Talk:Organic farming

definition of organic farming

Organic farming is a type of agriculture that uses natural methods ,it includes cultivation of crop without affecting the environment —Preceding unsigned comment added by 122.161.2.55 (talk) 07:08, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

i am busy doing a project at school and we have been asked to look at the effects of organic farming when doing an experiment on cress seeds, what does organic farming have to do with cress seeds, apart from the obvious fact that cress seeds are organic and are grown ?

NPOV & Organic Farming

This article was weak because it ignores certain controversies that should be included for NPOV. I made a few edits to improve this. The intent was to manage this without changing it so as to debate points but to permit the Reader to review contoversies if they wish to. 24.10.30.141 (talk) 21:51, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

Benefits of organic produce

This 2007 link needs to be deleted http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/green-living/organic-food-is-healthier-and-safer-fouryear-eu-investigation-shows-395483.html

It is a preview of a scientific study to be published in 2008. This study and not this cited article needs to be the supporting citation. I cannot find any such study, but did not delete the claim and supporting citation because someone else may be able to find it. 24.10.30.141 (talk) 21:36, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

I didn't find anything either and find the content misleading. The Organic Food article is much more balanced and doesn't use the study that is in question here. Xanderanj (talk) 16:38, 11 May 2011 (UTC)

It is my understanding that newspaper articles are an approved source for articles as long as they are papers such as the NYT's, the Guardian, etc. I frequently find a news source reference rather than the study. Gandydancer (talk) 13:24, 12 May 2011 (UTC)

International regulation & IFOAM

This text gives me the impression that there is international regulation when apart from some EU treaties there is none. Could someone else edit this section to make this clear? I would, but I don't know enough about the IFOAM to be able to do this well. Personally I doubt that many nations pay a lot of attention to the IFOAM and I would prefer that it just be deleted, but others likely disagree. 24.10.30.141 (talk) 21:46, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

"Organic agricultural methods are internationally regulated and legally enforced by many nations, based in large part on the standards set by the International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements (IFOAM), an international umbrella organization for organic organizations established in 1972."

Weed control

People who don't do any farming themselves tend to lack appreciation for the need for weed control—i.e., that it takes so much attention, that it's not just an afterthought. This edit was an addition to bring the importance of weed control to the attention of the lay reader. OK, the editor on this edit felt that that additon was superfluous, apparently on the theory that the reader would already understand and appreciate weed control without it, presumably because the word "pesticides" was already linked above. OK, that's reasonable, but I felt that, if we're "not allowed" to have this sentence, then you do need at least to lead the lay reader by the hand a little bit as done here. OK, fine, no problem, but then the editor of this edit says that most people already know what a pesticide is (doubtful to those of us who know the true background level of knowledge of many of the non-farming readers who will come here), and, furthermore, says that an herbicide is not a pesticide, which is clearly not in line what's presented at the link targets themselves (i.e., if one *actually reads* the ledes of pesticide and herbicide). *Both* of those ledes make clear that herbicides are being classed among pesticides, and that weeds are being classed among pests, so the second half of this edit summary just emphasizes the mistakenness of the first part. I'm not picking on anyone at all—I know that all of these edits are in good faith—but all I'm saying is, please don't automatically assume that you can second-guess my edits, slash, know better than I do (such that both of my edits need to be undone) when I'm putting more attention and thought into my edits than you're putting into yours. I mean that only logically, not as an insult in any way. The idea that the readers who come to this lede don't need to have the basic concepts of weed control briefly mentioned, because they already know the correct information and emphasis without being told, has been demonstrated to be wrong by the edits themselves. The lede as it now stands is fine by me—it mentions and link both pesticide and herbicide, and that's enough—but please—don't revert others' work on a cursory, skimming, didn't-read basis without paying enough attention to judge the merits of it. I'm not a newbie, so I'm not offended when I see it, but one has to remember that doing that kind of reversion to newbies would constitute WP:BITEing. It takes good contributors and sours them on future contributing. Thanks, and happy editing. Regards, — ¾-10 23:47, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

I agree on both points. --EPadmirateur (talk) 00:56, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

I am so sorry! I am a life-long organic gardener and I do a fair amount of editing on related articles and I have never known that a herbicide was considered a pesticide. I am usually aware of the need to be "nice", especially to new editors, but I really did think that anyone that thought herbicides were pesticides must be real dopes and certainly know nothing about gardening. Sorry to make you go through all this work just to defend a perfectly good edit. Gandydancer (talk) 12:41, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

No problem—sorry that it sounds so whiny upon re-reading. Didn't mean it as a whine so much as a whoa-slow-down. Glad you guys understood. Happy gardening. — ¾-10 01:36, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

No, you were not whiny at all! And happy gardening to you as well - this year I will be adding two hives to my collection of things that make me happy. Gandydancer (talk) 16:40, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

i am sorry to insist here, but i am a grower of orgniac veg myself, and i find this annoying, organic farming never includes herbicidal weed control, also this is covered in it's own section, let's keep intros short.Truetom (talk) 21:36, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

