Are We Really Eating Healthy with GMOs in Place?

Don't get me wrong I'm all for accurate labeling requirements and all that. And I completely agree with you on the fiduciary duty thing (I honestly wish more people WOULD realize this too).

However the per acre yield thing didn't sit well. For various economic reasons it doesn't make sense; organic stuff is more expensive because OF lesser yields, and smaller supply.

I'm in grad school so I'm kind of lucky that I have "free" access to journal repositories.

Anyway I found some articles from journals (free abstracts, full reports cost) here:

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0308521X1100182X

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v485/n7397/full/nature11069.html


If anything there's plenty of variables including geographic location, methods, which crop,etc. In any case organic yields ARE lower on a per-acre basis then standard though. How much lower is dependent upon the variable.

Edit:
word choice

For a conventional farmer, the soil is seen as almost irrelevant, just a medium to hold roots, nutrients, water, and pesticides.

Also, got sidetracked in the GMO argument, but let it be known, I think GMOs are a great idea. HOWEVER I think a big company such as Monsanto placing a monopoly on the whole gene copyrighting thing is a very bad thing indeed.

For a conventional farmer, the soil is seen as almost irrelevant, just a medium to hold roots, nutrients, water, and pesticides.

Another grossly inaccurate statement.

Actually, on a per acre basis, organic and traditional farming methods produce more food than modern agricultural techniques.

Didn't need to read the rest of this post when BS of this magnitude started it right off the bat.

Wanted to have some data to back up my BS claim that would be much more equivalent than some of the published studies. So here we go.

112 acre field across the ditch from my organic farm, farmed by Jeff, vs. 2.5 acres in veggie production on my farm. 2012. Some Background:

It was the worst drought in 62 years. Jeff had put in a $514,000 center pivot irrigation system. He ran it using a diesel generator, because our REMC charges an absurd rate to hook up 3-phase electric. It ran about 22 hours a day, 7 days a week for most of the summer, meaning the whole field was watered daily Jeff grew Monsanto's Genuity VT Double PRO RIB Complete corn, which stacks 2 different major genetic modifications: Roundup Ready 2 for herbicide resistance, and BT toxin production to kill a slew of insects (which includes honey bees, for what that's worth).

We used a combination of drip irrigation, small sprinkler heads, and hand watering out of a 55 gallon drum, all fed off of the 4" well that serves our house. Ours ran about 18 hours a day, 7 days a week (we couldn't water every plot on the same day, due to limitations of water flow rate and pressure from the well, elevation change, etc). Our harvest figures do not include what we harvested and ate or canned/froze for our own use, or culled veggies (blemished, over-ripe, insect damaged, etc.) - only what we actually delivered via CSA or took to market. Also, spring was very warm, very early, followed by a late 3 weeks of freezing weather. Consequently, we (as with all growers in our area) lost all of our apples, peaches, nectarines, pears, raspberries, strawberries, cherries, and almonds, which normally make up a good deal of our harvest totals.

we have similar soil - ours has slightly more organic matter because we've been farming it organically, but we've only been doing so for 3 years, so it's moderate. We had the same weather. His property taxes are 12% lower because he's on the other side of the county line (we are the corner of the county...).

Jeff harvested 10,976 bushels from his 112 acres. 56 pounds/bushel for corn = 614,656 pounds of "*food," or, 5,488 pounds per acre.

We harvested:
Green Beans - Haricots Verts: 568 lbs
Green Beans: 912 lbs
Broccoli: 423 lbs
Cauliflower: 110 lbs
Brussels Sprouts: 47 lbs
Green Cabbage: 82 lbs
Red Cabbage: 40 lbs
Kohlrabi: 21 lbs
Kale: 92 lbs
Sweet Corn: -crop failure-
Flint Corn: -low yield, used all for ourselves-
Sunflower Seeds (for oil production - experimental): 24 lbs
Basil: 33 lbs
Bee Balm: 18 lbs
Calendula: 12 lbs
Chamomile: 13 lbs
Cilantro: 21 lbs
cumin: 41 lbs
Sweet Marjoram: 23 lbs
Oregano: 38 lbs
Chile peppers (21 varieties): 87 lbs
Eggplant: 51 lbs
Sweet Peppers: 109 lbs
Bell Peppers: 87 lbs
Tomatillos: 50 lbs
Snow Peas: 103 lbs
Sugar Snap Peas: 192 lbs
Potatoes (11 varieties, 9 endangered): 3,423 pounds
Beets: 312 lbs
Carrots: 34 lbs
onions: 219 lbs
Leeks: 34 lbs
Radishes: 306 lbs
Shallots: 23 lbs
Turnips: 451 lbs
Rutabaga: 101 lbs
Arugula: 98 lbs
Chard: 12 lbs
Lettuce (14 varieties, 8 endangered): 712 lbs
Spinach: 117 lbs
Mustard greens: 22 lbs
Mache: 8 lbs
Claytonia: 3 lbs
Tomatoes: 2, 923 lbs
Cucumber - slicing/salad: 1003 lbs
Cucumber - pickling (double-cropped the potato field, sold wholesale): 981 lbs
Watermelon: 902 lbs
Cantaloupe: 602 lbs
Honeydew: 238 lbs
Pumpkin: 2,103 lbs
Zucchini: 2004 lbs
Oats: 103 lbs

