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  • From: Cory Brennan <cory8570@yahoo.com>
  • To: permaculture <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [permaculture] [SANET-MG] yield of conventional vs organic farms
  • Date: Sat, 12 May 2012 09:00:07 -0700 (PDT)

Though I would like nothing more than to see us act rationally in terms of
population fitting with what ecosystems can give sustainably, I'm around
enough people who don't think that way, and are into high tech solutions to
see a scenario where we will be creating skyscraper aquaponics and
hydroponics facilities and other higher tech approaches which will create the
apparency of endless food. 

Marsha Hanzi, in Brazil, says she gets 3-8 times the yield of commercial ag
with far less inputs, using polycropping. She uses opuntia to nurse castor
bean crop and interplants with several other cash crops. It takes more labor
than machine based ag, but if the population is increasing, we'll have it. So
I'm not sold that sustainable ag can't out produce petroleum based ag.
Intensive backyard growing can of course out produce petroleum ag and remain
sustainalbe especially when all available organic waste is captured and
careful balance is achieved. So it is possible to continue to feed a growing
population with our current resources, if managed correctly. I don't expect
that to happen, though. That is the hard part!




________________________________
From: Toby Hemenway <toby@patternliteracy.com>
To: permaculture <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
Sent: Friday, May 11, 2012 2:05 PM
Subject: Re: [permaculture] [SANET-MG] yield of conventional vs organic farms

> I had begun to despair that anyone would begin to look critically at the
> current “Can organic agriculture feed the world” focus,

This was exactly my response. What the cited study said to me, seeing that
organic has lower yields than chemical farming, was that in order to have a
less damaging agriculture, we need to accept lower food yields as one of its
corollaries. At my talks, I often get asked if permaculture can feed the
world, and I answer that the only thing I know of that can feed 7 billion is
a lot of cheap oil.

One of the most destructive things we could do is to try to keep producing
enough food to keep the human population expanding or at current levels. We
need to be putting a lot of thought and effort into bringing our numbers
down, or nature will do it for us, and she's not always nice about how she
does that.

Toby
http://patternliteracy.com


On May 11, 2012, at 9:29 AM, Lawrence F. London, Jr. wrote:

>
>
> -------- Original Message --------
> Subject: Re: [SANET-MG] yield of conventional vs organic farms
> Date: Fri, 11 May 2012 11:15:03 -0400
> From: Karl S North <knorth@BINGHAMTON.EDU>
> To: SANET-MG@LISTS.IFAS.UFL.EDU
>
> It is encouraging to me to see a conversation like this one on SANET. I
> had begun to despair that anyone would begin to look critically at the
> current “Can organic agriculture feed the world” focus, or more
> generally at the limitations of “organic” as a concept on which to build
> a disciplinary science, as numerous land grant schools have mistakenly
> tried to do.
>
>
>
> As some of you have said or implied, from the viewpoint of the
> discipline of systems ecology, the question of food production needs to
> be reversed from “feeding the world” to returning our human activities,
> agricultural and others, to within the limits of the carrying capacity
> of the biosphere. The Odum brothers, and then William Catton, have made
> this point many times in the last fifty years. I have yet to hear of a
> land grant agricultural school that has made the works of these authors
> central to their agricultural program as I have advocated in my critique
> of the current scientific paradigm, Reductionist Science and the Rise of
> Capitalism: Implications for a New Educational Program of Agricultural
> Science<http://karlnorth.com/?p=511>.
>
>
>
>
> I have enjoyed a thirty year career as a farmer (certified organic for
> part of that time) and member and educator in the organic movement, so
> what I am saying here is not meant to criticize the efforts of anyone in
> this movement. But I think it is time, as we enter an era of permanently
> increasing scarcity of energy and other strategic nonrenewables, to
> acknowledge the extent to which the concept of organic and the movement
> that swears by it bear the marks and constraints of an economy and
> culture that has enjoyed cheap energy.
>
>
>
> Kept in the dark by the powers that be as to the momentous implications
> of the new era, most organic farmers and agricultural scientists, like
> most of society, have only slight glimmerings so far of what life and
> agriculture is going to be like as resource use returns to carrying
> capacity after the 200 year adrenaline shot of fossil energy.
>
>
>
> Here is an example. As an early supporter of FOOD FIRST I read *World
> Hunger: 12 Myths* when it first came out, and count myself as a personal
> friend of Peter Rosset. I also am a strong advocate of food justice and
> food sovereignty. However, the case FOOD FIRST makes for there being
> enough food to feed everyone ignores the fact that most of that food is
> at present produced by an industrial system of food production that will
> gradually collapse in the new era because it is 80-90% dependent on
> fossil energy.
>
>
>
> One would hardly realize it from most of the discussions on SANET, but
> there is a lively community devoted to exploring the implications of
> depletion, peak production and decline in resource after strategic
> resource in the era of ‘energy descent’ that now is well under way. And
> its activity has produced a rapidly expanding literature. One of my own
> contributions to that literature might be of interest: Visioning County
> Food Production<http://karlnorth.com/?page_id=9>is a six-part series
> that describes what a relocalized agriculture might need to look like to
> feed a New York county in the post-petroleum age. It is also available
> in print:
> http://www.amazon.com/Thinking-Local-Tompkins-County-TCLocal-org/dp/0615579256
>
> along with papers on other subjects relevant to the energy descent
> commissioned by our local energy descent organization, TCLocal
> http://tclocal.org/.
> .
>
>
>
> Expressed terms of fundamentals, the energy descent future is one in
> which the laws of thermodynamics and other laws that govern physical and
> biological life on the planet (well known to students of ecology and
> basic physical science) will begin to bite again as they never did in
> the last two-century binge.
>
>
>
> So, as Jeff pointed out, the question cannot be about yield, but about
> sustainable yield, which broadens the question to what are the
> requirements of a durable, healthy agroecosystem. But as Wes Jackson
> said the last time he visited my nearby landgrant college, there are a
> lot of people in academia running around saying they are agroecologists,
> but little training offered in the basics of systems ecology, starting
> with systems energetics as pioneered by Howard Odum and others. So, with
> Wes, I don’t buy the idea that at present many agricultural scientists
> are being truly trained as agroecologists. Is there hope for change in
> the land grant system? Or are the bigger agricultural schools just so
> out of touch that, like other dinosaurs in natural history, they are
> simply headed for extinction in the
> new era?
>
>
> --
> Karl North - Northland Sheep Dairy, Freetown, New York USA
> http://karlnorth.com/
> "Pueblo que canta no morira" - Cuban saying
> "They only call it class warfare when we fight back" - Anon.
> "My father rode a camel. I drive a car. My son flies a jet-plane. His
> son will ride a camel."
>  —Saudi saying
>
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I am redirecting a message sent to sanet here. Lawrence wanted me to
post to this list and this topic was discussed here also. Then too, the
concepts presented aren't alien to permaculture (which is not a term I
myself have used, although there certainly ARE coincidences with at
least some forms of the permaculture concept). BTW, I began farming
organically in 1968, when organic farming actually meant something more
than the need to pay though the nose for third party certification.
However, I moved to Mexico in 1974 and despite the well publicized
problems existing here (but not nearly as much as most of you probably
think), I'm glad I did. (For a lot of reasons that can be discussed
later - maybe).

