It’s time to start living here as if we plan to stay
Taranaki streams are struggling under the burden of dairy effluent according to the Daily News, with twice as many cases of non-compliance as last year. However Taranaki is not the worst province in the country:
In October last year, Environment Canterbury released a report on its monitoring of resource consent compliance that found 17.7 per cent of Canterbury dairy farms required re-inspection visits after incidents of significant or major non-compliance.
It also found that 28 per cent of farms had problems with effluent discharge, of which 12 per cent were considered significant to major.
Interestingly Russel gave a speech on this issue over the weekend, where he advocated a legislated moratorium on all new consents for water takes in at-risk catchments:
It’s time that we embraced our organic future, the future of food, the future of our primary sector. It is the only future our soil has.
The old grey parties think organics is a quaint niche market.
The Greens know that organics is the only future possible. We survive in this country and on this planet solely as a result of the top twenty centimetres of soil and only an organic future will look after that twenty centimetres that stands between us and starvation.
…It’s time to start living in Aotearoa New Zealand as if we plan to stay here.
For we are in the middle of the greatest transformation of the New Zealand economy and environment since the Rogernomes wiped out our manufacturing sector.
And that great transformation is the intensification of agriculture and the great conversion to dairy. From Northland to Southland the agricultural base of the economy is being transformed in front of our very eyes into high intensity irrigated dairy production. Pine plantations are being turned into dairy farms. This is having a dramatic impact on the land and people of Aotearoa New Zealand.
March 11th, 2008 at 2:11 pm
>>the old grey parties think organics is a quaint niche market.
It is a quaint niche market.
>>only an organic future will look after that twenty centimetres
Only?
>>Rogernomes wiped out our manufacturing sector
I think you’ll find market forces wiped out the manufacturing sector. And rightly so.
>>the great conversion to dairy
How do you propose New Zealand makes money?
March 11th, 2008 at 2:25 pm
A few facts:
In Britain, the yield of wheat from organic farms is only half that from conventional farms. It requires twice the water, at least twice the ploughing  and use twice the amount of petrol and diesel. Some crops you may get
almost the same yield with organic agriculture as with conventional agriculture, but in study after study, on most crops, there
are significant yield reductions.
Only two per cent of the food sold in Britain is organic.
Organic food is a fashion and lifestyle choice. It is no more or less environmentally friendly than conventional methods.
March 11th, 2008 at 2:49 pm
Study after study? What, like these ones?
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn2351-20year-study-backs-organic- farming.html
http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/July05/organic.farm.vs.other.ssl.h tml
http://fse.stanford.edu/news/study_confirms_value_of_organic_farming_2 0060309/
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2006-03/su-nsc030606.php
March 11th, 2008 at 2:51 pm
Yeah not sure why there was a reference to the manufacturing sector…boo-hoo!
Well there’s your source (?) and then stuff like “revenues on organic dairy farms were about 2 percent higher than revenues on conventional farms, according to the 2001 [FDA] study.” http://www.bayjournal.com/article.cfm?article=2760
Well it uses less fossil fuels, reduces soil degradation and the run-off of water-soluble nitrogen from fertiliser into rivers and lakes.
The major barrier is :
(same ref)
I can see how these organisations could be a bit selective, but there are a lot of peer-reviewed journal articles about organics there http://www.soilassociation.org/web/sa/saweb.nsf/7626dec679c2455580256d e2004bae42/d86ca28aeb457851802573f700573914!OpenDocument
and http://www.soilassociation.org/web/sa/saweb.nsf/Living/nutrition_resea rch.html
But then we get stuff like
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?view=DETAILS&grid=&xml=/ea rth/2008/02/24/scifair524.xml
Presumable that makes it more than a fashion or lifestyle choice.
Apparently Britain’s market is growing at 30% a year http://stuff.co.nz/4158811a6531.html
The only thing I would wonder about is whether this trend will turn around if people decide that they are willing to eat genetically modified fruit and veges, although they sometimes can also use high levels of fossil fuels and chemicals…
March 11th, 2008 at 2:52 pm
Instead of “Presumable that makes it more than a fashion or lifestyle choice.” I should have said “I think this justifies if being more than just a fashion or lifestyle choice in the general sense”.
