martin - 4/10/2011 09:29 1) when talking about sustainability, should you consider "economic sustainability"? some say you should. In other words, if the farmer is not making enough profit to stay in business, then that system is not sustainable. 2) what about the use of petroleum fuels? (you did mention them). So, if you really want to talk about (environment) sustainability, you would need to eliminate the use of petroleum from the system. That would mean going back to using hand labor to grow food? That would mean that going back to a system where a large majority of the people would be involved in the production of food(?). If one studies history at all, one would realize that it is the mechanization of agriculture which allowed more and more people to move away from the process of growing their own food, and allowed civilizations to become more advanced and more complex. That's the whole point of what we are doing - allowing fewer people to grow the food, so more people can devote their time to other pursuits. And the debate goes on..... and on...... and..... :) I agree that the debate goes on and on. This probably isn't the thread for it. However, I'll throw some more poo on the pile. Let's take it to the extreme. It seems that for the sustainability part of this thread, we're all arguing that agriculture is not sustainable. This means that someday, billions of people are going to starve when we run out of fossil fuel resources unless we discover some other energy source that can save the day. What if, instead of hoping for that miracle and in the meantime waiting for doomsday, we spend some time analyzing methods of agriculture that are not as dependent upon fossil fuels. We could then extend the time that that we have between now and doomsday, giving us more time to discover how to use another energy source. Additionally, while I know it's not possible to bring the masses back to the farm, if it were possible, I don't think that would be a bad thing at all. There are a lot of things about an advanced, complex society that are not all they are cracked up to be. About the only thing that I would really hate to give up would be medicine and I think you could still keep a pretty advanced level of medicine around if more people were producing rather than consuming even if they were producing on a small scale. | 
What is wrong with Organic food?
