Norman Borlaug on Organic Farming

http://www.reason.com/blog/show/132479.html

by glymor • 17 years ago

34 64 17 years ago

antonovka11• 17 years ago

I buy organic for three reasons:

1) Despite what Norman Borlaug said, the vegetables taste better. I don't really care why. Maybe it has nothing to do with the fertilizer used, rather that they simply don't ripen the tomatoes with ethylene (the other side of the techno-farming coin).

2) I can afford it.

3) I don't trust Monsanto and their ilk to integrate technology to better feed me. I expect them to rely on technology to improve their bottom line, very likely disadvantaging me in the process -- their goals and incentives are simply not aligned with my own.

timr• 17 years ago

There's definitely a lot of all-or-nothing thinking going on here, on both sides of the issue. I agree with Borlaug about nitrogen fertilizer; we can't replace it efficiently. But I also have qualms about the over-use of pesticides and fertilizer; air and water pollution; decreasing genetic diversity of industrially farmed food (probably the primary reason why organic produce tastes better, in practice); and dependence upon a global supply chain that requires massive amounts of energy, and that leads to perverse nutritional incentives. Don't get me started on non-vegetable farming....

I think a lot of claims coming from organic fetishists are off the deep end, but they're not entirely wrong. I think a lot of the claims coming from industrial farming fetishists are off the deep end, but they're not entirely wrong. As usual, the world consists of many shades of gray.

rjurney16• 17 years ago

There's nothing wrong with you buying first-world, boutique food. Buy hydroponic vegetables if you want. You are not the problem: there aren't that many of you.

The problem is that new age extremism has vilified Borlaug, and the very Green Revolution that makes modern civilization - largely absent from starvation due to inefficient agriculture - possible. This man saved a billion people from starvation and resulting war, won the Nobel Prize, and your average North American has no idea who he is. As a result of the efforts of eco-extremist organizations like Greenpeace, the debate on agriculture is incredibly misinformed, and the very innovations in research that are critical for supporting the increasing global population are vilified by arguments that are entirely religious, rather than scientific. And people don't know that is what they are.

As a wealthy westerner, wanting to eat any kind of food - fine by me. Wanting to end research into genetic improvements in crop yields - absolutely condemnable.

antonovka11• 17 years ago

There's nothing wrong with you buying first-world, boutique food. Buy hydroponic vegetables if you want. You are not the problem: there aren't that many of you.

The problem is that new age extremism has vilified Borlaug ...

Isn't calling organic food "first-world, boutique food" and many of its proponents "new age extrem[ists]" bit of hyperbolic vilification in of itself?

Commercial farming practices brought both good and bad, and you illustrate both extremes by railing so strongly against the one of them in multiple posts.

mark_l_watson• 17 years ago

I can't agree with him about organic food health benefits. When you eat industrially raised food (oil based fertilizer) you get a smaller spectrum of minerals, etc.

And, as my young grandson once said: "why would anyone want to eat food with bug spray on it?"

That said, it is a matter of free choice - my wife and I gladly pay slightly higher prices for locally grown organic food. If not organic, we then at least favor locally grown food.

rjurney16• 17 years ago

What you are saying is scientifically false. As in: there is no evidence this is true, and the opposite has in fact been demonstrated.

It may FEEL like you're getting more nutrients - but you aren't. You are getting fewer traces of pesticide, which is probably a good thing. But nutrients - no.

antonovka11• 17 years ago

Neither of you have referenced supporting papers or research. Which one of you is correct?

dejb4• 17 years ago

Yes some evidence please. The most recent paper that supposedly 'debunked' the differences in nutrients actually did show some differences but the authors chose to describe them as negligible. The study certainly did not seem comprehensive enough to be definitive.

martythemaniak• 17 years ago

Opponents of organic food never bring one of the main reasons why people buy organic - it tastes freaking awesome. While it may not be true for all products, there is a pretty clear difference between a lot of organic and non-organic products.

dagw• 17 years ago

Exactly. I don't care too much about organic vs non organic vegetables per se. What I do care a lot about is that I get the tastiest vegetables I can get. It just so happens that this means buying organic most of the time.

There really are two very different problems. One is how to we feed lots and lots of people in poor parts of the world and the other is how can rich spoiled people like myself get the best tasting vegetables. The solution to these two problems probably isn't the same.

fburnaby2• 17 years ago

I can second that. I took up buying my vegetables from a few hippies around town last year. They deliver to my door for the same price the (non-organic) vegetables would have cost at the grocery store. Though, I think a lot of this improved taste could be freshness as well; most of the goods are local and were picked much more recently. Another detractor is the fact that the food at the store has (typically) travelled much longer distances.