That's fine. I'm OK with your most recent edit, because it still addresses my concern. As for "superfluous", that's a judgment call, but fine as long as the herbicide link is kept. As for "misleading", I think the only thing misleading is that it said "usually" when really it's "always" as far as I know. So I think that sentence would have been fine except with "usually" deleted. But your edit is fine, too. — ¾-10 22:41, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

Sorry, I didn't see your comment here, Truetom, but I disagree. The lead of an article needs to include the most relevant and distinguishing information about the subject. That's what this sentence does. The fact that the weed control is covered in the main article is irrelevant. A summary of that information needs to be in the lead to distinguish organic farming from conventional farming. Let's delete "usually" as well. --EPadmirateur (talk) 00:24, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

the first paragraph already states that herbicides are excluded from organic farming, why say it twice. besides this is not an article about backyard gardening, weed control is not important to organic pig or cattle farmers, hoeing and weeding are not methods that are used be organic growers or cereal or apples. i try to avoid phrases that sound small scale. Truetom (talk) 13:58, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

Actually, homemade organic herbicides & fungicides are indeed used by some organic farmers. Using saltwater to treat fence lines immediately comes to mind. Any practitioner of Integrated pest management will probably have the need at some point for a homemade "safe" formulas. I agree that it is best practice to use the least amounts that you can get away with. A search for homemade organic herbicides reveals a multitude of recipes & treatments, not all will be effective, though. The article only seems to address synthetic (manufactured) herbicides.
⋙–Berean–Hunter—► ((⊕)) 14:45, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

Berean Hunter's good point is about what was in the back of my mind when I first wrote "usually" (and later, here on this talk page, "...as far as I know"). I figured it was entirely probable that someone somewhere practices organic farming using herbicidal weed control, except that it can be called "organic" because the herbicide is made using "natural ingredients". (The division between natural and synthetic is harder to make scientifically then it is in laypeople's minds, but still, there's a big, and real, difference between Roundup and salt water.) But I myself have never been involved with it, so I couldn't provide examples. Truetom, as for your recent note above ("backyard gardening [...] i try to avoid phrases that sound small scale")—you're right that organic pig or cattle farmers probably need not worry about weed control (the animals do it for them). But you're wrong that weed control is not a deliberate, conscious concern in other commercial organic farming, such as cereal crops. For example, when soybeans and maize are grown conventionally (nonorganically), it is often with "Roundup-Ready" seed, because Roundup is going to be used to control the weeds during the growing season. There's a big, important reason why "Roundup-Ready" was developed in the first place: because when you're growing corn or soybeans or other crops organically, the weeds are going to be every bit as big, lush, and green as the crops are—in fact, more so, usually—unless you do things to stifle them, such as cultivating. There's nothing "small-scale" about the concern of weed control and how you accomplish it in many domains of commercial agriculture. There are large organic truck farming operations (row-crop vegetables) that have to worry about it big-time. It's simply entirely incorrect that this topic is confined to backyard gardens and small-scale affairs. So that's why not treating it as an afterthought or a sidelight is important in this article. Regards all, — ¾-10 15:12, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

I also wonder about the cattle and pig farmers not worrying about weeds. They don't eat everything and leave some of the worst weeds like thistle and stinging nettle. As those are left, they go to seed and rapidly multiply taking over more and more space while crowding out feed crops. I've noticed this at a neighboring farm as it has progressed over the last four years and he now has a serious problem...I don't know if he is trying to do things organically or not but the principle is the same either way. When we had cattle (over 20 years ago), we moved them into adjacent pastures and then went in spot-treating with 2-4-D to keep that in check. What does the organic farmer do for that?
⋙–Berean–Hunter—► ((⊕)) 15:31, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

A good question, and one that I'm sure poses quite a thorn in the side (or make that a thistle actually) of farmers needing to address problems like that within the realm of organic methods. I think that when many people buy meat (or veg too) with an organic label, they're not understanding how much weed-control challenge (and insect-control and fungus-control challenge) went into it. I think that plenty of nonfarming people imagine that inorganic methods were merely foisted on farmers by Big Evil Corporations (in caps) and that doing things organically can easily be accomplished if the farmer will simply commit himself to living right and "saying 'screw you' to The Man". People don't realize that the reason inorganic farming became so widespread is because it solves short-term and medium-term problems that farmers really need to solve in order to have a good harvest. What it does in the long term is another question—the one that drives the effort to minimize the use of inorganic methods even if we can't practically eliminate their use. Farming is, at its heart, some amount of inescapable controlled monoculture. It is humans swimming upstream against the current of nature by trying to force one species to thrive and consume the soil's resources while battling back other ones from doing the same. Nature abhors a vacuum, and it doesn't suffer monocultures to live on indefinitely. Anyway, now that I've spent too much time typing here, off to do other stuff! — ¾-10 16:46, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

Input on pesticide effects on farm workers

I had recently moved information in the pesticides section of organic food to the talk page of another article about the health effects of pesticides on farm workers; this was reverted, but I started a discussion on the talk page about the most appropriate location for that information. Upon further consideration, it would seem more appropriate here than in the organic food article, but would welcome input on this from editors here. Yobol (talk) 18:44, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

