Tomorrow's Table: Organic Farming, Genetics, and the Future of Food

the private sector is becoming greatly centralized through mergers and acquisitions into a global oligopoly dominated by five firms that are also major marketers of pesticides (Monsanto, Dupont-Pioneer, Syngenta, Bayer, BASF).

Cover crops are plants that are grown to be turned back into the soil for nutrients and organic matter. The two cover crops we use most often, vetch and bell beans, are planted in the fall and tilled under in the spring. These plants belong to the legume family and have a symbiotic relationship with bacteria that lives in the soil.

“With mutation breeding, seeds are put in a highly carcinogenic solution or treated with radiation to induce random changes in the DNA. After germination, surviving seedlings that have new and useful traits are then adopted by breeders.”

If you add 10,000 pounds (5 tons) of compost per acre, you will add 100 to 200 pounds of nitrogen, 30 to 150 pounds of phosphorus, and 200 to 300 pounds of potassium. Since these nutrients are chemically bound within organic molecules, the nitrogen will be released gradually, roughly 15% in the first year, with the remainder being released in succe

While the seedlings are growing in the greenhouse, we can irrigate the fields to germinate weeds. When the weeds are small, we shallowly till to kill the weeds. When the crop seedlings are large enough, we can transplant them into the soil, and they will have a big head start against the weeds.”

Because sewage sludge in the United States is presently contaminated with cadmium, zinc, and copper, its use in organic agriculture is prohibited by the USDA “organic standards.”

organic farming produced the same yields of corn and soybeans as conventional farming, but used 30 percent less energy

then it will be time to update the plumbing in U.S. cities to remove contaminants from sewage so human wastes can be recycled back to the farm.

A European study found that with a three-crop rotation of wheat, potatoes, and grass/clover, organic yields of wheat were 90% of conventional; organic potato yields were 58% to 66% of conventional, and organic grass/clover yields were similar to the conventional