I agree with the thesis of the article, though. With the coming (actually, possibly already-existing) overpopulation crisis, high-tech food is going to be important. Unfortunately, the hardcore food-hippies will have to get over that fact.

evgen2• 17 years ago

Your CDs/farmers market food may have trvelled fewer miles, but it travelled in a far less efficient manner. So calked "food miles" are also around 4-5% of the energy cost in the food. Time from harvest to table and varitals selected may differ between your veggie selection and your neighbors, but odds are that their food used less energy to get to their table than yours did.

amelim2• 17 years ago

I would be willing to bet that in a double-blinded study the difference would be a lot less clear cut then you propose.

encoderer5• 17 years ago

To be fair, I think you'd have to distinguish between Industrial Organic and true farmers-market / moms-backyard organic.

You give somebody a tomato, an apple, a pear from Kroger or Safeway or Publix, and another from an organic farmers market... I'd be just as willing as you to bet on that random consumer selecting the organic produce.

antonovka11• 17 years ago

In addition to the organic vs. non-organic, it's also a question ingredients:

- Organic vegetables aren't chemically ripened, non-organic vegetables usually are.

- Organic snacks use sugar or cane juice, most non-organic snacks use corn syrup.

- Organic snacks use non-hydrogenated oils and real butter. Quite a few non-organic snacks use partially hydrogenated oils.

There's nothing that says corn syrup can't be organic, but 'organic' foods almost invariably use better, alternative, and often more expensive ingredients.

Given this, I don't think anyone would have difficulty identifying the foods.

randallsquared• 17 years ago

Indeed. I'm not sure I've ever noticed organic produce tasting better, overall. It certainly does look worse, which may be influencing how I feel about it.

As my own main food preparer, though, the main issue I have with organic is that it's less convenient. It takes me about the same time to chop up an onion or tomato no matter if it has a four inch diameter (non-organic, from Walmart) or a two inch diameter (from the organic bin at Shoppers Food or where ever), but I have to use a lot more of the organic ones to get the same amount of veggie. Also, organic veggies are far more often misshapen or have bad spots that have to be cut out, which I assume is because tomatoes that aren't being speed-ripen have more time for spots to go bad.

All in all, I'll keep buying food that looks good over food that might taste a little better (assuming I'm just unobservant).

nkurz• 17 years ago

I disagree. I think you are confusing two issues: 'certified organic' and 'local artisan'. I'm in a business right now where I buy a LOT of locally grown fruits and vegetables --- often 1000 lbs a week. I'm in the Bay Area, and I buy at the farmers' markets direct from the growers.

Probably 2/3 of what we buy is certified organic, 1/3 'conventional'. Everything is local, and I'm pretty sure that everything we buy is better than anything flown in to the organic section at Whole Foods. And I'm definitely sure that the certified organic produce is not uniformly better than the non-certified. The differences farm-to-farm, variety-to-variety, and season-to-season are certainly stronger effects.

Perhaps you point instead is that there is a difference between a mass produced tomato flown in from afar and ripened in a chamber and a home-grown tomato picked at the peak of ripeness? And that the tomatoes on the vine at $3.99/lb are often a better facsimile of the latter than the pinkish tennis ball at 99 cents/lb? In which case I'd agree with you. But I'd hesitate to say that this is because it is 'organic'.

mncaudill• 17 years ago

Borlaug had no problem with people buying organic (e.g., "Let them buy it. Let them pay a bit more. It's a free society."). His issue was that first-world people shouldn't completely abandon the advancement of genetically-modified food as it doesn't agree with their views of how food should be grown.

Most of us can buy organic food I would imagine, and it usually does taste better. But we shouldn't force our ideals of what others should and should not eat when organic is not a viable option, and any food is better than tastier food. That was Borlaug's message.

rjurney16• 17 years ago

Amen. There's nothing wrong with buying organic. Not respecting the differences between the first and third worlds is what is irritating in the food debate. Maybe people don't want genetically modified food domestically - but these innovations are critical to continuing to feed the planet. When you vilify them, when you start labeling foods as modified to create two classes of food, you're screaming loud and clear, "I don't give a shit about people that aren't just like me, and I don't respect the differences between first and third world realities." Personally - I want to be eating the same wheat as the guy pushing rickshaws in Old Dheli. I want genetic modifications rigorously tested so as to be safe for us all.

Acting like first-world boutique farming represents a viable model for the entire world - despite all the evidence - just because new age idealism says it should be, is the height of western arrogance.

antonovka11• 17 years ago

I find the belief that mega-agricultural conglomerates are at all interested in our long term well-being to be the height of technological arrogance. The market incentives are just not aligned with our interests.

It's not that genetic engineering can't be safely and responsibly leveled, but simply that given the track record of the foods provided by these organizations, I don't see why they will behave particularly responsibility towards our interests in the future.

It's also disturbing that you're attempting to turn the debate into one of classism or racism:

When you start labeling foods as modified to create two classes of food, you're screaming loud and clear, "I don't give a shit about people that aren't just like me, and I don't respect the differences between first and third world realities".

