Some blowback about last weeks announcement that Stanford researchers find little difference between organically farmed food and commercially grown food leave a bit to be desired in the logic department. From the Times of India:
“More significantly, organic could help save the world from global warming. It saves 40 per cent of water used in conventional farming and uses non-conventional energy sources,” says Patel, claiming that he did not have to use water pump for as long as 25 days when it did not rain at all this monsoon. “In summers, I don’t need to irrigate my farms for almost 30-35 days. Head of the department of civil engineering in MSU A S Patel says if every village of average 100 acre size could shift to organic, the water saved would take care of the village’s domestic needs for the next 20 years!
The entire article is here.
Next there will be claims that low flow toilets will save the world from global warming because they use half the water of regular toilets.
Anthony had talked about dual flush toilets before.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/06/14/a-green-product-worth-recommending/
Saves water, and no problems with insufficient water with the “solids”.
I installed 4 in my house. They work great. Some hassle with the first one, but once I figured out how to calibrate it, the others took 5 minutes each.
Well, if you leave out other variables and narrowly focus on just on thing of course you’ll come up with a result that doesn’t pass the sniff test. Organic farming methods yield LESS crop per acre and as a result require MORE land to cultivate meaning greater disruption to the environment, and MORE fuel to run the harvesting equipment since they have to travel GREATER distances.
Organic crop yield is generally 80% of conventional farming, depending on the individual plant species. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0308521X1100182X
Use your critical thinking skills, if you have to farm 20% more land, you expect to use 20% more fuel to harvest it and 20% more fuel to plant it. Organic farming requires more energy to plant and harvest period because you can’t undo the basic math without being intentionally obtuse.
Reality check says:
September 10, 2012 at 12:52 pm
“Tom in Florida: My sewer lines run from each end of the home to a central point were my kitchen sink is, then down a pipe to the septic tank. I always thought this was odd, but perhaps it’s a really good design. Interesting…. :)”
Sounds like a very good design although I do not know if that is unusual or just normal. A final note, whenever you have your tank pumped always flush the toilets while the cover is off the tank so you can hear if the water is making it all the way there. Tree roots can make their way under the pipe from the house to the tank and lift it enough to cause a slow drain or prevent flow entirely.
Why flush?
Just bag up your solids and sell them to local organic growers as natural fertiliser.
“Personally, I prefer the tangy taste of malathion on my fruits and veggies. ☺
Beats biting into a wormy apple.”
What’s worse than finding a maggot in your apple…
Finding half a maggot…..
> [i] Next there will be claims that low flow toilets will save the world from global warming because they use half the water of regular toilets.[/i]
Shouldn’t that be “save the world from global flooding”?
So if organic farming is 40% more water efficient, then certainly there were never any pre-industrial droughts which impacted agriculture, right?
What a truly bizarre claim.
Anthony Watts wrote:
“Some blowback about last weeks announcement that Stanford researchers find little difference between organically farmed food and commercially grown food leave a bit to be desired in the logic department.”
Actually I don’t think most people would have seen that article, so here is a link:
http://med.stanford.edu/ism/2012/september/organic.html
Excerpt:
“For their study, the researchers sifted through thousands of papers and identified 237 of the most relevant to analyze. Those included 17 studies (six of which were randomized clinical trials) of populations consuming organic and conventional diets, and 223 studies that compared either the nutrient levels or the bacterial, fungal or pesticide contamination of various products (fruits, vegetables, grains, meats, milk, poultry, and eggs) grown organically and conventionally. There were no long-term studies of health outcomes of people consuming organic versus conventionally produced food; the duration of the studies involving human subjects ranged from two days to two years.
After analyzing the data, the researchers found little significant difference in health benefits between organic and conventional foods. No consistent differences were seen in the vitamin content of organic products, and only one nutrient — phosphorus — was significantly higher in organic versus conventionally grown produce (and the researchers note that because few people have phosphorous deficiency, this has little clinical significance). There was also no difference in protein or fat content between organic and conventional milk, though evidence from a limited number of studies suggested that organic milk may contain significantly higher levels of omega-3 fatty acids.
The researchers were also unable to identify specific fruits and vegetables for which organic appeared the consistently healthier choice, despite running what Bravata called “tons of analyses.”
“Some believe that organic food is always healthier and more nutritious,” said Smith-Spangler, who is also an instructor of medicine at the School of Medicine. “We were a little surprised that we didn’t find that.”
The review yielded scant evidence that conventional foods posed greater health risks than organic products. While researchers found that organic produce had a 30 percent lower risk of pesticide contamination than conventional fruits and vegetables, organic foods are not necessarily 100 percent free of pesticides. What’s more, as the researchers noted, the pesticide levels of all foods generally fell within the allowable safety limits. Two studies of children consuming organic and conventional diets did find lower levels of pesticide residues in the urine of children on organic diets, though the significance of these findings on child health is unclear. Additionally, organic chicken and pork appeared to reduce exposure to antibiotic-resistant bacteria, but the clinical significance of this is also unclear.”
