Do you support organic farming/CSA's/sustainable agriculture?

Organic farming can frequently cause considerably more greenhouse gas emissions than conventional farming due to indirect land use change effects. However modern, conventional farming is deeply fucked up and can not be sustained indefinitely. We have to find a comfortable middle ground. I buy direct from local farmers at home in Kent because I know the quality of the product is better and I know where it has been, what it has been treated with etc. and that the farmers are not getting fucked quite so hard by the supermarkets if I, and others, do.

"whenever possible" for me also includes whenever I can afford to drop money on it.

You said Other (explain) I was explaining why I voted other, not looking for an argument or to screw up your thread kwilk.

Been there, done that, got some dirty t-shirts.

I still think its foofy.

It's basically no different than the way our grandparents' generation farmed. The pre-WWII agriculture, particularly on small farms, was organic. They just didn't call it that and didn't get foofy about it.

The first argument, not really, the apples from china still go on a truck once they get into port and everyone still have to drive to buy them. Something along those lines is true though - if I eat seasonal fruit like berries in the UK that have been grown locally there will be the least fuel used etc. however if I eat those same seasonal fruits out of season but grown locally it means they have been grown in a greenhouse or other artificial conditions, so more fuel etc. may have been used than in exporting them from somewhere else. An argument for buying local apart from any environmental stuff is if I have a problem with the product I can drive to the farmers house a bitch, so there is less likely to be a problem with the product. Indirect land use change is pretty complicated, if we use the example of Wheat in the UK using the best conventional farming techniques you can expect a yield of a little under 8 tons a hectare (the yeild in the US is lower, but the principle is the same) a very good organic yield would be approximately half that number, which means you need more fields to grow the same amount. To get those fields, since there is little fallow land, somewhere someone will clear land to get the new fields, clearing that land will release tons of ghgs into the atmosphere, tons more than farming using conventional methods for years. That is a simplification, but a reasonable explanation. It is particularly significant for grains, stuff grown by horticulture etc. organic is not so bad. No one get smart and put up economics stuff about supply/demand setting price and it all being ok. In the real world farmers just clear more land.

There is a lot to be said for this, and it is probably what we should aim to be doing. Not to get to debatey in Kwilks thread.

Only when it tastes better.

If you look at organic it is a pretty wierd system pretty much arbitrarily invented by some hippy dude, there are lots of parts to it that are not widely discussed that are not great. We need a new name and a new outlook combining old fashioned farming, organic and the best of modern conventional "fusion farming?!?" Organic meat means no medicine for your cattle, which is better than the antibiotics for everyone in your food approach of conventional farming, but it also means that cows that get ill are often just left ill and untreated till they get to slaughter weight, if they are given antibiotics you can't sell as organic any more. Not something that gets reported but something that is pretty common on the farms. There is all kinds of stuff like this. Pure organic means no manufactured fertiliser which means either serious crop rotation and leaving fields fallow if it is to be done in the long term, which will mean destroying more pure habitat. The level of fertiliser used by conventional farming is pretty bad and has unfortunate side effects, but on the flip side if you use just a minimal amount of manufactured fertiliser yield per hectare for wheat goes from 4 tons to 6, which means less land cleared. GM is also not inherently bad, it just might be unnecessary, and has the potential to be bad in that it could bring farmers under the total control of biotech companies. It is my pleasure to be able to talk about this stuff, I spent all of last summer working in this area, it is nice to be able to talk about it without having people yawn. Since you are heading into food you should probaby check out some of the books by Colin Tudge. He is a sort of agro-philosopher, nothing about indirect land use change, most of his work pre-dates that, but everything else. He has several books, one of which is shorter and says all the main stuff so look for whichever that is. He is very readable and sensible, not ascribing too strongly to either side of the debate.

I've been to a chicken factory in person- I now eat organic/free range whenever possible. I also go to farmers' markets when I get the chance to as well. There are tons of new and delicious things to buy, and it supports local/small business.

youngscientist raises some good points, but after seeing some documentaries on factory farming I now have the desire to avoid its products whenever possible. I'm less about pure organic farming and more about farming and agriculture that's more about health than economics. Pretty foofy I know but I don't want to eat cows that have been fed with shit and cow carcasses.