“Organic” Is The Latin Word For “Starve The World”

USDA data on 370 crops:

I compared 2014 survey data from organic growers with overall agricultural yield statistics for that year on a crop by crop, state by state basis. The picture that emerges is clear-organic yields are mostly lower. To have raised all U.S. crops as organic in 2014 would have required farming of one hundred nine million more acres of land.

13 Replies to ““Organic” Is The Latin Word For “Starve The World””

Excellent. I wrote an email to Steve
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Thanks for the article on organic vs conventional yield comparisons here.
Yes, it seems as though organic production is not good for the environment because it requires more land.
I worked for over 30 years as a potato agronomist here in Alberta, but also traveled to China a dozen times as a consultant. (The company I worked for established a successful seed potato operation.)
As a plant pathologist, you will understand my comments…well I hope they make sense.
Using potatoes as an example (and you know how vulnerable they are to diseases), yields would crash in a production environment where most or all was organic. Late blight would wipe out vast areas of potato crops in a region where fungicides were not allowed. So organic yields will be lower (decline) in a region where organic production increases relative to conventional production.
In addition, organic producers really rely on conventional producers to protect their organic crops. It is sort of like folks who do not want their children vaccinated. Their unprotected children stay healthy most of the time because they are surrounded with children who have been vaccinated. Same with potatoes. Organic potato production is possible because conventional producers keep diseases like late blight under control. Sure organic growers can grow in isolated areas, but spores can travel a long way when humidity is high. (Fortunately, here in Alberta summer humidity is low and LB is not an issue most years.)
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For those who do not know. A disease like late blight does not just reduce yield. Left uncontrolled, it will 100% destroy a crop in 2 to 3 weeks. A field turns into a brown mess and all tubers below ground rot. You’ve all heard of the Irish potato famine. That was late blight. And 150 years later it remains a serious pest. Potatoes are the world’s fifth largest crop.
CAS

Thanks for the excellent comment. We started to experience that problem this year, and nipped it in the bud by harvesting as soon as the tops started to die out. I would spray if I knew what to use, but by cleaning the harvested spuds on a wire rack, letting them dry outside overnight, and then picking through them as they aged to remove the blighted product, we only lost 20% approximately. It is good to have a name for the problem.

I buy potatoes an other produce from the source – mostly producers who use heritage seed or conventional cross pollinated hybrids and use minimal chemical yield treatments either Mennonite or Hutterite operations.
CAS -used to hunt the Taber-Vaxhaull region pretty extensively for deer and pheasant – I have seen many a crop of potatoes and sugar beets just tilled back into the soil – is this because of blights?

In some areas they still use Bird poop(Guano)for fertaizer but they have been doing for many many years long before were heard anything about this Organics poppycock. These back to nature freakos need to be marooned on some island or distant planet somewhere far away

“With average crop yields remaining at the 1900 level the crop harvest in the year 2000 would have required nearly four times more land and the cultivated area would have claimed nearly half of all ice-free continents, rather than under 15% of the total land area that is required today.”
http://www.vaclavsmil.com/wp-content/uploads/docs/smil-article-worldagriculture.pdf
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haber_process

Wasn’t guano a major export from the west coast of South America at one time? It was seriously back in the day, but Chile springs to mind as a source of said fertilizer.

Excellent comment!
During my thirty some years of crop farming in Saskatchewan it is obvious that the crops of the organic farmer’s yield considerably less and are very weedy.

Thanks for the comments.
It is all well and fine for the Subaru crowd to buy organic, GMO free veggies at the farmers market, but this is about feeding 7 billion people. Globally, we need to continue to increase food production with advanced varieties, pest control products and synthetic fertilizers. There is not enough cow shit and kelp to fertilize crops. Disease would ravage crops across regions. Weeds rob food crops of nutrients and moisture and must be controlled.
It would be an interesting exercise to figure out the carbon footprint (like I care) of a pound of California carrots in my local Costco compared to that same pound at the local market. I bet the long-haul produce has less of a footprint because of economies of scale. It is great that folks can by local in summer in Canada, but it won’t feed the masses and most of us could not afford to. And we sure as hell can’t afford to shop at Whole Foods.
Regarding so called heritage cultivars. It is a meaningless term. All of our vegetables (for example) are man made. No “heritage” vegetables existed in nature. Over centuries they have been selected, re-selected, crossed and back crossed and in some cases manipulated with radiation and chemicals to cause mutations. So are heritage cultivars from before 1990? 1950? 1920? 1880? Makes no sense. Heritage sweet corn? NO THANKS! Horrid starchy glop. ☺ Most old varieties have poor disease resistance and low yields. Newer varieties of potatoes often have many advantages: better disease resistance and processing quality for example.
Russet Burbank potato was selected in about 1880 or so and is the same today as back then and remains one of the world’s most widely grown processing variety.
Occam: “…used to hunt the Taber-Vaxhaull region pretty extensively for deer and pheasant – I have seen many a crop of potatoes and sugar beets just tilled back into the soil – is this because of blights?” Late blight was “first” seen in Alberta in 1976 and not known to be here prior to then. And was not seen again until 1992 when it caught us all off guard and caused considerable losses. Portions of a few fields were disked under. I am not aware of beets being plowed down.
CAS
PS: No proofed well

Hell, I could have told anyone that “organic” crops would
only be a fraction of those grown with chemical fertaliers.
The difference was a 50 percent crop yield increase with the
use of DDT, and a reduction of malaria rates from about a
quarter million a year to 17 in Sri Lanka.
I like the old tag line e better. Organic is another word for
grown in pig shit!

Douglas
Your problem could have been LB as there was some about this summer. Could also have been pink rot or early blight…or something else. If it was LB, make sure your stored potatoes are well ventilated and MAKE SURE that all culls are spread and and disked down before winter and that you get new seed in 2016. Viable LB can only survive in living tissues i.e. surviving culls or volunteers. Make sure you do not have a cull pile sitting around come spring or surviving tubers could sprout and be a source of spores in 2016.
Lots of good info about LB on webpages from AB, SK, MB, Idaho, Wisc and Washington.
Good luck!
CAS

These back to nature freaks so cuaght up in their rediculous ideology and this Substanible Development poppycock forcing everyone into veganism becuase of cracked urns like Maurice Strong and his band of fellow New World Order freakos