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Organic foods

lauriandres said:
Does it mean that if you own a cow, then you are not even allowed to give milk for free (to friends, neighbours etc.)?
In Estonia thanks to EU even owning a single cow is quite difficult due the regulations that the room for the cow cannot be a random shack, but quite comfortable for the cow. So basically all the poor people in the countryside were thrown under the bus, because it was impossible to give milk to small factories and consuming even with neighbours all that fresh milk is kind of difficult.
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I didnt explain that well. The federal government does not allow unpasteurized milk to be introduced into interstate commerce. This means a farmer who lives in Utah cannot sell his unpasteurized milk to neighboring states.

Individual states may or may not allow the distribution of unpasteurized milk within their state. Utah does allow the sale of unpasteurized milk. I'm not sure of the other 49 states, I bet a majority of them allow it.



As far as my take on organic vs conventional, I prefer trace amounts on pesticides to trace amounts of animal filth/e. Coli/Salmonella/etc. Much safer in my opinion.
 
♪alt13 said:
The big difference is that teflon is a convenience while food is mandatory. I very much doubt we could feed this many people without pesticides. We should test them for safety but we can't really do without them. I have been growing tomatoes, peppers, strawberries this year. A small pesticide free garden in a vast desert(for insects)of lawns and concrete. It is amazing how many bugs get into it. I could double the number of strawberries I get if I sprayed. I don't, so snails and crickets take about half of them. My peppers haven't been bothered but I have lost maybe a 1/4 of my tomatoes.

I honestly doubt that most of the crap people buy at wholefoods is actually pesticide free. Even if it is there is no way to scale organic up to meet the needs of everyone without eventually having widespread famine. For now pesticides are the lesser of 2 evils.
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you should look into different plant pairings. You can discourage a lot of bugs that way. Also, soil chemistry (and, thus, plant health) is a major factor in vulnerability to bugs.

I hear you, though. I live in a buggy area.... very hard to beat them. I think it several seasons to turn the ship in the right direction -- especially if the land hasn't been utilized for food production in its recent history.
 
♪alt13 said:
Dude no one knows exactly what the safe limit is for most pesticides. It's an educated guess at best but more likely an industry claim. When people start getting sick and it is successfully linked to a specific chemical we ban it. We don't do 30 year studies in advance to protect from long term risks. The EPA and the FDA can only be somewhat confident of short term risks. Beyond that they are just watchdogs.
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It astounds me how few people recognize this.
 
Siro said:
All human activities have an environmental cost. Organic farming is 25%-35% less efficient (in yield) than conventional farming, and thus have a higher land and resource cost. Nor can organic farming support the world population due to need of more resources and higher cost of products. But that's neither here nor there. I was simply responding to the claim that conventional food is less healthy than organic food because it's sprayed with pesticide. That's not really true. The health risk of pesticides on food is small if handled properly. If not handled properly, then both conventional and organic foods carry a risk, as demonstrated by the e.coli cases that spring up now and again from manure use in organic produce.
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who's facts are you regurgitating right now? Why are you doing them this favor?

Siro said:
But then we use countless chemicals in practically every modern product. How do you know these chemicals in <insert a product that isn't essential for survival here> are safe over decades of use? Since we cannot rely on current knowledge on chemical safety as very few are tested in all concentration over lifetimes, none of it can be considered perfectly safe. The rational stance is to evaluate the information given the evidence at hand, not according to some arbitrary threshold of negative proof.
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Ok then. Let's stay on topic....: why don't you share with us your direct experience with different farming methods and yields? tia
 
Siro said:
Not very different from what I've been saying, though. Levels generally deemed by the FDA to be safe, but there might be long term effects. I wrote a longer response, but then I decided against it. Our disagreement is a bit pedantic. I'm disagreeing with the mentality of shunning something for being synthetic because of unknown long term effects, without any direct experience in food production, because that would apply to everything we use. I don't disagree that such chemicals exist, or that they might have unknown long-term effects.

And hey, haven't we had discussions about futurism and transhumanism? I would've pegged you as a little less risk averse. :)
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fixed.
 
Howard said:
Fresh milk (raw) isn't allowed to be sold in the US, has to be pasteurized. Pretty sure that's how it is.

Reason the tomatoes from your garden taste better is BC they're on the vine longer. Natural sugars that we can't replicate.
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I buy raw milk every week at the farmers' market
 
Most of the time I hear this debate between organic yields and conventional yields, I can hear the same imagined field in both instances. The argument always asks that you imagine the same rows and parcels: a strip of this food, maybe more; a strip of that food; a strip of another. Then, there's the irrigation, and it works basically the same in all instances, blah blah

Meanwhile, different farming methods that are totally organic are producing super high yields.

I agree with Hantlers, though. Nonconventional organic methods are hard (probably impossible) to scale up. That hardly feels like a condemnation, though.
 
