As for the article, the point of it, in my opinion, was to explain that the market is driving production methods. There isn’t a majority of people who want to pay the extra costs for organic food.

It’s a pretty simple equation: if organic farming was cost effective it would be more widespread. But the impact on the land and the more expensive methods don’t seem to be supported by the public.

But it isn’t that simple. One could just as easily respond: if industrial farming were cost effective, it wouldn’t need the massive federal subsidies it enjoys now through legislation like the Farm bill. Until the subsidies are eliminated or otherwise accounted for, one would be hard pressed to persuasively argue for the effectiveness of methods made possible by those subsidies.

That was an interesting article you linked to. What about it did you find particularly persuasive? It seemed to me that his argument was “things are the way they are because it’s easier that way” and ignored completely the substance of critical arguments.

I’m increasingly open to the idea that internet may be doing more harm than good, especially to local community which Wendell Berry writes about so beautifully, I imagine he would object to it because it makes globalism too easy.

Of course local community had to be pretty close to death for the net to explode the way it did.

I find even on localist sites people are usually babbling like drunks or getting into fights like drunks (that includes me).

Increasingly I’m only using the net for information , not “communing” or “converation”.

These are the questions I cannot answer. Culture is a mighty thing to try and shift with public policy.

Your comments are appreciated, but remember that I’m a pediatrician, not an agronomist or (pardon the term) “soil scientist.” As I hoped to make clear, whatever might come of the agrarian vision will be at once traditional and new, but darned if I know what it that will look like.

Yes, Berry did write that the corporate division of farming into petroleum-dependent planting and waste-accumulating livestock operations was effectively “taking a solution and making two problems out of it.” However, I don’t recall him saying, THEREFORE, ALL farming MUST USE ONLY manure for fertilizer. He’s too supple a thinker, too practical a man to reduce matters to simplistic binaries.

To the degree I understand Berry’s analysis, he’s calling for greater attention to the effects of everything we do as we feed ourselves and others. Treating soil as a culture medium, readily and harmlessly altered by chemical additives in order to maximize yield of “food products,” is an dangerous abstraction. Fencerow to fencerow corn planting, for example, rapidly depletes soil, despite it’s short-term productivity. But that doesn’t mean the solution lies in tiny organic garden-boutiques touting their use of night soil. Similarly, concentrating livestock into such small quarters that only megadoses of antibiotics keep them from succumbing to epidemic disease has long term effects, such as the rapid development of resistance-conferring bacterial plasmids, we will soon run out of technological answers to. That said, I’m a pediatrician. When I use antibiotics I try to do so wisely, judiciously, sparingly.

The last time I spoke with Mr Berry, our conversation turned more on the development and use of perennials than manure. Wes Jackson’s Land Institute is similarly intrigued with perennials. (See the fifty year farm bill link in my post or google “Land Institute.”) Is the development of higher-yield perennials a technological advance or an organic one? I neither know nor care. What matters more to me is the Amish question, “How will this technology affect the community?” I suspect you and I will answer differently than an Old Order Amish farmer. I hope whatever answer we arrive at takes into account the effect on humanity across the globe as well. Still, the question is far more useful than determining if technology, in the abstract, is inherently good or bad. Nor are perennials the entire answer. This is, as always, a work in progress.

One more thought. For years, the approach to severe childhood malnutrition in developing countries was to admit such children to Nutritional Rehabilitation Units, where they would receive intensive nutritional support, often via IV, and heavily dependent on foreign assistance. By gathering these children, already ill-suited to fighting off bacteria, viruses and parasites, into one place, rapid spread of disease was almost guaranteed. Until the development of Ready-to-Use Therapeutic Foods (RUTFs) such as Plumpy’nut, there seemed no way to avoid this. Now, using peanut preparations, often grown in the country where it will be used, these children can be re-fed to nutritional health at home or in dispersed living quarters. So.. there’s less epidemic disease, less reliance on foreign aid, and a market for locally-grown peanuts. Surprisingly, the developing world has almost none of the problems with severe peanut allergy supposedly rampant in the developed North.

Few, if any, saw RUTFs coming, but they revolutionized nutritional response to severe childhood malnutrition, and a few other realities as well. Was that a technological advance or an organic one? I don’t think it matters, as long as the children don’t starve.

Depopulate suburban sprawl perhaps, that not really close and so no cigar nor even a thought of a cigar farrago that sought to create urb in rus but instead created mal-urb in anti-rus…a kind of purgatory where bearings are thrown out the window because who wants to arrive there in the first place? It is civilization turned into comic book. Don’t get me wrong, there is obviously much authentic life, worthy people and real love within the precincts of our suburbs but it exists in spite of the surroundings.

As to Big Stick Mike and his query about exclusivity of approach….exclusive approaches are never wise but there is something about the homicidally efficient nature of Industrialized agriculture that demands a serious and comprehensive accounting.

Not that mankind is of the comprehensively accounting temperament.

Don’t take my word for it. Read this piece and tell me if you have the same opinion. Organic farming requires much deeper plowing resulting in erosion, etc.

“Is feeding ourselves compatible with small-scale farming? Can family farms use advances in agriculture technologies in good conscience, i.e. sustainably?

I genuinely don’t know the answers to these questions, but it’s one that must be answered, one way or another.”

Even small family farms use a lot of ‘commerical’ methods because they have to make a profit too. Where I see most of the organic stuff happening is on operations that cater to a very specific Whole Foods-type customer that will pay top dollar for these products. Organic farming is incredibly destructive to the land and has a very small yield. I think large-scale and comercial farming gets a bad rap. We’ve got to eat. Is there room for imrovement? Always. Can we move completely to local-only agriculture? Not in my opinion.

Reason: What do you think of organic farming? A lot of people claim it’s better for human health and the environment.

Borlaug: That’s ridiculous. This shouldn’t even be a debate. Even if you could use all the organic material that you have–the animal manures, the human waste, the plant residues–and get them back on the soil, you couldn’t feed more than 4 billion people. In addition, if all agriculture were organic, you would have to increase cropland area dramatically, spreading out into marginal areas and cutting down millions of acres of forests.

At the present time, approximately 80 million tons of nitrogen nutrients are utilized each year. If you tried to produce this nitrogen organically, you would require an additional 5 or 6 billion head of cattle to supply the manure. How much wild land would you have to sacrifice just to produce the forage for these cows? There’s a lot of nonsense going on here.

If people want to believe that the organic food has better nutritive value, it’s up to them to make that foolish decision. But there’s absolutely no research that shows that organic foods provide better nutrition. As far as plants are concerned, they can’t tell whether that nitrate ion comes from artificial chemicals or from decomposed organic matter. If some consumers believe that it’s better from the point of view of their health to have organic food, God bless them. Let them buy it. Let them pay a bit more. It’s a free society. But don’t tell the world that we can feed the present population without chemical fertilizer. That’s when this misinformation becomes destructive.

Is feeding ourselves compatible with small-scale farming? Can family farms use advances in agriculture technologies in good conscience, i.e. sustainably?

I genuinely don’t know the answers to these questions, but it’s one that must be answered, one way or another.

It takes far longer than a lifetime for a community to learn ways of transforming suffering without transmitting it.

It seems that it doesn’t take nearly as long for a community to forget how to transform suffering, though. Sustained affluence has a curiously numbing effect on a community in this regard, rendering deep changes in attitudes to suffering in something much less than a lifetime, changes which are very difficult to undo or even to moderate.