Argumentative Essay On Organic Farming

In the article,” Why Bother” written by Michael Pollen, he explains how the environment has gotten very bad over time. He talks about sustainability, global warming, and the cheap-energy mind in his article. He tells us that we need to act now before the phenomenon gets worse. Have you paid attention to the environment lately? Have you noticed the rising temperature around the world? Have you noticed the melting of the ice caps? If you haven’t you are about to be in for a surprise. The world has gotten very bad and we need to act now. There are a lot of causes to the environmental problems. The main cause are from farmers all around the world. Farmers are a lot more technologically advanced then what they were 50 years ago compared to now. The problem with the farmers are the overuse of energy, erosion of the soil, and pollution. The answer to all of these problems is sustainable agriculture because it is more efficient and better for the environment.

The articles “The Climate Crisis at the End of Our Fork” by Anna Lappe and “Why Bother?” by Michael Pollan urge us to see the connections between food and the environment. In the article “The Climate Crisis at the End of Our Fork”, Lappe insists the methods used in food production and distribution have a massive impact on the planet. In the article “Why Bother”, Pollan provides us reasons why people should bother to help stop global warming. There are three main causes between food production and food distribution that play a big role in global warming. Changing the way food is produced and distributed could diminish the dangerous effects of global warming. However, in order to stop global warming everyone has to assist as a group instead of individuals.

Organic farming is farming without the use of growth hormones or genetically altering the growth of the food. Organic farming is a great alternative to the way the meat industry is ran now. Many large corporations, like Stonyfield Farm, are broadening the horizons on organic foods. Organic foods may take longer to produce, but it will be a very good exchange for health over time. Without the food being genetically altered, it will be rid of the nasty E. coli which has stricken the nation so often. Stonyfield Farms are even getting places like Wal-Mart to carry organic foods in their stores, which is a big step, Wal-Mart is thought of as one of the low grocery places, somewhere that the cheap people get their food. But, with this new movement, it could change the face of organic food, and the way we think of supermarkets. Organic farming is a step the industry must take to improve health

Since the time of when early settlers arrived in Jamestown, Virginia, farming has proven to be a reliable solution to many crises within the food industry. After all, learning how to farm from the Native Americans saved the colonies from famine during the 17th century. Fast-forward a couple centuries to the 1800s. During the 1840s, commercial farming became a new trend as farmers began seeing quicker production and a bigger profit. The inventions of irrigation and chemical fertilizers also happened during this time. Subsequently, these farming techniques have further influenced the ones today. However, the introduction of organic farming methods has created uproar within the agricultural industry due to its impressive success. Polyface farms have become the leading icon for how organic farming methods can and will be most successful in the journey towards revitalizing the United States’ food industry.

Polyface model - Integrated strategy: Polyface is a small scale, community oriented farming. It was envisioned to be an environmentally sustainable farm, effectively utilizing the resources inherent in the land, and mimicking the natural ecosystem. The activities of the farm animals complimented each other and contributed to the overall effectiveness and productivity of the farm’s system. The waste produced was ultimately returned back-to-the-land. For example Polyface utilized excreta and composted internal organs of the farm animals for use as natural fertilizer for the grass. It believed in nature’s biodiversity system and maintained its animal ratio accordingly to suit that system. For example the hen to cow ratio was 16:1 which effectively helped process the cow manure. Polyface focused on organic farming, selling the bulk of their products locally. Compared to the industrial model, Polyface produced

She says that the growing of so many crops is causing greenhouse gases. Michael Pollan says that everything is made of corn. Everything in today’s world that we consume, food or drink, is somehow made of corn. You may not know it, be able to taste it, but it is there. Niman suggests that reducing the amount of corn rapidly produced , would help better the planet. Tearing the land and invading nature to grow mass amounts of crops is causing our planet, our home to be destroyed. One way to save our home would be to stop the mass production of crops. Not only would this be saving the land, it would also help control the amount of carbon dioxide emissions that are released into the

The excess of carbon in the atmosphere is the cause of global climate change. To reverse global warming we must balance the carbon cycle by removing carbon from the atmosphere and returning it to the plants and to the soil (4). Though in the end, carbon exists in everything and the carbon cycle is much more complex because it includes every plant, animal, microbe, fallen tree, body of water, bit of soil, breath of air, plume of smoke, combustion of fossil fuel, decaying particle, and bubble popping to the surface of a swamp (5). Industrial farming has disrupted this cycle. If we completely halted the burning of fossil fuels today, which we can not by any means, climate change would still continue through modern agriculture. The key to reversing global warming is not solely through solar panels and ethanol fuel, but in proper symbiotic farming

