The word is that “organic” farming techniques leave soil able to fix about 30% more carbon than large-scale industrial farming techniques. When you’re “organic” farming, you plant winter cover crops and you don’t till the soil (turning it in order to mix in fertilizers, uproot weeds, aerate it).

I guess my organic garden isn’t organic, because I do use a roto-tiller to till it.

I don’t have any issue with the idea that these techniques can improve the amount of carbon sequestered by the soil, and of course, not-tilling will reduce the amount of carbon released into the air by tilling devices. I do have an issue with the continued mutation of the word “organic”.

Can we please stop overloading the word ‘organic’ with meanings that have nothing to do with chemical compounds based on carbon? Originally, the word “organic” was meant to compounds that could only be synthesized in living organisms - an idea which proved to be fundamentally meaningless as our knowledge of chemistry grew. As the word was used to distinguish between foods which were grown using “natural” fertilizers and pesticides versus man-made artificial ones, it still carried the essence of its original meaning.

I have absolutely no problem with wanting food that was grown without being sprayed with poisons and fertilized with petroleum products. That’s what I want to eat. And although I myself am less concerned about genetically engineered crops than many people are, I also have no problem with people wanting their foods labeled so that they can know whether they contain genetically engineered foods.

What I do have a problem with is the overarching use of the word “organic” to mean all of these things. I’ll just continue to ignore that fact that fundamentally, all food is literally “organic”, whether it was fertilized with oil and sprayed with DDT or not. It’s a real stretch to try to use the word “organic” to mean “farmed without tilling”. Anyone who thinks that most of today’s “organic” food is farmed using kinder, gentler techniques than its evil non-organic twins needs to spend a while reading Michael Pollan’s “The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals”.

The fight to have “organic” mean no pesticides, no non-natural fertilizers (whatever that in itself means), no-till, picked by blind vegetarian virgins whose feet never touch the ground is one that we are only destined to lose. If the people who are pro-organic themselves keep lumping new meanings into it, it’s no wonder that the people who simply want to use the label to sell more foods can get away with getting the USDA to allow ‘organic’ foods to contain non-organic ingredients.

So how about if ‘organic’ doesn’t mean all things to all people? The word’s tired. Give it a rest and start saying what you mean. Traditionally farmed, free range, naturally fertilized, pesticide-free, non-genetically modified… it’s a mouthful but it’s clear and it does have a bit of a ring to it.

And the thing about non-tilled soil fixing more carbon? That’s cool, too.

Via: Shhhh, We’ve Got a Secret: Soil Solves Global Warming, Part 1 (TreeHugger)

Via: No-till farming - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
[tags]carbon, carbon fixing, organic, farming, no-till, climate change, global warming, organic[/tags]

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