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Comment by darzu | Hacker News Reader

Citations needed. I worked on an organic vineyard for a summer and I can tell you it took a lot of work to get that label.

Non-organic vineyards in our area had barren earth or gravel under the stalks as they used weedkillers regularly. In contrast, we practiced “turf flipping” where we would, with clever machine and hard work, turn the soil over to smother weeds. The soil was alive and rich with the longest earthworms I’ve ever seen. This took incomparably more time than spraying chemicals but we believed in the mission. And the extra money from labeling it organic didn’t come close to covering the extra effort.

In some cases at least, the label means something.

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I think the question really is about benefit/trade-offs of the work/costs that goes into the organic. Apart from of course outright fraudulent actors.

Case in point is Sri Lanka's current economic meltdown (1) - which is to a significant extent attributed to the government going all in on organic, banning fertilizers resulting in yields plummeting - less food to go around and no longer self sufficient, exports plumetting so less hard cash to buy oil, medicines no way to provide power, transport etc

(1) https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/03/05/sri-lanka-organic-farmi...

Come on. Converting to all-organic at once having failed by no means suggests that slowly phasing out to get to organic wouldn't work.

Switching suddenly, and by means of a ban -- what could go wrong?

A free-market gradualistic solution would be to cap pesticide and fertilizer imports and auction licenses to buy them.

The question I asked was about cost/benefit trade offs of organic and indeed as the linked article indicates, what are the trade offs with how the math adds up. I am not pre-supposing that a switch to organic is even desirable like this comment above.

For instance, if without inorganic fertilizers, yields plummet 20-30%, does that mean we need more forest land converted to farming tonkeep people fed? Do 20-30% more people have to work in agriculture vs today and stop working in cities? What would that do to urban services? What similarly are the trade offs from using fertilizers for land? What happens over time?

If there are good research papers that explore the total system costs and economic impacts?

From the article linked in the parent comment, the failure was very well predicted by it sounds like basically everyone who knew anything about agriculture. And that prediction was based entirely on basic facts about agriculture rather than any "how to get there" effects like you're saying caused it to not work.

That's a completely different issue to if the label "organic" means something.

> And the extra money from labeling it organic didn’t come close to covering the extra effort.

And this right here is why people are skeptical about organic produce.

There seems to be two kinds:

- The kind that doesn't scale (so any would be environmental benefits would stop existing if it became more than a niche)

- The kind that scales because they're abusing loose definitions of "organic" to charge the end customer more money.

Our vineyard didn’t make as much money as surrounding vineyards but it was still self sustaining. More robust demand for organic wines would have made it even more so.

Organic farming has external benefits as well, or rather the absence of negative externalities like harmful chemical run off and less water usage. These aren’t as easily noticed by just looking at market dynamics currently.

All that being said, my understanding is that organic farming isn’t the right choice in all cases. It’s definitely more labor and sometimes resource or land intensive. It takes a certain wealthy consumer base to support it.

I hope that robots can eventually make organic practices more widespread. Instead of spraying pesticides (some of which are permitted under organic rules in the US and Europe) have robots come by continuously and pluck each weed as it appears. Pluck the pests from The leaves and stems. Water each plant individually per its need, etc. There should be no need to sacrifice a human on backbreaking and fiddly labor.

Just because you're forced into extra "make work" activities to get the label, doesn't make it any less of a fraud.

>> Organic food itself is a fraud as it doesn't actually mean anything.

> Citations needed.

Here you go: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organic_food#Health_and_safety

Quote for you:

There is little scientific evidence of benefit or harm to human health from a diet high in organic food, and conducting any sort of rigorous experiment on the subject is very difficult.

That quote does not not support the assertion.

And personal health was never the point of organic farming.

What was the point? Any links?

In a word, sustainability. It is about the farming.

Many people who buy organic food expect a reduced pesticide load (particularly in secondary products like eggs and dairy), but the main point is to support the organic farms and organic farmers, with the hope that the practice will spread.

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