but that's unusual.

    My wife and I do eat out a lot so contribute to the restaurant industry which is very wasteful. We frequently split a meal and get an extra salad or side of veggies to go with it so we minimize our direct contribution to restaurant waste. Meal splitting has gotten so common that many restaurants put a splitting fee on the menu.
     
  18. DaveinOlyWA

    DaveinOlyWA 3rd Time was Solariffic!!

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    the movie referenced above does not address what consumers waste. only what grocery stores waste.

    as far as "reliable information" in this information age, i no longer have even the slightest clue as to what "reliable" information is because what i see is propaganda and opinion with a scattering of figures so, there you go.

    anyway the movie looked at several different grocers and their food policy. one was Trader Joes (for being a "green" company, they waste more than any other retailer) it was Dec 24th and the store would not be open again until Dec 26th. Trader Joes apparently has a habit of throwing away food a day or two before the "use by" date but since they were not open, they were throwing away food that had several days to go before expiring.

    the producer of the movie started life as a dumpster diver but then realized that the amount of food was waay more than he or his friends could eat, so he started investigating the store's various donation policies which was a very brief investigation because there was nothing to investigate.

    it was only after a lot of harassment by the diver, that TJ's agreed to allow any food to be picked up. most other stores declined and lock their dumpsters so you cannot retrieve it.


    now, remember (see above) its all just numbers, but its estimated that the City of LA alone throws away enough food to feed the entire state of Cali. now, i saw this several months ago so all the numbers are faded impressions of an experience that has now been obscured by several layers of life.

    so watch the movie
     
  19. Corwyn

    Corwyn Energy Curmudgeon

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    Nope. The highest food production per land area system ever developed was the Paris system from the end of the anti-penultimate century.

    The reason we don't use it now is labor costs.
     
  20. mmcdonal

    mmcdonal Active Member

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    Normally yes, but Texas has been ravaging its water table for decades. So much in fact that shore property in some places has sunk into the sea (long before rising oceans where the scare du jour.) So I am not so sure if it was the local organic farmers, or just a convenient non-conformist scapegoat.

    As I like to say, though, why not try "Organic Food", or as our grandparents called it, "Food."