Originally Posted by
mike
Well, Roody, it really doesn't work that way with organic farming. You can apply an enormous amount of labor and mechanical intervention into an organic farm, but you won't get yields equal to conventional farming. Conventional fertilizers and insecticides result in far greater production acre per acre than you can get with organic farming even if you have workers standing in the fields shoulder to shoulder.
Organic fertilizers are nice, but they are puny compared with conventional fertilizers. Organic insecticides are hardly worth the trouble.
I doubt that the world could sustain it's present human population if we went 100% organic farming.
My understanding is that much of the gain of so-called "conventional" farming is from the hybridization of seed strains. I believe this is the case with corn, for example, where 50 years ago -- with the then existing strains -- you simply could not crowd that many plants and still have a harvest. [disclaimer: I've read exactly one book on this topic...]
So-called conventional farming with fertilizers may allow marginal or poorly developed soil to grow bumper crops, but to kind of twist your last sentence (
), with the degradation of nitrates to downstream water supplies and the continuing issue of soil erosion, I doubt the world will be able to sustain this type of farming activity.
I guess I should know about the downstream effects, since every Spring my family wonders if the city is able to filter enough of the nitrates out of the river water.