Very good and accurate analysis and summation of industrial vs. organic food production. The effect on land use by the two is enormous. Banning the use of pesticides, herbicides, fertilizers means that yield per acre drops. This increases the cost. Carried out on a global basis, this decreases the amount of food that the world's poorest can afford. This creates increased starvation.
More land used for agriculture means less land available for the natural world. Do we really want to be cutting down forests to make more room for agricultural use? We saw the effects of this in places like Brazil with the clear-cutting of tropical rainforest to make way for sugar cultivation. Or Indonesia with making room for palm oil plantations. The environmental effects of this have been adverse and enormous with no long term economic gain whatsoever.
Banning meat production and consumption has much the same effect. Animals in the food industry are raised on land which is generally incapable of supporting grains or vegetable cropping. Forcing the elimination of meat consumption may have adverse health consequences. But this also will force up the cost of grains and vegetables and thus increase global starvation among the world's poorest people as well.
There may be an unpleasant political aspect to this. The United States and the European Union have been engaged in trade wars over agriculture for at least four decades. So the question becomes to what degree are organic food production requirements simply non-tariff trade barriers.
Very good and accurate analysis and summation of industrial vs. organic food production. The effect on land use by the two is enormous. Banning the use of pesticides, herbicides, fertilizers means that yield per acre drops. This increases the cost. Carried out on a global basis, this decreases the amount of food that the world's poorest can afford. This creates increased starvation.
More land used for agriculture means less land available for the natural world. Do we really want to be cutting down forests to make more room for agricultural use? We saw the effects of this in places like Brazil with the clear-cutting of tropical rainforest to make way for sugar cultivation. Or Indonesia with making room for palm oil plantations. The environmental effects of this have been adverse and enormous with no long term economic gain whatsoever.
Banning meat production and consumption has much the same effect. Animals in the food industry are raised on land which is generally incapable of supporting grains or vegetable cropping. Forcing the elimination of meat consumption may have adverse health consequences. But this also will force up the cost of grains and vegetables and thus increase global starvation among the world's poorest people as well.
There may be an unpleasant political aspect to this. The United States and the European Union have been engaged in trade wars over agriculture for at least four decades. So the question becomes to what degree are organic food production requirements simply non-tariff trade barriers.