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.
"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.
Organic farmers tend to believe that what they do is taking good care of their soil, but they also think they have received some sort of divine revelation from Gaia about how to farm. They have a way of deliberately rejecting modern farming techniques and try to reinvent the wheel.
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. 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. This is why scientific farming is comparably close to the same techniques also employed in organic farming.
There is no objection to people using all sorts of organic type techniques to improve soil quality. Most of them are not nearly as new or revolutionary as they seem to think. 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.
Evil technology is what keeps millions of people from starving. And 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. On the other hand, we cannot judge other people's religion. It is none of our business.
"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.
Organic farmers tend to believe that what they do is taking good care of their soil, but they also think they have received some sort of divine revelation from Gaia about how to farm. They have a way of deliberately rejecting modern farming techniques and try to reinvent the wheel.
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. 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. This is why scientific farming is comparably close to the same techniques also employed in organic farming.
There is no objection to people using all sorts of organic type techniques to improve soil quality. Most of them are not nearly as new or revolutionary as they seem to think. 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.
Evil technology is what keeps millions of people from starving. And 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. On the other hand, we cannot judge other people's religion. It is none of our business.
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.. Check here for free reprint license: Does Eating Organic Food Make You Anti-Social?.
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