what is our position on the organic agriculture?
Image by Ecoagriculture Partners
Organic farm in Ithaca, NY
Photo: Sajal Sthapit
Question by lovinit: what is our position on the organic agriculture?
please tell me alot of information as much as you can.
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11 Responses to what is our position on the organic agriculture?
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this isn’t a alot, but yields are lower than conventional farming which is the reason for the higher prices at the grocery store….
and only hippies buy it?:)
Danny
September 17, 2011 at 1:27 am
food organically is the correct way in the long run i.e. no chemicals in drinking water (hormones etc) or in the air, however greater research and indeed g.m. f.(genetically modified) r needed- this my position in short. the cumulative effects of parts/mil on the human body is not known but is now real. science is its own caution, with lots of past experience and heed rather than recklessness must be effected by public outcry rather than industry.
wynt b
September 17, 2011 at 2:07 am
Organic Agriculture is all about farming without chemical inputs. It is a holistic approach. It is utilization of local inputs; judicious use of natural resources; Conservation of biodiversity. Actually it is rewainding our forefather’s farming!. It is just opposite to Green revoulation. It has highest impact on controlling Gobal warming.
Around 310,000 square kilometres (75 million acres) worldwide is converted to organic farming. Since 1990 the flow of organic product to market has been increaced rapidly averaging 20-25% per year. As of 2001, the estimated total market value of certified organic products was estimated to be $ 20 billion
pupu
September 17, 2011 at 2:36 am
Conventional agriculture has come about from thousands of years of development and is the base of the production of food for the huge populations of the planet. As with any huge population of animals there is an effect on the environment. With any other animal, there is a foraging or hunting or a need to feed in a niche that the species holds, and the natural checks and balances keep a population balanced with respect to the environment and provides checks to those balances in a very complex arrangement. With human animals we have a tool that no other animal has, that is intelligence. With that we can manipulate the environment, bypass the checks and balances in favor of ourselves, and manipulate nature and the “niche” that we filled originally. Back to conventional agriculture, it allowed us to create huge populations in smaller areas by changing nature and adapt it to us. For a long time there was little seen as to negative environmental impact. But still populations grew and still humans became more skilled at the manipulation of things in the name of culture. The impact to the environment especially with respect to agriculture became apparent, and the sciences that fueled our growth also showed that some costly mistakes where being made, usually with failures and hunger and mortality. The environment is becoming unstable as some of our manipulations and activities are seen to be part of the cause/ effect. The chemicals we thought were tools are hurting us directly causing sickness and death for us directly as well as the environmental (and negative indirect effects to us as a species). In learning to make the necessary changes to remedy the problems we brought upon ourselves and the environment, we moved into a new form of agriculture we called organic.
Our position as a people is that organic agriculture in general is necessary to protect us and our environment and it is a natural move in the learning process that allows us a higher form of culture. Organic agriculture is a very loose term that encompasses a huge range of practices and is really still in it’s infancy. We go beyond to make it more a sustainable form, and there is still a great amount of work going on to make it more productive and fit into the economics better (cost, supply and demand). An on line acquaintance recently sent me some material on the work going on in India that further addresses the issues of feeding the swelling numbers with intensive techniques, relying not only on organic and sustainable methods, but low or no investment/ input. It allows their system of farms and farmers to produce not only all the products needed to be successful, but to be in harmony with their land and environment to the point that they minimize outside influence with respect to the purchase of all forms of products and yet nurture the land, produce a bounty of crops, and do so with an adverse economy. They can remain independent and limit the adverse effect of the world on themselves while limiting the adverse effect of there agriculture on the environment. This is what I have heard described as “Spiritual Farming” and I am afraid I can do it no justice in my description as I am just beginning to understand it and the forces that have motivated it’s birth. I guess i can only describe it and the transition of agriculture over the centuries as a dynamic process that continues still. Our position then is that we embrace the changes as people and seek to improve still as we grow. And it surely does grow.
mike453683
September 17, 2011 at 3:30 am
I have been practicing organic management on my farm for about 15 years. For 8 years I was certified organic, meaning I paid money to a third party certifying agent, had to keep excellent input, planting, crop rotation, livestock and market records (I still do this), get an annual inspection and prove I was following the regulations. I want as little to do with the USDA and that one reason I dropped my organic certification in 2002 and the legal right to use the term organic in my marketing (I make my living growing and selling farm products I grow on my farm)
When I started out my soil was bad, I did not know what I was doing (there is a steep learning curve to be able to manage an organic farm well) so my yeilds were very low but over 10 years on that farm I improved the soil dramatically from soil that would barely grow anything, even weeds to soils that produced good yields. When you hear about bad yileds on organic farms those farms are either badly managed or the grower is new to organic management and just hasn’t learned how to do it yet. That and the soils take 7 to 15 years to recover from chemical abuse and get their micro-herd and organic matter back to good levels. And it is because tyhe soil on organic fgarms is so much better than these farms do indeed yield as much or more than conventional farms especially in years of drought because well managed organic soils can hold around 5x to 8 x times more water than chemically managed soils which have very low organic matter and thus a low water carrying capacity.