On 5/12/2012 at 8:16 AM, Edna Weigel wrote:

> I've enjoyed this discussion, especially as related to obesity
> prevention. ... Any comments?

> Edna

Yes Edna, I'll comment - although frankly, I'm no sure how much good it
will do, because my frame of reference -the perceptions and measurements
that guide my life- is probably much different than yours (generic,
plural second person you). In other words, In the same way that
saneters -people who care more about food (and how it is grown)- are
different from people who don't think much about that, my experiences
and the conclusions those experiences generated are unlikely to be held
by anyone else here. In a real sense, I don't live in the same world as
the rest of you. (And this will become evident as the discussion develops).

> One thought I'd like to see explored in greater detail is the concept
of nutrient density. Seems like I've read (probably on SANET) that the
concentration on yield has led to varieties that are higher in
carbohydrates at the expense of other nutrients. The large scale US
distribution system encourages production of vegetables that produce
high yields and ship well. In the supermarket, flavor isn't a criteria
because the customer has no way to pre-taste what they are about to buy
and most customers have no idea that better tasting fruits and
vegetables can be btained anywhere so they depend on soft drinks and
manufactured foods for their taste treats. In contrast, a farmers
market vendor won't have many return customers if what he/she sells has
no flavor but the one at the next table has delicious, tasty food (it
also helps that some vendors give out preparation advice to those who
have no idea how to prepare fresh, unfamiliar foods). I tend to think
flavor correlates to nutrient content--it certainly correlates to the
quantity of vegetables I consume relative to grains. And, of course,
higher carb content of ordinary vegetables and grains seems
made-to-order to increase obesity.

Yes, flavor certainly correlates to nutrient density and it may be
worthwhile to identify the reasons why. However, in order to do so,
we'll have start from the beginning, and that means asking: What is
Food? To start with, food keeps us alive. It is also what made us
grow, after being born. Where does it come from? It comes from other
living organisms. And it embodies a given set of environmental
conditions that after being consumed, help create the conditions that
produce an identifiable internal environment, within us too.

The first phrase of the last sentence is where conventional ag
production systems fail and also, explains why they fail: Because they
don't taking onto account the indisputable fact that agriculture (plant
growth and food production) is a activity that depends on naturally
occurring biological processes involving a large number of beneficial
and sometimes (when the environmental conditions are wrong), not so
beneficial organisms. The importance of soil organisms means nothing to
the manufacturers of chemical inputs and the poor souls that depend on
them (and will never liberate themselves from them) in order to farm.

There too, we can all agree. Where we are not likely to agree so much
however, is in relation to the importance and significance of the
internal environment food creates after eating it. Remember, all of our
tissues and most of our metabolic processes are derived from food (along
with air and water), and most of what all of you eat, is NOT FOOD to
me. How so? I discovered a long time ago that when a given food
substance (or it's source) was created for one purpose but used for a
completely different one (that is, eaten), a conflict occurs on every
level (that is, boith metabolic and moral).

The reason I am saying this is, I feel OBLIGATED to share something that
works (and has worked since 1966) perfectly well for me, because people
actually die as a result of ignoring this principle.

So what do I eat, then? My diet is derived principally from the fruit
of whole (not grafted) trees, along with the botanical fruit of less
developed organisms (i.e. tomatoes, melons, peppers etc), All raw.
Since 1966.

I suppose that may seem like radical behavior for most of you, and may
have a limited relevance to the subject of this thread, but the point
is, organic has a long way to go before it reflects the biological
reality of human needs, the role of agriculture in society and the role
of human beings on this planet. A whole new paradigm and set of
measurements (along with a totally new economic system) is going to have
to be developed in order to account for all this and correct itself. (In
that respect, I've been taking a look at the work of the Odum brothers
and more recent, related work for that purpose).

I'm 69, have a four month old daughter and another on the way, so I
thought I'd better come out with it already.

Lastly, some unenlightened sanet moderator capriciously put me on
moderation some time back, so any interest generated by this post should
probably be routed via private mail or another mailing list, because my
posts are not going to become visible for an unreasonably long time,
thanks to those insulting shenanigans.

Douglas






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