Quote of the Day: "Flora and Fauna Genocide"

The problem with conventional agriculture — and the reason we have to import oil in order to grow corn — is because the way we grow our food is extremely unnatural. Think of this: We literally kill every living thing in the field before we plant our crops! To prepare a new field to plant corn, we would have to remove all the plants already growing there, and plow the soil under, which kills even many of the soil microbes that are essential for fertile soil. All that organic matter that was just removed is what created rich soils in the first place. Then we import a bunch of chemical fertilizers to feed the plants, because we stripped the place. One could call that flora and fauna genocide, you know? Every living thing? Is that really necessary?

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To truly assess the value of organic farming, one would have to calculate the true costs of conventional agriculture, including depleted soils, pollution, increased flooding, and many other disadvantages which cost communities billions of dollars. When one does that math, there is no doubt that organic and natural methods of farming are superior to conventional agriculture from many different angles, but that is a future blog.

- Cory Brennan, a Florida-based permaculturalist, arguing that organic farming can be more productive than conventional in a Creative Loafing column.

Defenders of conventional agriculture often charge that organic farming is too labor-intensive and that yields are too low to feed the world. In the column, Brennan argues that techniques like "polycropping" can increase yields by "3-8 times over traditional agriculture."

-Mark