New Study: Apparently Home Gardening is Bad for the Environment

[slugworth]

I think they assume every gardener has a compost pile.

[bower]

... the people doing this study at the University of Michigan don't care because they aren't doing "science." They are doing propaganda dressed up up as a scientific study. I've worked with these kind of people at universities, the EPA, and other regulatory agencies. Researchers pump out useless crap studies all the time simply because it's easy to get funding for these types of studies and the regulators love these studies because they can use them as an excuse to pass more onerous regulations. That's how they get a bigger budget. Which spurs more funding for crap studies. It's a viscous self perpetuating cycle.

Just to clarify the facts about the funding. It spanned 5 countries and each provided some funds.
Data collection involved volunteers aka "citizen scientists".

Scroll to the end of the paper and you'll find funding sources listed in the acknowledgements.
"This work was made possible by the enthusiasm, patience and support of the farmers and gardeners who became citizen scientists.....
...This Article is based on the FEW-meter project, funded by the ESRC (UK, grant no. ES/S002170/2), BMBF (Germany, grant no. 01LF1801A), ANR (France, grant no. ANR-17-SUGI-0001-01), NSF (USA, Belmont Forum 18929627), the National Science Centre (Poland, grant no. 2017/25/Z/HS4/03048) and the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (GA no. 730254) under the JPI Urban Europe’s call ‘SUGI FWE Nexus’."

No government that is at all competent would base policy on the kind of data presented in this study, with sample sizes that are so small, and also spread across multiple nations. The cost of community garden infrastructure investments in the UK, Germany, France or Poland is not a basis for your domestic policy decisions: the number surveyed is so small that only a couple of actual Michigan urban ag examples would be represented. So this further weakens the conclusions for any single location used in the study.

Do governments use science as a basis for policy? Yes indeed they do, and they should, in the public interest. But the kind of science used to formulate policy is of a whole other caliber. Take this for example: a review of 42 studies on composting at the commercial scale, looking at best practices to reduce emissions and maximize benefits. The intent to provide a basis to formulate policy, for environment and for public health, is explicit. 2023 publication.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9933540/

"The purpose of this review is to evaluate data available in the scientific literature on air emissions from composting operations, discuss the merits and trade-offs of measurement strategies employed in past studies, and provide guidance for researchers and decision-makers who seek to integrate composting emission factors into policy and environmental impact studies."

This is the kind of work that informs good governance for commercial scale impacts on air quality for health and environment, and for publicly financed waste management strategies. Reviewing as many studies as they can, to provide a sound basis for decisions.

[sleepy man]

Hi guys,

You can make any study say what you want. As multiple people have pointed out there are some flaws and other factors to take into account when interpreting it. I've majored in this field and still have trouble sometimes understanding biostats, study structure etc.

But it is true that a large traditional farm will usually be more efficient and have less of a carbon foot print then a smaller system. Its an example of simple economy of scale. It's why something that's mass produced will be cheaper then something that is hand made.

The article does have some good points and I don't think that its telling anyone to stop what they are doing. But Its another way of thinking and I feel I'm more knowledgeable after reading it.

thank you @Wildcat82 for posting this

[zeuspaul]

More bad news.

New research shows unintended harms of organic farming

Thu, March 21, 2024 at 11:03 AM PDT

Organic farming is often touted as a more sustainable solution for food production, leveraging natural forms of pest control to promote eco-friendly cultivation.

But a new study published in Science on Thursday finds that expanding organic cropland can lead to increased pesticide use in surrounding non-organic fields, offsetting some environmental benefits.

These harmful "spillover effects" can be mitigated if organic farms are clustered together and geographically separated from conventional farms, the researchers found.

"Despite policy pushes to increase the amount of organic agriculture, there remain key knowledge gaps regarding how organic agriculture impacts the environment," said lead author Ashley Larsen, of the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Although organic agricultural practices generally improve environmental conditions such as soil and water quality, the trade-offs aren't very well understood.

For example, organic fields could harbor more beneficial species that prey on insects, such birds, spiders and predatory beetles and fewer pests. Or, the lack of chemical pesticides and genetically modified seeds could mean they harbor more pests.

To find out, Larsen and colleagues analyzed data on some 14,000 fields in Kern County, California, across seven years.

Kern County produces high-value crops including grapes, watermelons, citrus, tomatoes, potatoes and much more, making it one of the most valuable crop producing regions in the United States.

The team paired digitized maps of fields and the crops grown on them with records of pesticide applications and whether a field had an organic certification.