March 11th, 2008 at 6:27 pm
To add to the the other literature in support of organics.
http://www.cnr.berkeley.edu/~christos/articles/cv_organic_farming.html
BluePeter
“It requires twice the water, at least twice the ploughing  and use twice the amount of petrol and diesel.”
References please.
March 11th, 2008 at 7:33 pm
Kevyn
The Bichel Committee. 1999. Report from the main committee. Danish Environmental Protection Agency. Conclusions and recommendations of the Committee: 8.7.1 Total phase-out. mst.dk/udgiv/Publications/1998/87-7909-445-7/html/kap08_eng.htm#8.7.1. [Excerpt] “A total abolition of pesticide use would result in an average drop in farming yields of between 10% and 25%, at the farm level; the smallest losses would occur in cattle farming. On farms that have a large proportion of special crops, such as potatoes, sugar beet and seed grass, the production losses in terms of quantity would be closer to 50%. These crops would probably be ousted by other crops.�
Norman Borlaug, father of the “green revolution,” and winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, who asserts that organic farming practices can at most feed 4 billion people, after expanding cropland dramatically and destroying ecosystems in the process.
SleepyTreehugger
Organic wheat yields are lower, up to 50%, ergo to match productivity of conventional farming you’d need twice the space and inputs.
In a democratic society those who wish to farm organically or to eat organic food have a perfect right to do so. It would be helpful if the organic ideological community would recognise that right in reverse for others to farm in the way they wish.
March 11th, 2008 at 9:03 pm
Nice post.
BluePeter: “It would be helpful if the organic ideological community would recognise that right in reverse for others to farm in the way they wish.”
Sure you can. Just don’t degrade the environment for the rest of us, keep all your chemical crap on your own farm, and make sure there’s no chemical runoff to any waterways. It’s easy to spout “ideology”, but that might be a bit harder to actually do, eh?
March 12th, 2008 at 5:46 am
BP
Accepting that “Organic” yields are lower than chemically boosted genetically enhanced yields isn’t hard. Steroids make bigger muscles too. A Turbocharger gets more power out of the engine.
The problem is that if you use them constantly or add too much boost you destroy things you’d like to keep.
Which is the point of this post.
Now MAYBE you will understand what I mean when I say that we have already exceeded the “carrying capacity” of the planet.
Same time as this is going on grain prices are setting up to triple.
Personally I don’t think there’s a need to go all the way back to the “pure organic” methods.
OTOH, it is clear that we ARE hitting limits in what we can do with the water and land we have. We are destroying what we have… and that can’t be sustainable. Which means that YES our primary export crops and produce has to see that limit and we can’t just “boost our economy” at the expense of future generations of New Zealanders.
…the model you appear to espouse is very broken. Continued growth is not POSSIBLE. The pure organic model you rubbish for being unproductive is not necessarily the alternative. Indeed, it does not actually acknowledge the limits to growth, it just insists that more land and energy and less chemistry will be used per unit yield ( or per capita, as it comes to that ).
BJ
March 12th, 2008 at 8:15 am
We’re in New Zealand. We have no danger of running our of farming land. The notion is simply ridiculous.
The “unlimited growth” line keeps getting trotted out, but it’s an extreme position. Of course New Zealand won’t be able to support a billion people, but that simply won’t happen. We’ll be lucky if our population every tops five million on current birth rates. As far as our exports are concerned, I’d like to know how you know what our capacity is? Our farms don’t appear to be particularly intensive, and we’ve shown we adapt as the market changes (wool to milk)
Perhaps you might want to stop supporting the DPB….
March 12th, 2008 at 11:11 am
Rainman certainly had a point BP, not sure where you keep getting the idea that the Greens want to force a particular practice on everyone…even though i’m sure most parties would like to just be a dictator, would be so much easier eh. Seems that the Greens are wanting to stop the ‘environmental subsidy’ we provide…
So the nutritional value is better (overall?), the ecological value is better and the yields certainly vary - on wheat, there is this LA Times article http://www.commondreams.org/headlines02/0531-05.htm on a 21 year Swiss study of organic wheat which I thought was very interesting, although almost certainly out of date, especially with regard to ‘conventional’ farming methods. However, reaching 90-95% of conventional yields with “To get that kind of a yield with 50% less energy, 97% less pesticide and as much as 51% less fertilizer than conventional methods is, as they say, incredible.
