this post was submitted on 24 Jun 2025
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Science Memes

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submitted 1 day ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Going organic and plant-based would be such a massive improvement.

People have been saying this for at least 40 years.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 17 hours ago

Going organic and half of the world starves.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Yeah, only half of that statement is correct. Organic is overall more damaging to the environment for most species. The lower yields = more acres needed for cultivation.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 19 hours ago (1 children)

'more damaging' is unfortunately not a simple linear scale. One requires more space, the other releases more poisons into the environment. Both suck. But if production becomes plant based at the same time as organic, there'll still be way less space used overall. Cursory searx tells me 3/4 of agricultural land is used for animal agriculture (including growing feed). Horribly inefficient.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 18 hours ago* (last edited 18 hours ago)

Organic farming releases as much or more "poisons" than conventional. Just because those poisons "natural" doesn't mean they are not harmful. Coppersulfate, pyrethrins, spinosad, neem etc are all indesciminate killers. Rotenone is a banned organic pesticide because it's linked to Parkinson's.

The 3/4 number gets a lot worse when you know we really don't need to farm as much land as we do. If we stopped subsidizing idiotic farming practices and invested heavily in infrastructure, we only need to use 1/4 of the land we do. That includes feeding all the animals. If we migrated to a plant based diet it would be around 1/10th the current land usage.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Also, many GMOs were engineered to be more resistant to pests and thus need fewer pesticides

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago

And the absolute majority of GMO plants are not even food.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 day ago

GMO are a tool.

Some GMO's are a good idea. Virus resistance for example was the first GMO I worked with in the 90's. Papaya ringspotvirus is an excellent example.

Some GMO's were a mediocre idea and an overall failure. Like all the efforts with SAMase for improving shelflife. Aka the GMO tomato.

Some GMO's are downright stupid and irresponsible. Like the RR in corn, soy, alfalfa, etc. Its lead to a massive over-application of one chemistry. Creating resistant weeds in all production zones. Or dicamba resistance is soybeans that's fucking up all the remaining trees, shrubs, and forbs.