The above contrasts to the claim that organic food has significantly more vitamins, on average anyway. Vitamin content can vary between different sources even if both foods are “organic” or both are conventional, but the preceding study ought to be more or less representative of the averages.
Because organic foods tend to be far higher priced in general, a luxury product in the market in that sense, sometimes growers pay more attention to using tasty varieties (potentially at the expense of yield) or to micronutrients which can impact taste. Neither, though, requires the ideological package of “organic farming”; there is nothing that prevents, for example, adding both NPK fertilizer and particular micronutrients if helpful.
@Reality
Thanks for your contributions. Much ado about nothing.
I have two low-flush toilets. One bowl-clogs repeatedly and we are used to it. The solution it to let it simmer for a while. Then flush again. The other has never had a problem. Clearly they are unequal. I see there is now on the side of the box a ‘diameter’ reported (for example 60mm) and this is no doubt a response to customer complaints with the designs being modified to suit.
The volume of the flush can be adjusted on modern low flush toilets and should be set to the suitable flow needed to work properly. In other words it is not necessarily a ‘low flush’ if you choose it not to be. The ‘dual flush’ is where the big savings come from. The volume for the 1/2 and full flush are separately adjustable on some systems. Look in the back for the float valve adjusting mechanism – a threaded vertical rod made of plastic. One stop sets the total height and the other sets the volume to be dropped during a 1/2 flush.
To those above who claim organic food is healthier, it isn’t. http://annals.org/article.aspx?articleid=1355685…To those who claim it’s more sustainable, it isn’t: if organic crop has X amount of some nutrient and the industrial crop contains Y of the nutrient ( X > Y), then more (X – Y > 0) of the nutrient has to be returned as fertilizer to the soil to maintain its nutrient level as the yield is carried off to market and lost.
Hi guidoLM,
Organic described as a natural growing method deliberately adds in extras to the soil other than crop residue. If water/insects cooperated the history of farming is one of sustainable food production – which is different than urban populations’ need for food.
I know many who can not afford to buy fertilizer and others who can not afford timely insecticide/fungicide. Even many who get products can’t afford a back pack sprayer & in season mine is usually on loan with farmers fetching it one from the other throughout the day.
Well I don’t eat organic foods anyway, as they have carbon in them which the US Supreme Court says is poisonous.
@pyromancer76, until 2010, Whole Foods got most of it’s organic produce from China. How is that for local?
Three times for solids, once for liquids.
@Truthseeker:
Get a large plastic pitcher. Leave it in the bathtub. Upon entering the “little room”, turn on the shower faucet. Do your business (turning off the tub faucet when convenient) Commence flush.
About 1/2 way through when the “deposit” is trying to make up its mind – stay or go, stay or go… dump the pitcher in in a smooth medium fast rate. (I find slightly offset from the center is best).
You will “flush with pride” in one go. Oh, leaving the shower / tub faucet running during the flush and a bit after will assist “the do” in making it all the way to the street, avoiding the “accumulation of do” in your feed line that otherwise results and eventually leads to a giant clog in the pipe that was designed to have 5 gallons “move the do” and now plugs up instead.
It’s not just getting it out of the bowl and into the pipe that matters, it’s getting it to the big pipe in the street without time to set up and make a clog, too. ( I learned this the hard way… no more issues since adopting this process post, um, plunging and flushing and chemical treatment and…)
So get yourself a nice big pitcher and keep it in the the little room…
Well, I’ll take a Missouri position on the notion that organically grown plants require less water intrinsically.
Of course if fertilizer of any kind, whether cow dung or factory made, is not used growth rate will likely be slower thus less water needed. Or if a less productive variety of the plants is used, lower growth rate may mean less water used. Either way = less food.
Organic growers want to change the plants to better resist insects without affecting nutrition, which is the need in poor countries – not taste. One effort in the US resulted in some of the undesirable components bred out of potatoes centuries ago.
There is a risk from uninformed people trying new things. For example, some people might think that manure is a good fertilizer but not think about what is in manure – such as e-coli – and how to neutralize the bad stuff. (It is done, not hard but takes time and knowledge.)
And if you are in a particular situation, such as poor farmers in central Africa, choice of crop types is important because water is scarce or expensive. There are many grains in the world, some may be useful in such circumstances though it is much less likely that they have been developed by breeding to give very good yields.
I too would want to know what crop the guy in India was growing, and what stage of growth it was at during the 25 days (noting that the corn crop in IA is poor this year because rains did not come at the right time).
As for risk of blight and such, methods developed in the early 20th century help change crops to resist things like “rust” which was a problem with wheat.