Organic farming - what are the disadvantages?

Question

Organic farming - what are the disadvantages?

Answer 1

1st i believe that chemicals are more harmful than organic fertilizers. one of the few disadvantages i can think of is that may be expensive to maintain, especially on a smaller scale. with an increase of organic insecticides the "pest" problem is becoming more controlable

Answer 2

it will damage all fertile land in a long time utilization.& also harmfull to bacteria in soil

Answer 3

the animals suffer terrible abuses and causes no good food for consumption full of diseases and pesticides

Answer 4

One noticeable problem is that with some harvested crops, you will find that occasional spot or imperfection. It is important to know that 90% of the pesticides are for those wee little spots. What a huge expense for a blemish which can be caused from the very poor farming practices that are employed in raising some crops.

Yields may be a bit lower. To combat pests and "dis-ease", common practices include companion plantings, higher spacing/ lower densities of crops and non-productive time in fields due to different maintenance and growing stategy. Hense the cost is a bit higher; everyone has a family to feed, even the organic grower.

There is also a higher labor cost as many organic solutions are more labor intensive. Mulching to prevent weeds (not weed killers), hold in (and conserve/ manage) soil moisture, and feed/ nurture the soil that grows the plant (instead of heavy more frequent chemical fertilizer and weed killer) requires more time to procure, bulk ship, and distribute than it does to spray, or gas, or distribute and mix chemicals. Mulch in huge amounts may actually be more costly to procure and ship, as well as monitor and adjust, as in the case of manures.

In monocultures, plant densities go by charts from plowing and seeding to harvesting. Companion planting to help manage pest and disease, or to provide some other function like ground cover/ stability, etc,  requires more planning and harvests frequently can't be sucked up by a combine of similar device, and hand harvests are generally the only way to get the product out of the field. If one spends huge amounts of energy taking meticulous care of the soil and it's structure, one won't want to compress it with heavy equipment and ruin in seconds what has taken seasons to make right.

Now that the organic harvest is out of the ground, a lot of extra work will go into marketing, and packaging, and getting it to the consumer. If one wants to pay (a bit more) for that nice organic tomato, no one will buy the product if it is a hard, pink and green, undergrown (to ship bulk with low damage) tomato? so it need to be shipped right, fast (plants eat their own nutrients at an astounding rate after picking), and not overpackaged. That would defeat the whole planet saving theme by having a pound of paper and plastic to keep a tomato safe.

Thats the basics. Each different crop has it's own peculularities and each grower their own strategy to get a product to market that is worthy and will be bought. There is a lot more to it all, but that is why the change is slow and product availability is creeping but coming up. It is a huge change and requires investment, more than just selling conventional equipment to re equip for organic growing.

Answer 5

Crop production is down due to spoilage, due tolack of preservatives.  Poor defense against insects and other pests because of limited insecticides.

Answer 6

slower and more expensive, less product yield,

Answer 7

MORE LABOUR INTENSIVE, and not as good as the real thing

Answer 8

cost. organic produce costs more. um and the land usage can be better served, (as far as crop production), with traditional methods.

Answer 9

Whole Foods, whole paychecks.  Drives the cost of food way up.  Plus, you tend to attract more yuppies to the community, and it loses its variety when everyone walks around looking like LLBean characters.

Answer 10

Coming from a long farming background I'll share a little from the top of my head.

You will first need to get certified to be able to qualify as an "organic operation".  This can take several to many years.

You will have more insects to deal with that really "like eating" your crops since you cannot use the pesticides that regular large commercial operations do.

This will result in lower yields and possibly lower quality of your products that are saleable at a good market price.

You will not be able to use the herbicides that large commercial operations do to control weeds.  So you will possibly have lower yields of your crops and more manual labor involved which will lower your profit margins.

There also may be restrictions on the type of fertilizers you are allowed to use, chemical versus "natural".

I would consider personally animal manure to be a natural, BUT one has to be careful of possible bacterial contamination to fresh raw foods.

So you will possibly have to resort to the old standby of "green manure" crops to plow under ahead of say a crop of tomatoes or lettuce.  This system does work well, but takes away from valuable "use" of the land to produce a crop that you could be selling instead of waiting for the "green manure to grow" for say 2-3 months ahead of a planned crop.

Probably the most advantageous part of it all is knowing that this food you produced was grown chemical free!

It all already tastes better just thinking of that alone.

I'm not saying my system is a total fact, but a simple overview of how an organic operation would compare to a "chemical operation" that we have come so dependent upon for large crop yields at the lowest cost and highest return margins for profit.

Hope this all makes sense to you.

Answer 11

The flavour may not be the same.

Answer 12

it is usually more expensive and bring about a low crop yield

Answer 13

Most of the answers so far have been on the crop side of organic agriculture, but I think it's very important to remember the down sides reagrading animal agriculture.  The definition of "organic" for animal ag. does not promote the ultimate health of the animal.  It bars animals from being treated with therapueutic anitbiodics, like pennicilin and tetracycline.  When you consider how "antibiodic-happy" your average smother-mother is with their children, (mothers who often turn around and blast anything but organic milk/meta) it seems very hypocritical.  I understand (even thou I don't personaly agree) that the "organic" philosophy would not want to use antibiodics to enhance animal performance.  Antibiodics are still vital to treating illness in both humans and animals!

Answer 14

believe it or not, its not cost effective... consider two acres one fertilized/treatments and the other not... the loss of crop due to natural causes Bugs, would be much higher in the unfertilized/untreated crop.

and its getting harder to find uncontaminated soil, water ect... trace amounts of contamination is found in remote areas , poles  and such...

it was said that you gave an untreated apple to a child pass five (Western culture) they would reject it. sad

Answer 15

I don't believe organic farming.

We have more than 1.500.000 pesticides. Air and water full of them.

Disadvantages ? Less food , more wars.

Answer 16

Much more fossil fuel burned for all the extra tillage that's required to keep the weeds down.

More erosion due to the extra tillage.

More labour

More land needed to produce the same food.

Answer 17

Organic farming is the pratice in which you can not use anything that is synthetic (or man-made). and with this pratice you are more vulnerable to plant pest and disease which will sometimes lower yields and quality. Also It would be impossible to feed Everyone with organic production alone the yields are not high enough.