Agronomy or asskicking

Stop all this "organic" and "natural" treehuggery. Because that's all it is. Well, that and money grubbing on the part of the people selling you that overpriced stuff

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"Organic" means almost nothing in the USA thanks to the influence of the USDA, and "Natural" means less than nothing.

However, you are sadly mistaken about the basic realities of farming...

"Organic" and "natural" crops cannot even remotely compete in terms of volume of perfectly safe, edible food with the genetically modified, pest free varieties.

The following things are true:

1. A hundred years ago, there was no such thing as agriculture which was not "organic", because we did not turn petroleum into fertilizer or, for that matter, pesticide.
2. The use of shallow tilling of soil, especially when done with heavy machinery, creates hardpan.
3. The use of petroleum-based pesticides and fertilizers (as well as other artificially-sourced pesticides etc) harms soil diversity. Good soil is over 60% organic material (ideally, over 80%!) and can be 20% or more living matter. The chemicals with which you are so enamored harm beneficial insects, the worms which we depend on to create soil (they are also defeated by our tilling practices) as well as nematodes and mycelium.

Enough facts, I don't want to confuse anyone with them. Let's get back to the battle. Again, a hundred years ago it was all "organic" farming. Therefore "organic" itself doesn't mean a whole lot. If you're fertilizing only with poop and the like you can still be horribly harmful to the environment by simply allowing topsoil to wash into rivers. Or, for that matter, by tilling it and leaving it uncovered, which allows it not just to wash away, but even to blow away. This results in harm to air quality and thus to our ability to breathe - living in agricultural areas is no fun. I am living in Lake Country now; I was living in Marysville last. Here it's vineyards, and you can find them south (Napa) or west (Hopland) where various items are sprayed on the plants - and into the air, where we get to breathe them. That shit sets off my asthma every time, so I really don't want to hear about how "safe" your inorganic farming is.

Now, let us discuss the issue of sustainability in more depth. "organic farming is mining the soil of its vital minerals, particularly phosphorus and potassium. ... Conventional farming, on the other hand, restores mineral balances through fertilization." This is amazingly empty-headed cheerleading bullshit. In fact, organic farming restores mineral balances through fertilization, but in conventional farming techniques (those of the so-called "Green Revolution") instead of correctly amending the soil with those things which it requires, and allowing natural forces to fix those nutrients and make them available to your crops (these "natural forces" are also called "other plants" or, by the ignorant, "weeds") we spray ready sources of the food into the soil and feed the plants. Feeding the soil is a basic tenet of true (i.e. nothing to do with the USDA) organic gardening, but I understand that there is always a temptation to simply ignore facts in the pursuit of a good argument.

It just so happens that in my yard there is an organic garden which produces food crops at an extremely economical rate. It is based on compost, poop (steer, llama, seabird, bat, and chicken shit) and the usual range of organic soil amendments including alfalfa meal, blood meal, bone meal, feather meal, seaweed meal and so on. Those with an eye for detail will note that much of this is actually recycled refuse from animal processing and the like - I'm no space cadet from Vega. The soil is better this year than it was the year before - it's been obvious for months because the cover crop (mustard) was about four times taller this year in spite of similar (if anything, less ideal) conditions otherwise.

Now, let me address the issue of food quality. In theory, commercial farming methods can safely produce food of the same quality as organic methods, or even superior quality. In actuality, this almost never happens. First of all, the pesticides are unequivocally not safe for you (I don't know what makes you think that the food is safe, when it has repeatedly been shown to not be so - some of the pesticides don't wash off conveniently and we even have special vegetable washing products for this purpose now - the global "We" you understand, because I produce my own produce and otherwise general buy organic) and honestly, you should never spray anything on your plants that you wouldn't at least spray on your own body, if not something that you wouldn't mind putting in it. Common sense here. While the food for the plants is taken apart one molecule at a time and put back together the way mother nature intended regardless of if it comes from poop or from oil, the pesticides don't get the same treatment.

