Tim Worstall

Oliver Walston on Organic Farming

Nice little spoof by Oliver Walston, comparing the organic farming movement to the medieval church.

One thing that has puzzled me mightily is the opposition to fish farming. The alternative, industrialised trawling, is a form of hunter-gathering (and therein lie all of the Tragedy of the Commons problems) rather than a form of farming. Shouldn’t the organic farming movement be in favour of, umm, farming?

Super comment by richp as well. Anyone have an answer?

Why is copper sulphate (an *inorganic* chemical BTW) better for you
than glyphosate (aka Roundup) which is, incidentally, an organic
chemical?

In

7 responses

  1. Not Saussure Avatar
    Not Saussure

    Much of the opposition to fish farming, or, at least salmon farming, is based, as I understand it, on the fact that farmed salmon are very different beasties to the wild variety (apart from the fact they don’t taste so good, I mean) which means they aren’t well-suited to life in the wild.
    This apparently means that as and when they get loose, as inevitably they do, and spawn (which they apparently do rather earlier in the year than do wild salmon) you end up with lots of lots of immature escaped salmon — who aren’t equipped by nature to survive in the wild to adulthood — successfully competing for the same food resources as do slightly younger, wild fish. They thus deplete the stocks of wild salmon.
    I don’t know, but I suspect similar problems are likely to arise with other farmed breeds of different fish species; the general problem is — it seems to me — that farming fish generally involves developing a breed that’s not going to want to migrate (as do most of their wild cousins) so as and when they escape into the wild this inevitably causes problems for the wild, migratory fish.

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  2. Richard Avatar
    Richard

    Have you given a thought as to what fish eat? And where you get the feed from?

    Reply
  3. Josh Avatar
    Josh

    Why is copper sulphate (an *inorganic* chemical BTW) better for you than glyphosate (aka Roundup) which is, incidentally, an organic chemical?
    Make no mistake. They call it organic farming, when it should really be called atavistic farming.

    Reply
  4. gene berman Avatar
    gene berman

    Richard:
    I remember reading (about a year ago) that farmed salmon had significantly higher Hg levels than wild–supposedly because they were fed meal containing anchovy (or similar) caught off the west coast of S.A., where the Hg’s been used in gold-mining for hundreds of years (getting into coastal waters).

    Reply
  5. Noel C Avatar
    Noel C

    Copper sulphate is really rather toxic to humans (as are all copper II salts if I recall). Glyphosate inhibits an enzyme in plants that we don’t have and as such is practically non-toxic. Given the choice of consuming 100g of glyphosate or 100g of copper sulphate, I know what I would do, I want to live. Glyphosate is however produced by nasty big chemical companies and therefore is baaaad. There is no science in any of it.

    Reply
  6. Noel C Avatar
    Noel C

    I should add, organic in chemistry terms means simply a compound containing carbon. For example strychnine. It really is no indicator of whether something is good or bad for you, despite the connection with certain farming practices…..

    Reply
  7. Dallas Weaver Avatar
    Dallas Weaver

    In looking at the above comments regarding fish farming, I would like to add some more notes:
    1—Farmed salmon are lower in Hg than wild salmon — Willd salmon are ok on Hg content.
    2— You can produce farmed fish, including salmon, with pure organic food ingredients, but it costs a lot more than fish meal. Fish meal is just a high quality protein and fat source that is also low cost relative to the alternatives.
    3— The quality of the fish you eat depends (unless you catch your own) more upon the handling and distribution system (freshness) than it does on whether it is wild for farmed. Hence, the opposing claims on which is better.
    4– The chemical that is added to the fish feed to cause the red color in salmon (the color added label in the US) is the same chemical that creates the red color in wild salmon.
    5– The wild fisheries PR campaigns against farmed fish is one of the most successful campaigns ever. It successfully blocked competition (producing laws and regulations) in many states and even obtained an artificial price difference.
    — The farmers were capable of displacing the wild fisheries in the market with quality controlled product and the fishermen didn’t like the idea of competition that could destroy a few months job that provided an annual income. The fishermen allied with the environmental NGO’s have successfully prevented significant farming in the US, so there is no industry to fight back. The fishermen are still loosing the competitive battle with foreign farmers and their imports and are on the financial ropes.
    — A non-existant industry makes an easy environmentalist target – it can’t fight back and the ENGO’s get a cheap victory for their fund raising.
    — There is no spokesman for the un-invented.
    — The only push for aquaculture in the US is the 8 billion dollar seafood deficit as we import aquaculture products from the rest of the world. Meanwhile the technology is now all over the world.
    6—After adjusting for fat content and water differences in the data, wild and farmed salmon have the same level of lipophilic contaminates, independent of all the statements made by the activists who compare different species from different water with no adjustment for either variable.

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