by
Steve Savage on 10 February 2011
In 2008, the National Agricultural Statistics Service of USDA conducted a detailed survey of Organic agriculture in the US. Participation rates were high with Organic growers, so the data is quite reliable. What it showed was probably surprising to many. After at least three decades of “rapid growth,” Organic now accounts for 0.52% of harvested US cropland. NASS did not go ahead and compare the yields of Organic crops to equivalent data for the rest of agriculture, but all that data is publicly available and I have posted a comparative analysis on SCRIBD (which is also embedded at the end of this post). Organic crop yields are generally lower, but it is hard to put that into perspective.
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by
Kevin Folta on 14 September 2010
The last talk of the IHC2010 session on transgenic plants and public policy was Dr. Carmen Popescu. Her first words hit me in the chest like a sledge hammer and I’ll save them for the conclusion of this entry. Dr. Popescu is a scientist in Romania, working at one of the country’s several crop testing laboratories. The information herein is paraphrased from her presentation.
First let’s talk about Romania. I’m no expert, but I’ve hosted Romanian scientists in my lab. It is a country and people trying to join the highly industrialized nations of the world. There is a desire to move from the historical challenges of being a former Eastern Bloc nation into a modern economic power. Right now a sagging economy is weighing heavily on the country and impairing their ascent.
Until recently, one of their strengths was agriculture, and one of their major crops was potato. In particular, they used Bt-producing transgenic potato to resist attack of the Colorado Beetle, a beetle clearly out of its jurisdiction in Romania. Switching to Bt potato saved $10 million USD a year for farmers, $4 million in insecticides and $6 million in their application. Here transgenic technology made the farmer more competitive and helped Romania grow as a food exporter.
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by
Anastasia on 30 January 2009
Even before Tomorrow’s Table graced the shelves of bookstores across America, I was intrigued by the idea of combining science with traditional farming methods. In this week’s Nature Genetics, Jonathan Gressel reviewed Tomorrow’s Table and may have coined a term to describe the combination of organic and transgenic methods – orgenic! What do you think of the term?
Dr. Gressel is interesting in his own right, a professor emeritus
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Toward a better agriculture… for everyone
A recent paper in PLoS concluded:
The paper was Choosing Organic Pesticides over Synthetic Pesticides May Not Effectively Mitigate Environmental Risk in Soybeans (full text) by Christine Bahlai et al. Long story short, the research showed that some synthetic pesticides were more environmentally benign than some organic pesticides, showing that it’s inaccurate to say that organic pesticides are better for the environment. Sometimes they are, and sometimes they are not.
The paper itself is really great, deserving of its own post (see Organic pesticides aren’t necessarily more sustainable than synthetic by Colby Vorland), but I’d like to talk about the organic-conventional divide. Normally I don’t approve of thoughts in scientific journal articles that aren’t immediately related to the research, too often authors stray into questionable territory. But Christine’s thoughts here are immediately related to her findings, and her results may indicate that big changes are necessary in the way we think about farming.
Separating out “organic” as defined by the USDA may be beneficial in the short term for farmers that have transitioned to certified organic methods who can then charge a premium, but in the long term, the divide is a detriment to farmers, consumers, and the environment. If we really care about farming in a more environmentally friendly fashion, we need an entirely new system.
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