Why is my desire to know exactly what I'm purchasing in any way remotely related to how I feel about people who "aren't just like me" or living in a third world economy?

netsp• 17 years ago

I get pretty depressed when I hear about agricultural NGO programs in the developing world. They invariably sell themselves as dealing in "sustainable agricultural methods that don't degrade the land" or something similar. There is nothing wrong with that of course, but the number one reason for these initiatives should be growing more produce, not appeasing some armchair agriculturalist with a firm beliefe that organic is the right way to go.

chez17• 17 years ago

"That's ridiculous. This shouldn't even be a debate. Even if you could use all the organic material that you have--the animal manures, the human waste, the plant residues--and get them back on the soil, you couldn't feed more than 4 billion people."

Quotes like this make me sad. This is so ignorant coming from a brilliant man. Organic or conventional farming isn't the issue. The way most Americans consume meat 3 times a day is the issue. It would be like having a debate on oil consumption in this country and two people were arguing about heating homes with oil and nobody ever brought up transportation. Eating meat 3 times a day isn't sustainable. Organic farming is. The way this debate is framed is just beyond stupid for how intelligent the people having it are. Everyone just assumes that meat 3 times a day is ok and it's the organic farming that isn't sustainable. This is laughable.

This isn't an all or nothing thing here. Eating meat in moderation is fine. This country (American) has a taste for federally subsidized, extremely cheap and unhealthy meat. That is the issue. Not farming.

encoderer5• 17 years ago

True that. It's something like a 10:1 ratio for calories-in to calories-out on a cow or chicken. So to get 10,000 calories of Beef we have to feed a cow 100,000 calories of feed. And by feed, I mean corn....

rjurney16• 17 years ago

Maybe he isn't ignorant. Maybe he realizes that removing meat from our culture is more difficult than engineering more efficient agriculture. But really - North America is so agriculturally wealthy that is can afford to eat any way it likes. Borlaug engineered hybrid crops that made it possible for the rest of the world to self-sustain. In most of the world people don't eat as much meat, and that is not changing - and it is there that his innovations were most helpful. They ended starvation by providing enough wheat and rice for everyone - nevermind that it isn't always distributed evenly - he ended the literal shortages.

Anyway, this is changing. Look at meat's prominence in California (feed lots aside, I mean consumption) - much less than elsewhere. California leads, the rest of the nation follows.

encoderer5• 17 years ago

It's not a lack of agricultural wealth that should limit our meat intake. It's a lack of fossil fuel wealth. Raising cattle uses an enormous amount of fossil fuel. And even organically speaking, the only reason we have such cheap meat is a massive amount of subsidized corn. That's not good for the soil, it's not good for the environment, and it's certainly not good for the cows.

JulianMorrison2• 17 years ago

The only reason I ever buy "organic" is when I think the regular product is cheating me by adding in a lot of stuff I wouldn't consider an improvement, like water in meat, corn starch in sauce, etc. Ironically these are often things with organic equivalents - but the organic brands are selling to a demographic who read the ingredient labels.

azanar3• 17 years ago

Check the definition of "organic." There is no requirement regarding food additives, save that the additives themselves must also be organic. Nothing is stopping the organic farmers from introducing these additives any more than it compelling the conventional farmers to do so. Whether they do or don't is entirely a matter of goodwill.

antonovka11• 17 years ago

Whether they do or don't is entirely a matter of goodwill.

Not good will, but rather responding to market demand. The 'organic' buyers are more likely to read the ingredients list.

JulianMorrison2• 17 years ago

See my last sentence above. The connection of organic and not-messed-about is indirect - the same buyers demand both characteristics. Adam Smith gave a good explanation of such "goodwill".

azanar3• 17 years ago

Until now, I haven't said much about this, because arguments about organic farming seem to quickly part with reasonableness and come to rely on blanket assertions and condescension. It's getting old, and I would argue that we either need to change the way we approach this topic, or keep it off the front page; I'd prefer the former, but I think that will be hard.

I worry that it has become to tied up in people's sense of identity. Not in the sense of an environmentalist lashing themselves to a tree, but in the sense of two neighbors attempting to win a battle about who loves and cares for their families safety more by buying expensive items. It might still be true that one of them loves their family more, but it is irrelevant to the battle; the real battle is who can buy more of the expensive shit to prove it to the person they are fighting against. This is a class conflict, above everything else that is going on.

And hence the problem with organic food; it provides a more expensive option that is, ostensibly: better for you, better for the environment, better for the farmers, better for the rest of the population, better for wildlife, and likely any of a number of other groups of people or things.

Do we know if any of this is true? No. Do we know if any of it is false? No.

Does any of this really matter? I'd like to believe it does; it does for me. But I'm not convinced it does for most people.