"Surrounding organic agriculture leads to an increase in pesticide use on conventional fields, but also leads to a larger decrease on nearby organic fields," said Larsen, with the effect manifesting primarily in insecticides, which specifically target insects.

The level of pesticides in conventional fields decreased the further away they were from organic fields.

But the situation could be completely remedied if organic fields were grouped together, the researchers found, based on a less-detailed national level analysis they also carried out.

"Spatially clustering organic fields and spatially separating organic and conventional fields could reduce the environmental footprint of both organic and conventional cropland," the team concluded.

Writing in a related commentary, Erik Lichtenberg of the University of Maryland said that the authors had shown farmers' decisions about pesticide are influenced by the presence of nearby organic fields -- but it's not fully clear why.

The value of the crops, their susceptibility to pests, and farmers' personal risk tolerances likely all play roles.

"Which mobile pests are involved, where they originate in the landscape, or how and why they move across the landscape are poorly understood," said Lichtenberg, calling for more research in this area.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/research-sho ... 45826.html

[bower]

Having organic farmland next to conventional is not great anyway, due to risk of herbicide and pesticide drift. OTOH the conventional farmers obviously aren't thrilled to have naturally managed property next door with the risk of pest populations being hosted.
Farmers in general have low tolerance for risk, IMO. Margins are just too tight.

Still, in an area of high value cropland, it seems likely impossible to impose the best management they suggested, of clustering organic vs conventional fields.

[worth1]

Imagine trying to grow heirloom corn around commercial GMO corn fields.

[zeuspaul]

Still, in an area of high value cropland, it seems likely impossible to impose the best management they suggested, of clustering organic vs conventional fields.

High or low value cropland It's not going to happen. How do you tell an organic farmer to sell her/his farm and move to an organic cluster? Or do you just require them to use pesticides? Why not address the pesticides and the users if the concern is pesticides? Did these people think about what they were suggesting? Makes you wonder about the quality of their study.

Too many fast drivers weaving in and out? Solution remove the slow drivers so the fast drivers don't have to continually change lanes!

The concern is more pesticide use. I assume they are concerned about health issues? with pesticides in addition to the environmental concerns? The answer is to move the organic farms away! If the goal is to reduce pesticides in our food perhaps we need better disclosure laws. If the pesticide users had to report pesticide contamination in their products they would likely figure out a way to reduce their pesticide use.

Or is the goal to maximize profits for conventional agriculture?

[bower]

Actually @zeuspaul it is ironic that one study, which appears to blame organic farmers for increased pesticide use(!), makes it into the general news.
In actuality, based on what I read weekly at phys.org, there is a vast majority of science pointing to organic agriculture as the future of the sector, because of the carbon footprint and carbon potential in the farm sector. So in fact, most science-based policy is swinging the other way. Transitioning to organic management is seen as the future of food production. It is seen as a way for governments to meet their carbon goals and also public health goals for society.
But it isn't an easy transition. Farming is and has always been a vulnerable sector with tight margins and high risks due to weather issues, which are increased due to the forecast of more frequent disasters like drought or flooding or even disease or insect infestations, under climate change. There have always been props and subsidies to support what is an essential service to society. So the big question is, how do you bring the change without putting the burden on farmers, and properly support them through the transition.
For example of what isn't working, see the massive farmer protests happening in Europe.
Climate initiatives are only a part of the issue for these farmers. Diesel subsidy cancelled. Alternative unclear. Regulations on chems and ferts tightened, with a load of paperwork required to comply. Etc. The timing is terrible, and the failure to materially support the new costs, while allowing imports from countries that can undersell your own farms for various reasons including not being subject the same.
See the graph in this video, of where farm prices went in France in the past two years... yikes!!

That is the effect of market dysregulation, more so than the new rules intended to reduce the chemical/carbon footprint. But they don't help and are seen as part of the grievance, which they are. You can't just expect farmers to be the ones to pay society's costs!
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/farm ... rcna143816

Anyway, FWIW, the smart policy is going to be the one that provides incentives and supports for transition, not the one that penalizes and adds cost to the providers of the essential service, growing our food.

[crunch1224]

I feel strongly about being able to grow my own produce. The produce I grow is extremely healthy and also feeds some wildlife that visits from time to time. I grow organically as best as I can. I care as much about the surrounding area and the wildlife as I do about my garden. For a agency to threaten my right to be healthy and my land to be healthy they have another thing coming.

I think it's all about control. From what I see agency's want control and do controversial things to get us to fight each other, so that they can slip in and do what ever they want while we are being distracted. This is a very old tactic that the Romans used to control people and this same tactic has been used all through out time because it works.

With that said I will continue to grow a garden till the day I die.