[biorach]

Organic farming exists.

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...

[ch4s3]

> Organic farming exists.

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.

[1] https://www.global-organics.com/post.php?s=2018-02-02-are-pe....

[2] https://www.pan-uk.org/site/wp-content/uploads/List-of-activ...

[3] https://web.archive.org/web/20220513165751/https://blogs.sci...

[biorach]

Note that as far as I'm aware Rotenone is not on the list of EU approved substances for organic farming. Correct me if I'm wrong.

[ch4s3]

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.

[biorach]

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.

[ch4s3]

> 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.

[biorach]

Right.

It's a very complex system with complex trade offs. But, and this is crucial, not so complicated that the issues cannot be understood by an adult with high school education.

As it is, there is very poor understanding among adults in the rich world of where their food comes from, how it is grown or reared, what food/fertiliser it is given, what chemicals it is treated with and how much, how it is processed, how it is packaged, the margins along the way, and the power dynamics along the chain

Even educated adults can be shockingly uninformed, witness Gweneth Paltrow style fantasies about imagined health benefits of organic food, or on the flip side, total ignorance about the quantity of chemicals that go into the production of conventional food.

The increased frailty of our food chains and environment means that collectively we need to get educated, realise the high environmental and health cost of chemically intensive farming and start exploring alternatives. And not with this dumb "organic good, chemical bad" mentality but properly evaluating the trade-offs in each system

It's hard to envisage a world where we feed 8, 10, 12 billion people without some chemical input, but it's certainly a good idea to try at least move in that direction

[fsflover]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organic_farming#Nutrient_leach...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organic_farming#Food_quality_a...

[ClumsyPilot]

> Consumers can move past herbicides and pesticides ... cooking more from scratch.

How is this even relevant?

[ac29]

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.