We can argue that we know the above is true, but the data we have is relatively limited. Even when we have data, it isn't entirely clear what it is measuring, because people have such confused definitions of what "organic" actually means. It has nothing to do with local farmers; it has nothing to do with the complete elimination of pesticides, herbicides or fertilizers. It just limits the types of substances used, based on origin, not known health effects; organic farmers are required to use "natural" farming aids. What we have to go on is gut feelings that "natural," whatever we define that to mean, is "better." We also have the gut feeling that "artifical" things, whatever we define that to be, are "bad." This falls apart the instant someone points to something artifical that is better than the natural version -- as an example, please see Canola oil. But it can so fuel the senses that food we consider to be artificial will taste noticably worse. Does it? Who knows; we need more double-blind studies on this.

The problem is that the debate is working from an assumption a priori, that organic food is the better option, at least by the organic proponents. I am not pro-conventional food; I don't believe that most of the people who still buy conventional produce are that religious about it. They'd like to see data on both sides of the debate, and would like to sit down and have a reasonable pro-con discussion. But that can't happen when one side of the debate is screaming "YOU'RE KILLING YOURSELF AND THE PLANET!" It's like the guy who buys the more expensive car seat while screaming at his neighbor "YOU'RE KILLING YOUR CHILD!" The poor neighbor now has a choice: submit to the religious fervor of expensive car seats, or deal with the continued condescention of his neighbor.

We need to start having a rational discussion about this; I'm surprised, given the level-headedness by which we approach other topics, that we are so unabashedly biased on this one. Maybe it's just a vocal minority?

tokenadult2• 17 years ago

We need to start having a rational discussion about this; I'm surprised, given the level-headedness by which we approach other topics, that we are so unabashedly biased on this one.

Hurrah. I applaud anyone on HN who urges participants to look at evidence and to examine their preconceptions as we discuss issues thoughtfully.

hendler2• 17 years ago

Where Borlaug and organic farming have differences is modeling sustainability.

As a scientist, I think (based on very little knowledge of him) , Borlaug was interested in sustainability and open to criticism.

The problem of sustainability can be addressed by various forms of science - Borlaug probably doesn't deserve to be a lightening rod. The politicization of agriculture (and the sustainability debate) is industrial farming techniques are sometimes (obviously) in conflict with ecologically "holistic" practices - that is, the model of the systems are different, and both models get things wrong.

My two cents: Profit clouds science as much as fear or ignorance.

rjurney16• 17 years ago

Borlaug takes the stance that even if having 6 billion people on earth is 'unsustainable,' that we should still feed them all. At the root of all the 'sustainability' counter-arguments is the idea that we shouldn't feed everyone no matter what it takes, that people SHOULD be starving... just never the person making the argument. This is why Greenpeace does things like run a successful campaign to ban nitrogen fertilizer exports from Western Europe to Africa - its environment over people. Better for the people to starve than the environment suffer the fertilizer load, and the problem of increased populations when people stop starving.

Which is what I call environmental extremism - the non-extreme variety has people first, and seeks sustainability for our entire, well fed population.

hendler2• 17 years ago

'''the non-extreme variety has people first, and seeks sustainability for our entire, well fed population.'''

I agree partly - starving now or later - is the problem.

Isn't humanity just a startup?™ - industrial agriculture has "technological debt". We either pay the debt now, or face bigger debt later.

Borlaug, I don't think, was trying to define and deal with debt - and I think sustainability/ecology does.

bk• 17 years ago

This is a typical ideologically charged topic - so I will present a few facts that that I think may put some of the debate in perspective:

1. There are now more obese people than starving people in the world. The diseases that are killing those overweight people are largely nutritional in origin (heart disease, diabetes, at least some cancers).

2. The EU (and I assume the US/Canada as well) are destroying agricultural products en masse, due to subsidized overproduction.

3. Population growth is rapidly decelerating - the largest countries in the world have or are rapidly approaching "first world" birth rates. Western Europe is shrinking.

Borlaug did phenomenal work for his historical period, however, looking at it in a historical timeframe, we should remain aware that the parameters of our world are constantly changing, and thus it's not that simple.

Personally, I think it requires a careful look at the political and economic production and distribution systems around the agriculture and food industries. The whole "granola hippie" versus "libertarian corporatist" debate is simply a huge distraction that misses the point.

gjm11• 17 years ago

There are now more obese people than starving people in the world.: "Obese" and "starving" are not parallel: you only call someone "starving" if their lack of food is putting them at considerable risk of imminent death, whereas being "obese" -- while it does indeed increase your risk of various nasty things -- isn't nearly so dangerous. (It depends a bit on how you define "obese". I'll guess that to make it true that "there are more obese people than starving people" you need to define it quite broadly.)

[Edited about 1m after posting, for clarity only.]

Norman Borlaug on Organic Farming

Related Stories