As I learn more and more about organic farming and GMOs one question that has popped up for me is organic farming SUSTAINABLE. I have come to question whether it really is.
- Whole Food Blues: Why Organic Agriculture May Not Be So Sustainable
- Organic Farming Is Not Sustainable: More labor with lower yields is a luxury only rich populations can afford
- A Response to The Wall Street Journal article: “Organic Farming Is Not Sustainable
- 8 Differences Between Organic Food & Sustainable Food
- Sustainability and organic are not the same. Beyond the limited scope of theNational Organic Program (NOP), there are no strict rules set up to ensure that organic farmers or organic food production operations follow eco-minded practices.As a member of the organic industry it’s important to be realistic about the limits of organic certification. You should be able to separate organic food facts fromsustainable food facts so you can market organics honestly and successfully educate organic consumers.
- Agri-Brief: IS ORGANIC FARMING SUSTAINABLE?
- Questions About Organic Produce and Sustainability – NYTimes.com
- Will Organic Food Fail to Feed the World? – Scientific American
- Local vs. Organic: More Important? | Lexicon of Sustainability | PBS Food
- The Lexicon of Sustainability | Shows | PBS Food
- Is Organic Farming Sustainable by anti-GMO voice E. Ann Clark, Professor, University of Guelph, Ontario
- The Future Is Organic – But It’s More Than Organic (about E. Ann Clark on Organics vs. GMOs)
- The 9 billion-people question | The Economist — The 9 billion-people question The world’s population will grow from almost 7 billion now to over 9 billion in 2050. John Parker asks if there will be enough food to go round
- Soil proprietor: Do GMOs promote dirt conservation? | Grist By Nathanael Johnson (one article in a series of articles Nathanael Johnson has written entitled Panic-free GMOs for Grist)
Sadly when you search for articles about soil depletion and water usage the pro-organic articles that pop to the top of the list aren’t scientific paper or even articles in science magazines they’re articles published by Mike Adams of Natural News and Joseph Mercola and a scattering of well meaning but other frivolous New Age websites. ( see Others Not To Cite…)
And More On GMO Labeling
- Major Grocer to Label Foods With Gene-Modified Content – NYTimes.com
- Why Label Genetically Engineered Food? – NYTimes.com
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You might look at some of the SRI (System of Root Intensification) research. I grow plants myself, and what I’ve found is that actually, agriculture has gotten more and more “indoor” with higher yields. And on a parallel track, outdoors and manual, with high yields. SRI is manual, organic, and high-yield. Hydroponic lettuce is indoors, high-yield, but not so much manual labor.
http://sri.cals.cornell.edu/
BOTH of them work, in terms of not depleting soil.
In my own little gardening experiment, I’ve found that using “root bags” works quite nicely to grow a lot of vegies in a small space, with minimal labor on my part.
http://www.greenhousemegastore.com/product/root-pouch-grey-fabric-pot-3-4-year/root-pouches
Some of our local farms do an amazing job too, using a variety of techniques. They aren’t aggressively “organic”. Like me, they mainly are doing what is easy and cheap.
I suspect for the “big” crops, like rice and corn, the perennial versions may be the way to go. These may well be “GMO”, so are they considered “organic”? Probably not. But perennial crops are not labor intensive, and they are great for the soil.
Anyway, there are loads of people experimenting with this. “Farming” is changing in increments. If you look at the farm supply stores, they are selling stuff that used to be limited to a core group of organic tree-huggers, but it’s gone mainstream.