[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

[ch4s3]

> 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

It seems like with current projections global population might peak around 9.4 billion in the 2600s and then fall back down to around ~8.8 by the end of the century. If we can manage river water carefully, I think it's going to be fine in the medium to long run.

[biorach]

you mean 2060, right?

Looks like I misremembered the projected peak population.

And yes, long to medium run it's going to be fine if we can carefully manage river water carefully. And if we don't exhaust soils in key agriculture heartlands, and if we don't cause too much icecap collapse, and if we don't trigger desertification of vulnerable areas (southwest USA, various parts of sub-Saharan Africa etc) and...

[ch4s3]

I do, I didn't notice the typo until the edit window expired.

> And if we don't exhaust soils in key agriculture heartlands

I think that's probably solvable if it doesn't happen at exactly the wrong time.

> and if we don't cause too much icecap collapse

This seems like a thing we could adapt to, even if it's highly undesirable. Building out a bunch of artificial reefs, locks, dykes, and flood plains seems very doable. We might end up with some 22nd century Venices, and a few less islands but not the end of civilization.

> if we don't trigger desertification of vulnerable areas

This seems harder to adapt to without moving a lot of people.