Can anyone provide a hopeful development update as to what efforts if any are underway in the farming industry to genuinely move past herbicides and pesticides of this kind?
Consumers can move past herbicides and pesticides by paying more (sometimes much more) for their food, and cooking more from scratch.
Of course this is easy for wealthy first-world dwellers. Less so for low income families in places with less diverse supply chains.
Organic farming has lower yields (those pests otherwise killed off by the pesticides end up eating a lot of the produce) and is more labour intensive - which explains the higher cost.
Additionally there is more to the picture than farmers and consumers.
In most first-world countries the large retailers (Walmart is famously the most ruthless here) mercilessly squeeze suppliers (distributors and large farmers) to supply the most produce at the lowest price. This pushes farms into consolidation and industrial production - i.e. very large scale mono-culture farming heavily dependent on chemicals.
The very low cost food that we see in our supermarkets has the effect of making orgainic produce look overpriced by comparison - often consumers these days view organic as a luxury item.
Governments too have grant-aided and subsidized farms in a way that often incentivizes "high-tech" farming.
Organic especially in the US, but also in the EU, doesn't mean no herbicides and pesticides[1][2]. Some of the non-synthetic insecticides are FAR more dangerous for people[3]. A popular organic pesticide from the recent past worked by destroying cell mitochondria in a vast swath of eukaryotic cells, nasty stuff.
I should have been more clear, that one was allowed in the US, but some of the things that are allowable in the EU aren't necessarily super safe. Generally speaking really effective natural pesticides were dangerous for humans.
Sure, whatever. Organic farming isn't perfect and isn't a panacea, and I've zero interest in defending it, or in attacking high-chemical factory farming for that matter.
We need to gain a better understanding of our food production systems, the full chain, precursors (seed, fertiliser and chemical suppliers), farms, processors, distributors, retailers.
We need to stop thinking in terms of pure cost. We need to stop thinking in terms of good and evil (good organic farmers vs evil corporations or whatever). We need, as a society, to gain a proper understanding of the complexity of the food chain, of the trade-offs involved in various methods. Of the advantages and disadvantages...
It's appalling that there are chemical residues in our food, possibly to an extent that it has health implications visible in a study such as the one cited.
It's amazing that in most countries food is now much much more accessible for the vast majority of the population than it was, say, a century ago.
To a large extent these are two sides of the same coin.
> To a large extent these are two sides of the same coin.
Yeah, I think that's the interesting thing here. People don't routinely starve in droves anymore and malnutrition is increasingly rare. On the other hand there's creeping fragility in the food system(s), unknown knock on effects of chemicals applied to lots of staple crops, and land/water use issues.
It seems to me like a lot of smart people are actually working on these things but progress is as always uneven and happening in fits and starts.
I dont think it follows either, but at least when you cook from scratch you have control over how much stuff is washed before you use it. That's not the case for more processed food.
I'm not suggesting processed food necessarily uses poorly washed vegetables, just that its out of one's control - it certainly strikes me as possible that industrial scale processes might do a better job at removing chemical residues than a typical home cook giving store bought produce a quick rinse.
As Sri Lanka recently found, it is difficult to feed all of your people by switching to organic. As much as I appreciate the benefits of organic and do try to buy it when reasonable, I recognize that organic farming takes more land, water, and labor to produce the same volume of food as non-organic. It works for a low volume, premium price model for some people but not for everyone.
I feel like our best bet to reduce the need for pesticides would be using GMO techniques to make our crops resistant to pests but the same people pushing for organics tend to dismiss GMOs out of hand.
That’s because GMO means roundup resistant in a whole huge section of its use case, and farmers are just making it rain roundup on the food. I read an article about (American) farmers using roundup to get wheat to dry and open after harvest. Basically coating the wheat right before sale.
>As Sri Lanka recently found, it is difficult to feed all of your people by switching to organic.
Oh come now. I don't really think we can use a country who had to suddenly switch from using inputs to making due without them as a good test case for organic farming. Those are absolutely less than ideal conditions.
Everything I've read on organic farming and permaculture nearly always yields higher per acre output (maybe at a higher labor cost, I dunno).
Some of our cereal crops aren't good candidates for going organic but it absolutely makes sense for a lot of of fruits and vegetables, especially the soft skinned varieties that are more apt to absorb pesticides.
Again, it certainly wouldn't replace the cereal crops, but for fruits and vegetables that are perishable and prone to absorbing pesticides, I could easily see small scale local agg replacing our current system if the price of carbon were accurately reflected (i.e. carbon tax)
I'm not defending a thesis here. You asked for a source for the assertion that one could have high yields under organic farming and I provided one. I understand organic farming yields are lower when comparing against most conventional agriculture, but your original assertion (I hate we don't have thread context in reply windows) was implying that we couldn't properly feed everyone fruits / veg using organic agriculture. I highly doubt that. Maybe organic would require more labor or different automation than simply dousing everything with roundup and pesticides, but we could do it. We simply have to decide to prioritize health and environmental impacts over cost.
Consumers can move past herbicides and pesticides by paying more (sometimes much more) for their food, and cooking more from scratch.
Of course this is easy for wealthy first-world dwellers. Less so for low income families in places with less diverse supply chains.
Organic farming has lower yields (those pests otherwise killed off by the pesticides end up eating a lot of the produce) and is more labour intensive - which explains the higher cost.
Additionally there is more to the picture than farmers and consumers.
In most first-world countries the large retailers (Walmart is famously the most ruthless here) mercilessly squeeze suppliers (distributors and large farmers) to supply the most produce at the lowest price. This pushes farms into consolidation and industrial production - i.e. very large scale mono-culture farming heavily dependent on chemicals.
The very low cost food that we see in our supermarkets has the effect of making orgainic produce look overpriced by comparison - often consumers these days view organic as a luxury item.
Governments too have grant-aided and subsidized farms in a way that often incentivizes "high-tech" farming.
I could go on...