I may have to join Twitter just to follow Chow Babe.

[progressoid]

https://twitter.com/thechowbabe

[Warpy]

1. Organic growing methods have gotten a bad rap because of a few fools

but they do tend to build the soil over time, increasing yields.

My own gardens have been organic (the cats fun to watch when I used fish emulsion) and turned equal amounts of clay and sand into rich soil over a period of a few years.

I've been watching a bunch of UK shows about Mediaeval and Renaissance farming methods. With no herbicides, they just let the weeds grow and some of them were useful indicator species for when a field was ripe enough to harvest, especially hay meadows and wheat, staples for livestock and humans.

Your body can't tell the difference between organically and chemically grown food. You will sequester more crap in your liver from the latter, but that's what your liver is designed to do, store the poisons you can't eliminate.

As the oil dries up, we'll likely have to return to more organic farming methods, so it's great that there are pioneering farmers out there to show the rest how it is done. Otherwise, we'd be pretty hungry in the future.

[progressoid]

2. Monoculture is the big problem here.

Well actually duo-culture. Mostly corn and soybeans. On the plus side, winter cover crops are gaining acceptance. Helps to reduce soil erosion, improves soil (and water) quality, and adds nitrogen.

I'm actually quite concerned about the future of food production. I can't imagine farmers here being able to squeeze much more out of the land regardless of how it is produced.

[Warpy]

3. "Green manure" crops like alfalfa have been used forever

the stubble enriching the soil after the heads have been harvested for cattle feed. The honey from hives used to pollinate it is pale and very sweet and the only type I use for baking.

The problem with the type of wheat that's used for bread is that it's planted in fall, overwinters, and then ripens the next fall, giving land used exclusively for wheat no time for a green manure cover crop. About the best a farmer could do is divide his field in half, and alternating the ones that grow wheat with soy, alfalfa, or other crops that fix nitrogen and can enrich the soil. Agribusiness can't do that, so they spread chemicals and plant wheat year after year, depleting the soil.

The Mediaeval three field system was about the best, legumes the first year, wheat or barley the second, and having it fallow the third, pasturing stock on it so they'd enrich it with manure.

[DetlefK]

4. If I eat half an organic pig, is that more or less healthy than eating a whole organic pig?