Organic Farms, we are now seeing, are able to feed a lot of people and can likely feed the world, just not in the way we are farming now which is heavily dependent on cheap oil to bring us food. When gas and diesel get above $ 4 a gallon the farmers are going to have trouble affording fuel to run their equipment and fertilizers and pesticides will become prohibitively expensive. So farmers that chemically manage their farms will either have to switch to organic management or find another line of work and sell the farm, land to the highest bidder.
To feed the world farming methods will have to change. In most of the world the people are too poor to afford huge tracts of land and big machines and will feed far more people in their part of the world by getting human scale and organic. It is a lot cheaper (and far better for the environment) to make your own compost. Compost is a very effective fertilizer. Farms that are diversified produce something like 10 times more food than mono-cropped farms (which is what industrial chemically managed ag is all about)
We do not need the confined feeding operations which have completely destroyed the nutrition cycle by trucking grain from the mid west to animal factories on the east coast. The animals are unhealthy and propped up by antibiotics which directly affect our health. We would do better to get more small and medium sized farms and put the animals on those and on pasture. pastured animals are a lot healthier, produce much higher quality meat and do not need theraputic drugs just to keep the animals alive until slaughter.
Industrial organics (USDA organics) is not my cup of tea as they are using industrial management and substituting organic inputs for chemical inputs. But they are still a lot better than their chemically manage counterparts as they are not as polluting and not as dependent on petroleum. I want to see farms get smaller and decentralized as the more centralized our food system gets (and with industrial agriculture 5 companies own about 90%) the less say we have as far as what we eat. this is scary considering the folks that brought us chemical agriculture tend to put profits before people and have been known to produce less than great food such as all the processed foods loaded with trans fats and high fructose corn syrup along with genetically modified organisms.
So my position is I am for organics and I believe that it can indeed feed the world and will be the only thing that does as conventional agriculture’s days are numbered because it is so dependent on oil along with all the problems we are seeing with the chemical overloads in us humans.
ohiorganic
September 17, 2011 at 4:16 am
it,s very
good
thiru M
September 17, 2011 at 4:39 am
Organic is an incorrect term referring to food, as it is used.
Organic means something contains carbon, the element.
Radacheck
September 17, 2011 at 4:55 am
It seems to sell. Even the major traditional processors seem to have organic lines or brands. “Organic” may include milk without hormones, or non-GMO. Some people might buy organic Hemlock:)
Jerry Lee
September 17, 2011 at 5:52 am
In the long run, organic farming can be just as damaging to the soil as commercial farming. It can eventually cause the soil to have too much nitrogen, etc.
Julia S
September 17, 2011 at 6:45 am
Organic products are not more expensive because of lower yields, that is just hogwash passed around by the fertilizer industry to discredit the organics organizations.
The truth is; both the Traditional and Organic camps are in for a surprise. There is a new Technology in town and within the next 8 to 10 years the science behind it will come forward, together with peer reviews, and 3rd party confirmation of its affects. Read Wikipedia about fertilizer. It tells how the use of NPK is used to force plants to over react to what is suppose to be a natural process. (If you did not fertilize at all, plants would still grow. No one fertilizes the forests!)
What has not yet been done, is use the natural processes to increase yields. This is what “Organic” farming practices are attempting to do, and through trial and error, have done a very good job of it, so far. The problem is that no one has found the magic concoction to make it all work. That is until now.
Scientists have recently found a significant amount of naturally present, but yet undiscovered micro-organisms that solve this mystery. Products are just now starting to come to market that take advantage of these discoveries.
Watch the videos as they are very exciting and explain just how little we currently understand about our world.
david2936
September 17, 2011 at 7:00 am
i know i dont have to worry about swallowing pesticides and herbicides or genetically altered vegetables and fruits
some people say ohh the amount of pesticides in conventionally grown produce is so small.
how about i put that same amount of URINE in your food and see if you like that
scene_luke
September 17, 2011 at 7:30 am