March 12th, 2008 at 11:19 am
Cringed when I saw this on that article too (the guy is from the Hudson Institute):
lol
March 12th, 2008 at 11:25 am
StephenR
Where do I get the idea?
The post that started this thread:
“The Greens know that organics is the only future possible.”
“Only”, eh….
March 12th, 2008 at 11:32 am
>>So the nutritional value is better
No it isn’t.
http://www.croplife.ca/english/pdf/homenews/2007/SummaryoftheSafetyand NutritionalValueofOrganicFood.pdf
>>the ecological value is better
No it isn’t. If we needed to feed the world on it, you’d need to destroy ecosystems in order to get the scale required.
I’m not against organic food. If people want to be fashionable and lifestyle-ee, then that’s fine.
Organic is not the “only” way. It is not even a particularly desirable way, for most.
March 12th, 2008 at 11:54 am
I would guess that ‘only’ is their belief with regard to the costs/benefits of peak oil and the gradual intensification of farming methods i.e. taupo farmers being prohibited from increasing nitrogen use, and then protesting that that is ‘the only way’ to increase productivity.
Obviously ecosystems are getting destroyed for inefficient cattle farming and biofuels, and I can imagine that there a lot of other crops out there that aren’t as useful as food, like flowers, for instance. I think ‘running out of land’ with organics is not a problem when those other uses are considered, especially when SOME organic methods come so close to conventional methods. As with anything, it depends. As with anything, people demand flowers/organics, so people sell them, and with the money purchase what they decide they need.
Obviously you’re pro-choice-ee with most things (yay), but all things considered on this thread, surely it is a least slightly more than particularly desirable in the general sense. The phrase “it depends” should come up with this issue, like so many others, but I don’t think organics can be dismissed lightly.
March 12th, 2008 at 11:55 am
As for nutritional value, who does one believe? So many credible sources in this thread…
March 12th, 2008 at 12:29 pm
From the reading I have oe on organic agriculure and from the conferences I have been to, I have come to the conclusion that the yield per hectare is as good or better than the yield from conventional agriculture. It is the yield per person hour that can be a lot less. So for the capitalist economy conventional agriculture makes sense because labour is dear, and they can socialise losses to the envirohment and long term losses to the soil. But if we are concerned about ecological integrity and social justice, organic agriculture is certainly more efficient.
And why do we have such an obsession with productivity. We are already producing more milk than we can process, with the result that the excess is being dumped in the Manuwatu river.
We must also remember the imbalance in research funding going to conventional and organics. If the organic secotr received as much government funded research as conventional agriculture, we would be able to achieve even higher yields.
March 12th, 2008 at 1:14 pm
>>who does one believe
It appears to me the two systems have little real difference in the grand scheme of things. It is not true to say organic is the “only” way. Clearly that is nonsense.
The zealots make a monster out of one, and a God out of the other,eh….
March 13th, 2008 at 9:59 am
Mmm…hardly monstrous, but maybe the ‘only’ way if ‘certain future events’ happen, I would say.
March 13th, 2008 at 10:58 am
Don’t know if there is much point arguing about organic/non-organic yields as you’d need to set up a long-term experiment (say 100 years) to get a clear answer - I would guess that if you throw chemicals at any patch of land you’ll get good yields for a bit at least. You’d also need to ensure that there are no off-farm impacts, which would be tricky.
I do think organics have a big advantage in terms of land use. NZ is incredibly wasteful in its use of land. Lots of unused urban space - traffic islands, rotary intersections, grass verges, wide roads, waste land etc. and as people tend to get bothered by chemical use in their own backyards, urban market gardening is much more practical if it’s organic.
“The zealots make a monster out of one, and a God out of the other,”
Hmmm… that’s true of zealots. A bit like saying the demise of NZ manufacturing was due to ‘market forces’ and the demand for organics is “a fashion and lifestyle choice”, the two terms mean the same thing, but are very loaded in their implication.
March 14th, 2008 at 2:41 am
“It’s time to start living here as if we plan to stay” Got some bad news for ya frog, ya aint gettin’ outa this life alive.
March 14th, 2008 at 2:43 am
Hank said it better - “I’ll never get out of this world alive.”