Subject: (none)
From: [email-masked] (Larry London)
Date: 19 May 1994 00:20:05 -0400
Newsgroups: alt.sustainable.agriculture

Path: bigblue.oit.unc.edu!concert!gatech!howland.reston.ans.net!spool.mu.edu!news.clark.edu!netnews.nwnet.net!news.u.washington.edu!psaltery.chem.washington.edu!user
From: [email-masked] (Allyn Weaks)
Newsgroups: rec.gardens
Subject: Re: Articles About Killing Things
Followup-To: rec.gardens
Date: Thu, 12 May 1994 17:48:59 -0800
Organization: University of Washington
Lines: 22
Message-ID: <[email-masked]>
References: <[email-masked]> <[email-masked]>
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In article <[email-masked]>, [email-masked]
wrote:

> 	Keep in mind also that when you go 100% organic, it requires more
> 	land to get similar yields as conventional methods.  I don't see how
> 	putting even more land into cultivation (some sources say up to 2x)
> 	can really be considered taking care of the earth.  I'll stick with
> 	high yield crops and responsible use of available technologies.

Um, this is a big generality.  In Japan it's been pretty well demonstrated
over the last couple of thousand years that intensive organic farming
produces greater _sustainable_ yields than conventional western European
chemical/tractor farming, which has done an amazing amount of damage to the
soils and water table in just a few hundred years.  What is harder to
manage organically is the huge scale machine automation.  If you do lots of
work by hand on smaller plots with hedgerows in between the fields, you get
similar or better yields, and can keep it up for millennia.  And with
unemployment what it is these days, maybe it's time to experiment with
attracting more people back into agriculture.
-- 
Allyn Weaks
[email-masked]