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NAOS said:
you know my history of farming?
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Not as well as you so clearly know mine. But no, really, don't let me interrupt your playact about being the last word on food production. Do carry on.
 
Siro said:
Not as well as you so clearly know mine. But no, really, don't let me interrupt your playact about being the last word on food production. Do carry on.
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If you'd had any direct experience you certainly would have mentioned in the interaction you had with salt13. It seems a safe bet to count absence of evidence as evidence in this case; no way you can just carry on like you were if you'd tried your hand at it.

Look, we live in a world where we arm wave like that all the time. Sometimes, though, the arm waving doesn't work as well.

I'm not trying to be the last word, brough. lol at that.
 
NAOS said:
Most of the time I hear this debate between organic yields and conventional yields, I can hear the same imagined field in both instances. The argument always asks that you imagine the same rows and parcels: a strip of this food, maybe more; a strip of that food; a strip of another. Then, there's the irrigation, and it works basically the same in all instances, blah blah

Meanwhile, different farming methods that are totally organic are producing super high yields.

I agree with Hantlers, though. Nonconventional organic methods are hard (probably impossible) to scale up. That hardly feels like a condemnation, though.
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One thing people have to realize with yield results is there's a difference between the amount you harvest and the amount you can sell. What I've witnessed with a lot of these so called high yielding plots are that while the harvestable yields may be high, the quality is low enough that it's difficult to sell. Makes a difference. Not saying that's always the case of course.

There's a lot of good ideas we can take from organic practices. We still don't have a perfect system, but we're working on melding conventional and non-conventional practices. Organic growers don't bother me. What bothers me is when people (primarily organic supporters) blast conventional practices with no knowledge of what's going on (like Dala).

You made good points on pairings and soil chemistry and how it can help with pests. Takes years to get the soil right though, most people aren't that patient when they should be. Lots of natural bio controls that can be used as well in a garden, but kind of impractical large scale. Maybe someday though, that's the goal. Trust me, I would love to not use chemicals. They're expensive.
 
Howard said:
One thing people have to realize with yield results is there's a difference between the amount you harvest and the amount you can sell. What I've witnessed with a lot of these so called high yielding plots are that while the harvestable yields may be high, the quality is low enough that it's difficult to sell. Makes a difference. Not saying that's always the case of course.

There's a lot of good ideas we can take from organic practices. We still don't have a perfect system, but we're working on melding conventional and non-conventional practices. Organic growers don't bother me. What bothers me is when people (primarily organic supporters) blast conventional practices with no knowledge of what's going on (like Dala).

You made good points on pairings and soil chemistry and how it can help with pests. Takes years to get the soil right though, most people aren't that patient when they should be. Lots of natural bio controls that can be used as well in a garden, but kind of impractical large scale. Maybe someday though, that's the goal. Trust me, I would love to not use chemicals. They're expensive.
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yeah, I also mentioned time. In my experience, it takes about 5 years to see the boost in yield that comes from good, biodynamic farming practices. (That's a super rough number, for the record. It's based on the two 5-year-plus experiences I have working the same bits of land.)
 
NAOS said:
yeah, I also mentioned time. In my experience, it takes about 5 years to see the boost in yield that comes from good, biodynamic farming practices. (That's a super rough number, for the record. It's based on the two 5-year-plus experiences I have working the same bits of land.)
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Sounds about right to me. Gonna be different on every piece of course. Only problem is that us farmers aren't patient. It's hard to invest our own money into something that might show benefits in 5+ years, Ya know? Especially when we have methods that work right now. That's the challenge to me at least. It's fun though, I enjoy this part of it. The thinking, the philosphy behind why we do what we do.
 
Howard said:
Sounds about right to me. Gonna be different on every piece of course. Only problem is that us farmers aren't patient. It's hard to invest our own money into something that might show benefits in 5+ years, Ya know? Especially when we have methods that work right now. That's the challenge to me at least. It's fun though, I enjoy this part of it. The thinking, the philosphy behind why we do what we do.
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Agreed. That's the bugger of the market, though, not the bugger of farming. I like what you said earlier about yield versus the-yield-you-can sell. The market can be a very poor measure of agricultural productivity.

where's the land you're working?
 
NAOS said:
Agreed. That's the bugger of the market, though, not the bugger of farming. I like what you said earlier about yield versus the-yield-you-can sell. The market can be a very poor measure of agricultural productivity.

where's the land you're working?
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In a way it's poor, in a way it's good. High yield with no quality is a crappy crop imo. I'll take a lower yield with high quality every day.

Our farm is in the southwestern part of montana. Silt-loam soil for the most part, tons of calcium which can kinda suck for fertilizers (binds Em up).
 
Howard said:
In a way it's poor, in a way it's good. High yield with no quality is a crappy crop imo. I'll take a lower yield with high quality every day.

Our farm is in the southwestern part of montana. Silt-loam soil for the most part, tons of calcium which can kinda suck for fertilizers (binds Em up).
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that's a beautiful area, man. You're lucky.
 
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