Yes, I looked at the links. Incidentally, one was Americanscientist - not Scientific American, which is a totally different publication. The point being that you are not so accurate yourself.
Oops, sleep deprivation strikes again. My bad. I hate evening shift.
The "conventional" lobby could with advantage make use of many "organic" techniques - but does not do so because the "organic" lobby discredits those techniques by following superstitious approaches.
I think you're right in that they could use those techniques,
and they would get far more mileage out of conventional pesticides and the GM crops if they did so.
I doubt it's because the organic movement makes them look flaky, though...it may be a combination of factors, tied into what's profitable...but it's the food system. It's got issues.
I think the farmers do it because a lot of the nonchemically-based management practices...companion planting, crop rotation systems, fallowing, green manure-
are not conducive to short-term profitability.
I'm given to understand this is how it works:
Most commercial farmers spend their lives in a debt cycle-they go into debt to buy the chemical products they need to fertilize and protect the commercial crop, seeds for said crop, equipment to till the commercial crop.
One bad year can mean the bank ends up with their farm, so they are highly loathe to try anything different than the same old grind of till, buy seed, plant seed, spray, harvest, pay back the bank. Profit margins are low. The buyer is a giant food cartel that isn't going to pay much, because they're a monopoly buyer.
So the farmer/landowner's sort of ground between the bank and the agribusiness, unless they
are the agribusiness. And the agribusinesses themselves are ONLY worried about the quarterlies, as it's this that determines the fate of executives. They don't care about sustainability, fertility of the corporate land assets, or long-term human survival; their eyes are on the next 3 months.
And there's logistics...By logistics, I'm going to be making a lot of suppositions here...but based on what I know of supply chains and the farming industry:
SO, Let's take one aspect here...companion planting means you aren't going to have just one big crop on your land...but a bunch of little crops. I'll go with the most traditional companion planting: Corn, beans, squash. Well-known to do better together than separately.
With that you have
three separate harvests, three separate times you have to track down workers. This is already a problem with the crackdown on illegals-there's more incidences of crops being left to rot in the fields b/c the farmers can't get pickers.
Intercropping can be done in small patches,
but usually means hand harvest....MUCH more labor-intensive.
Corn harvesting if it's a uniform cornfield?
one person can drive a mechanical corn harvester down the rows. MUCH less labor cost.
Then, provided you've gotten the three crops picked, you've got to get each one, at different times, to somewhere and sell it.
I shop at a market locally that caters to the area restaurants-some of the produce is local...but the bulk of the produce at that market comes from California. Never mind we have a climate here almost as suited to growing year-round.
(In my area, we use what could be
good farmland to grow saint freaking Augustine turf for freaking lawns! In a metro area of 4 million we import our veggies from 2000 + miles away! :bugeye:
)
The whole system is set up for bulk production. If you produce a little of this, a little of that, as in companion planting...
can you get the big buyers to take the stuff?
I also used to pick up donated produce at a wholesale-only produce-row place.
They don't sell less than a pallet there, I don't think.
So we need to not only change how we grow our food, and where-since we can't keep growing almost all of America's veggies in California-we need to change how it gets to the supermarket-the whole chain of harvest and supply.
Most people used to get much of their non-tropical produce at a market, harvested and then brought the same day by a farmer much handier to the city...reviving this sort of truck farm would help crop biodiversity, allow for intercropping, better pest management, less fuel cost in getting stuff to market, less use of pesticides, fresher food, less need for refrigeration, etc.
All that with or without going organic, with increasing yield, and with less food wastage.
As far as adding fertility to the soil, two thoughts:
Human sewage is filled with contaminants. Remove the chemical contaminants, kill the dangerous bacteria, denature the virus proteins, and you have a lot of nutrients that ought to be going back into crops. We need to find a SAFE way to do this. I was thinking cooking the raw effluent with a solar array, then find some way to precipitate out the minerals, so as to leave contaminants of a chemical nature behind.
Yard waste. You know, I filled up a 600-gallon container with other people's yard waste. And cardboard. Newspaper. Food waste. We literally are tossing the fertility of our soil into landfills.
It's not that I'm totally against GM crops-Bt cotton, Golden rice, possibly this new cassava-those seem to be probable good things. Some use of GM crops may be a good thing, I'm not willing to say it isn't. But I'm not a trusting devotee of the stuff. I want to keep my eyes peeled for problems.
I have my own ideas of what GM ought to be used for that goes beyond standard crop applications-like my idea of GM oily sea duckweed, to release onto the ocean as a biofuel, a wild fish foodstock, a carbon sopper, and an oxy producer...(although it'd be hard as hell getting all those attributes in one hardy, fast-breeding, little free-floating plant)
I think genetic modding has great power. Anything that's powerful can be dangerous.
I also think that assuming that there
are no risks before that is proven to be the case, and then
not monitoring the new tech very carefully and applying it in a slow and cautious fashion...that's overly optimistic.
That's what I perceive your position as.
It very much reminds me of how people thought about X-rays/radiation before their dangers were known, or how people assumed pesticides were safe...until they found otherwise.
And maybe GM stuff's fine, and I'm being too cautious.
But I don't know that. What I do know about genetic modification (we genetically modded some e.coli in my Biology 1 class-glow in the dark bowel bugs...) leads me to think that it's not as precise as you think it is.
(I'll review that chapter in my Biology 1 book again, because that was the semester
right before the first sinus surgery, and between the fever (constant) and the migraines (every 3 days) and the fatigue (constant), my brain was one with the oatmeal. Made an A, but burned myself out doing it...)
I have to catch up on sleep now...and stop goofing on the 'net-two tree seedlings came in the mail, I have 3 planting beds to knock together tomorrow, need to try and get dirt for same also...
Do me a favor, if you have the time.
I am willing to concede the problem of reduced-yield for organics, so, if you would, look up and link some articles on
how much less yield organic farms produce over time. Longitudinal data. Not talking about the first five years; it's well known they take 5 years to get off the ground.
Please include data
on the data source and that data source's funding, if available.
Also, look up how much more GM crops improve yield and reduce pesticide use-actual stats, source, details...
It does not improve your credibility to use emotionally-loaded words like "stupid" and "superstitious."
What it shows is that you dismiss your opponent, as well as their objections, out-of-hand without giving them any respect or consideration.