19,419 lbs of food, or 7,767.6 lbs/acre
I didn't count the 103 lbs of honey we produced, because the bees travel off our farm to do that.

So, conventional 5,488 lbs/acre < organic 7,767.6 lbs/acre.

But, then, his corn was sold into the commodity trade, where 17% of it on average (Indiana is much higher, but I couldn't find the figure quickly) went to production of ethanol (and most went to feed, but that will eventually come food, even if it is used to feed animals which are not meant to eat corn, so we'll call it food).

Also worth noting, diversified organic farming in the traditional manner like we do is very labor intensive, but we do it only part time. Our land could have produced much higher yields if we had sufficient time to keep up with it. We could easily employ 3 people full time without expanding the area we're growing in, if the economics and our risk tolerance would support it, so in addition to all that food, we -could- have produced 3 jobs. Jeff, employing only himself part time (he also runs an excavation business), farms a total of over 10,000 acres. Alas, we got no subsidies, no crop insurance, etc. Jeff got a lot of both.

So, in a world with high unemployment, high government debt, and a desire to feed more people using less land... Why was my comment about traditional farming producing more per acre a comment of such high BS?

There is a current lack of evidence that GMOs are unhealthy. Also organic fruits and veggies seem to be no better than non organic in terms of nutrient density or pesticides used

There is a current lack of evidence that GMOs are healthy. There is a growing body of evidence that there needs to be more study on the impacts of GMOs, but we're rapidly passing a tipping point where if we're wrong about them being safe, we won't be able to go back. It's Monsanto's stated goal to have their patented genes dominate all life on Earth, and through the use of GMOs combined with their heavy-handed treatment of farmers, we're rapidly losing the basic genetic diversity upon which all of agriculture has been based for years 93% of veggie varieties available in 1903 had gone extinct by 1983, and since then Monsanto has actively purchased and then liquidated many traditional seed vendors (Seminis being the worst loss). So, while it remains to be seen that GMOs are unhealthy, it also has yet to be proven that they are safe, and that combined with their business practices, yields an untenable situation where if the company that promised us DDT, Agent Orange, 24D, and Roundup were all safe is wrong about this one, or nature does what it always does when there's too much of one genetic line and brings in a pest/disease/whatever that takes it out, we're utterly screwed. It seems unwise to dive head first off a cliff without first checking to see if the water is more than a couple of inches deep...

http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2011/07/food-ark/food-variety-graphic


There is considerable evidence that organic fruits and veggies are better nutritionally. The USDA's own nutritional data shows an amazing drop in the nutrient density of foods. For example, Broccoli in 1950 had 5.8% more phosphorus, 14.3% more vitamin C, 26.7% more iron, 37.4% more riboflavin, and 59.9% more calcium than broccoli in 1999. However, the nutritional value of organic broccoli has remained unchanged.


There are similar reports for a slew of fruits and veggies here:
http://www.traditional-foods.com/nutrient-decline/

In terms of pesticides used, while organic is not the same as no pesticides (as there are some that are approved), for the most part they're less toxic, less damaging to the environment, and less likely to be used in the first place. One of the tenets of organic farming is minimal use of even organic-certified pesticides, and they're so flipping expensive, and profit margins so low, that few organic farmers apply pesticides unless there is ongoing damage that is worse than the cost of the pesticide, as opposed to, say, the conventional potato farmers near me (growing for potato chip companies), that crop dust their fields with Chlorothalonil as often as 3 times per week with no visible damage of any kind. Chlorothalonil causes liver and kidney damage, eye damage, skin irritation, loss of embryos in early pregnancy, DNA damage, kidney and stomach cancer; kills fish, frogs, beneficial soil microbes, and worms. In our region, beekeepers with hives within 2 miles of one of these potato fields have lost 70% of their hives on average (we lucked out and only lost 66% of ours!) each year.