The food we eat and the quantity of it is what industries base their investments on; they use this to their advantage and produce more quantity than quality for us to consume, without taking into consideration the effect this might have on us or on the world as a whole. In the article “When a Crop Becomes King” written by Michael Pollan we see what the excessive use of a crop can do to our health and the environment. The vast production of products made with corn has made it the crop which is grown more than any other in the United States, but the process of adapting to the high consumption of corn came at a high cost. While corn is the easiest and cheapest substitute for sugar and animal food it is also linked to the cause of chronic diseases and serious, long-lasting damage to our ecosystems. The production of certain things is something we might not have control of but what we should have control of is our health and what better way than denying anything that we know might give us a hard time the power to do

Factory farming is an efficient and profitable way to make and sell meat. But there are a myriad of consequences to this system. Factory farms do whatever they can to be cost-efficient. This leads to a waste of energy, harmful effects on the environment, cruel animal treatment, and negative effects on human health, and therefore, factory farming should be abolished.

The Local Sustainable Food Chain creates a healthier environment because the farmers work with the land and animals in more natural ways and help the environment thrive. As shown by Polyface Farms, a prime example of Local Sustainable farming, regular farming practices had created soil that “was either no longer fertile or had washed away. (Pollan 161)” As Joel salatin, the owner of Polyface, switched types of farming, he

Other flaws in “big” organic are discussed, painting a picture  of a feel‐good movement that provides few benefits. Pollan’s final position on “big” organic is  somewhat unclear. He clearly perceives substantial flaws in the system, such as the fact that it is  as non‐sustainable as typical industrial food production, but at the same time he seems to argue  that it is at least a step in the right direction.     Pollan’s position on “small” organic is much less equivocal. He spends a substantial section of  the book detailing his visit to a small organic “grass” farm. Although Pollan does his best to  maintain a journalistic, neutral view throughout the book, it is clear that he was captivated by  the work being done by the grass farmers. Pollan shows that the most important crop to these  farmers is in fact the numerous varieties of grass, which form the foundation of the life cycle on  the farm. These farmers work to farm in a sustainable, natural way that closely resembles the  symbiosis of nature. In this section, Pollan provides a fascinating look at the evolved  relationships between different species of plants and animals, and how these relationships can  be utilized to create a sustainable farming system. Although Pollan is clearly enamored with  such “small” grass‐based farming, he also recognizes the near impossibility of implementing  such farming on a large scale. For example, the higher costs

Genetically modified crops are harmful to humans and the environment and shouldn't be used. Agriculture should proceed in harmony with nature and nature only. That is why some people have decided to buy organically grown food. From their experiences with organic food, they believe that the organic system can be economically practical. This system also provides a wide range of environmental and social benefits, and most importantly, it enables consumers to make a choice about the food they eat. According to Diana Brander, an American biology teacher, we should have the choice of the type of food we eat.

I. “The way we eat has changed more in the last 50 years than in the previous 10,000.” Food activist, Michael Pollan, makes this statement as the introduction to a documentary titled Food Inc., which discusses the way food is being produced today in America.

Ever since the Agricultural Revolution, farming has always been organic. As the human population grew, conventional farming, farming with non-organic methods (using synthetic fertilizers and pesticides), became prevalent to satisfy the population’s demand for food. Recently, organic farming has attracted consumers for its health, environmental, and agricultural benefits versus conventional farming, however, there is a debate whether organic farming can produce enough food to satisfy the current population of 7 billion people and future populations on Earth. Ed Hamer and Mark Anslow argue in “10 Reasons Why Organic Can Feed the World” that organic farming can produce enough food to satisfy today’s population, while D.J. Connor argues otherwise in “Organic Agriculture Cannot Feed the World”. Even though organic farming has plenty advantages over conventional farming, we should stick to improving conventional farming because the projections for organic farming that Hamer and Anslow use are misleading.

In our society one of the most prevalent problems facing the human race is the future of food, how we plan to sustain the bodies of our future generation. Many corporations have already started to genetically modify food so that they can be able to return more of a profit or grow bigger, better crops. They also commonly use pesticides and other chemicals in the process of growing their crops to better benefit their business plan. However, since these corporations have been so focused on gaining the upper hand in the industry many of them have thrown old methods of farming out the door there has been much debate over whether or not these crops are truly better for the human body. Another major concern over new farming methods and the advances in agricultural technology is if these corporations can destroy the many ecosystems of our earth just to be able to one up the competition. This is a pressing matter due to the fact that as stated by Usman Chohan, who is involved in finding sustainable agriculture methods for the future and was invited to Pakistan Agricultural Research Council site at Fatehjang to analyze their sustainability initiative “sustainable solutions are at the heart of our efforts to satiate our developmental needs whilst minimizing our ecological footprint in the years to come.” (Chohan, 2014). My question that I will be investigating is, how can agricultural processes of today be altered to be more environmentally sustainable yet still