The next factor negatively affecting food quality is the process with which these products are shipped to the store. It affects every stage of the plant's existence from its very selection - the varieties of food available on the shelf at your local supermarket are based more or less entirely on appearance and ability to travel. Food is picked early, gassed to force "ripening" (as if it were ripe after that) and then shipped hundreds of miles to the store. Consequently, not only does organic food generally taste better simply because it's a superior variety, but also because organic farming is usually carried out on a smaller scale, with the product being used closer to the point of production. Far from being a "throwback", this makes good economic sense and you can see the principle at work all over the world; in fact, China is going to have cars built in Mexico to sell to the American market in spite of the fact that American companies have things built in China to sell to the American market because it's cheaper than having them built in Mexico. Welcome to our world. Because the food does not have to travel so far, it can be picked at an actual state of ripeness, when the parts of the plant which we eat are fully developed, and thus the macronutrients are fully developed. Genuinely ripened products are always substantially richer in the things which are interesting to us; things with antioxidants have more of them, things with beneficial complex amino acids have more of them, et cetera.

Shocking to discover that fertilizer and pesticides yield more crops.

Food is rotting in silos all over the world (except maybe for Africa - wait, it's rotting in warehouses!) which should clearly make the point that the reason people are starving in this world has nothing to do with adequate supplies of food being available on the planet, but with them being available locally. Right now Mexicans are going hungry because our demand for subsidized ethanol fuel has increased the demand and thus the price for corn. The issue with people starving on this planet has nothing whatsoever to do with the amount of food available, and everything to do with greed. It is really just that simple.

NOW, where do we go from here? How do we correct the downward spiral that is destroying the soil all over this planet?

The first step is to stop throwing away valuable poop. In this country almost all sewage is pumped (at great expense) to sewage treatment plants where it is processed (at further great expense) and then generally put right back into some water system that someone will be drinking out of later. Then we later pump that water out of the stream, spend huge amounts of money to clean it up so that we can drink it or take a crap in it and flush it towards the treatment plant. The solid waste (lovely euphemism) left over from this process is usually either burned or landfilled. Or burned and then landfilled.

Instead of doing this, we need to recycle this human waste and feed the plants. You don't just pump the shit out into the fields, that's a recipe for E.Coli sprouts. You do have to process it slightly, but there are actually a number of methods to do this which involve very low (or basically zero) energy input aside from the crap, and which not only produce fertilizer but also methane gas. The methane gas can be used onsite for cooking, or compressed and taken offsite. It can be used pretty much anywhere we normally use propane or "natural gas". Most sewage plants actually just "flare off" or simply burn this methane, putting the CO2 right back into the atmosphere without any gain. And we pay them for the privilege of having our shit processed in the most inane way possible.

Of course, a lot of basic assumptions about the way people should live have to be revised - we have to reconsider location, location, and location. Or we can still spend a lot of money to pump the shit, but instead of pumping it to a treatment plant, we pump it to what amounts to an array of wildlife refuges with submerged plastic tents which capture methane. The shit is pumped into the bottom with a supply of water, and bacteria process it and heavy metals settle out and are fixed by other bacteria. The process produces algae which can be used to make biodiesel and alcohol fuels, and methane which I have already discussed. The only reason we're not doing this today is the very same reason that there is so much resistance against organic farming - in order to protect the profits of oil barons and their vassals, who are making big metric fuckloads of money by shitting on the planet and taking our money unnecessarily.

If you would like clarification of any of these points, or any further explanation of why organic farming is absolutely essential and why modern mass agriculture is destroying the planet, I will be happy to provide you with more information.

A more political tenor than the last one, but still good.

Also, a/n (implied) correction: In my previous post, I may have implied that photons are not affected by gravitational fields. This is distinctly not true. While it's true that photons do not exert gravitational force, they most distinctly are affected by gravitational fields, a la light being unable to escape black holes, parallax and the like.