Score One For Sustainable Food!
Obama chooses a gem for deputy USDA secretary… I’m interested to hear what Michael Pollan thinks.
Comments
Director of the Agriculture, Food and Environment Program at Tufts? Fucking awesome. I love that Obama keeps filling up the cabinet with smart people.
Isn’t it a shame that you’re able to even say that sentence? Isn’t that how it should always be?
Anyone else been hearing that organic farming is a lie? I was hoping to find some really solid sources on this, so as to stop paying the extra money for unnecessary guarantees.
Seriously? There’s no pesticides or chemicals used. I like knowing that my strawberries haven’t been sprayed with aspartame to cover up for the lack of sweetness caused by early picking. I like knowing that my food isn’t poisoning the local water supply.
i don’t really buy “organic” unless i’m in a supermarket or something. i try to buy produce from local farmers because nine times out of ten their stuff is organic by nature.
the big, industrial organic stuff utilizes almost as much fossil fuel as the non-organic stuff.
i guess there are always exceptions. john brought up strawberries… and they are definitely more prone to absorbing anything you spray on them. and for the most part, all strawberries come from california or somewhere else on the west coast. so obviously i would want an organic strawberry over a non-organic.
but that just introduces a different debate. should we really be eating food thats harvested 3000 miles away. or fruit like bananas that aren’t harvested anywhere in the country? is eating a banana really any that better than eating industrial meat? i don’t know. i like bananas
to go back on topic, i am really happy with this selection.
John said:I like knowing that my food isn’t poisoning the local water supply.
Cite your sources showing pesticides significantly impact ground water.
Sammy said:John said:I like knowing that my food isn’t poisoning the local water supply.
Cite your sources showing pesticides significantly impact ground water.
Seriously? Where have you been the past… your life. Here’s a trustworthy .gov site for kids:
http://ga.water.usgs.gov/edu/pesticidesgw.html
Remember DDT?
“Nor do organic farming practices necessarily conserve the environment. Competitive organic farmers keep their fields clear of weeds through frequent mechanical weeding — a method that damages nesting birds, worms and invertebrates — and high use of fossil fuels, which greatly increases pollution from nitrogen oxides. A single treatment with innocuous herbicide, coupled with no-till conventional farming, avoids this damage and retains organic material in the soil surface. Similarly, although use of manure means higher, beneficial levels of earthworms in organic fields, there are numerous problems with the use of manure (Box 3, overleaf), including possible effects on human health.”
Are there problems with organic farming? Of course. But that doesn’t mean that you should abandon it and just go back big factory farm goods.
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