The secret to building soils is... wait for it... manure and diverse crop rotation. Underwhelmed? Researchers in Iowa (Delate et al, 2013) came to this result after conducting ten years of field research. Only this wasn’t their conclusion. Instead, the headline…
Read More Study shows soil-building benefits of manure and crop rotation, so why didn’t they say so?
Written by Colby Vorland It would seem illogical that organic compounds are all more sustainable than synthetics, or vice versa. The term “organic” has a health halo, biasing many people toward believing organic growing techniques are best for the environment.…
Read More Organic pesticides aren’t necessarily more sustainable than synthetic
Written by Colby Vorland Nutrient-based claims on food labels are shown in some research to promote calorie underestimation. This is often called the health halo effect; certain buzz words associated with what people consider healthy cause them to overgeneralize other…
Written by Colby Vorland Recently I wrote about a study on organic vs synthetic pesticides on sustainability, which suggested that organic pesticides are not always more efficacious against pests nor as selective (not killing natural enemies of pests) than synthetic pesticides. Earlier this month…
Read More Organic agriculture pest control through enemy evenness
Written by Colby Vorland You may recall last year’s review by Dangour and colleagues that concluded, based on 162 studies, that “there is no evidence of a difference in nutrient quality between organically and conventionally produced foodstuffs.” This brought about…
Read More Organic vs. conventional food on health: not enough data