Import text here from organic food:

Risk to farm workers

There are studies detailing the effects and side effects of pesticides upon the health of farm workers. Even when pesticides are organic, and are used correctly, they still end up in the air and bodies of farm workers. Through these studies, organophosphate pesticides have become associated with acute health problems such as abdominal pain, dizziness, headaches, nausea, vomiting, as well as skin and eye problems. In addition, there have been many other studies that have found pesticide exposure is associated with more severe health problems such as respiratory problems, memory disorders, dermatologic conditions, cancer, depression, neurologic deficits, miscarriages, and birth defects. Summaries of peer-reviewed research have examined the link between pesticide exposure and neurological outcomes and cancer in organophosphate-exposed workers. Those pesticides found to cause major health problems are banned for use in agriculture, conventional or organic, in many developed counties.

I think there are significant OR issues so did not incorporate into article. Feel free to do so. Yobol (talk) 20:29, 8 June 2011 (UTC)

Homework

please help me i have project so i cant do this the question is what the side effects of these chemical and pesticides to human. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.101.164.84 (talk) 19:20, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

Please read this.
⋙–Berean–Hunter—► ((⊕)) 19:45, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

Two points that were inaccurate

I was just looking up some information on organic farming as a part of a school project and came across this. I was so shocked with the some of the facts I read, I almost fell flat on the floor not because they were true, but because they weren't!

Firstly, I would like to point out that no one was the "creator" of organic farming, because as we all know chemicals are only more of a recent thing. Can you imagine the ancient Egyptians spraying their tomatoes with bug spray every morning? Hardly! They were more ingenious than that, for they created the wheel and the alphabet! So was it the Romans? No, for no one was, that was just how it was done after God created the world. You might say it was the natural instinct of human kind just like it is to reproduce.

Secondly, the food we eat is not getting more organic and neither is the farms! It's only that people have just started to label it now. What you might not have noticed is, that it's actually getting worse, for now they have made so many more chemicals to use on farms! I was extremely disappointed with this document and I'll leave you with these couple of thoughts.

Great critical thinking. Thanks. The "history" paragraphs had been written by someone(s) with an implicit context (not consciously or critically examined) of "the modern era since the industrial revolution". I made several minor edits there which widen the context of the comments to include human history overall, in which, as you rightly point out, organic farming (of many particular kinds in different times and places) was the original type of agriculture, and has been practiced for thousands of years. As for your second point, i.e., whether the entire agricultural sector today is trending more organic or less organic, this is a very deep question, and how one answers it depends on which variables one measures and what overall impression one takes away from that. Greenwashing certainly plays a big part in recent years (as you pointed out at "just started to label it"). You are correct that chemical technology continues to develop (I wouldn't say "advance" lest someone take that to mean that "it's all better now, no more worries", which is not what I mean; although, in fairness to the chemists and engineers who are working on it, most of them are trying to improve things [e.g., stuff like the switch from R-12 to R-134a). My own sense is that things are not entirely hopeless, just fraught with ambiguity and uncertainty as to how things will trend in future. Environmental protection has come a long way since 1970. Things have been getting better in some ways, because today the general populace at least even understands that humans are in danger of fucking themselves up big time if they don't shoot carefully for sustainability. In 1970 most people just didn't even really think about it. Now, the hard part is getting people to take serious action now that they mostly understand what they ought to be striving toward. Humans often tend to be rather bad at actually doing what they know they should be doing. In that sense many consumers today are complicit in greenwashing because corporations are telling them what they want to hear, and they are choosing to believe it because they have a need to believe it. But it's a constant struggle to get them to really put their money where their mouth is. And not that it's all the fault of the individual, either; corporations pride themselves on being completely amoral (thus completely sociopathic), which is a long-simmering problem that humanity may need to put an end to someday if it wants to avoid meltdown of various kinds (literal and figurative) in the future. One last thing I want to say here, which is that looking down on modern technology, which is a popular way to feel superior these days, is no panacea, either, as a solution to humanity's problems. If humans want to breed up a population of even more billions (which they basically do) and have decent quality of life (and who doesn't?), they will need to look carefully at all tools in the toolbox, with a cautious but open mind. For example, it's all well and good to paint all GMO development with the same black-tar brush, calling it all evil and misguided (which many greener-than-thou people do); but are we really going to feed 6 or 8 or 10 or 15 billion people comfortably if we rule out GMO rice, soy, and maize? Personally I think salvation lies in a whole basket of solutions, with all of them viewed suspiciously as necessary evils to be balanced against each other. For example, preaching foodier-than-thou sermons is great, but are poor people supposed to "just suck up" higher food prices if that's what it entails? That attitude won't necessarily lead to good quality of life for all; it's too dangerously close to "well, I've got mine, so screw you". Anyway, thanks for improving this article today. Regards, — ¾-10 20:20, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

enough nitrogen

I removed the following section because it is wrong, or i suppose it depends on your definition of enough nitrogen. the whole section on soil management is a mess, actually: but getting enough nitrogen,at the right time, is next to impossible for organic farmers. Truetom (talk) 11:55, 24 November 2011 (UTC)