Originally from: brentns
                        
he recent discussion surrounding Berkeley dining hall begs a larger debate about sustainable food at Yale and "sustainable agriculture" in general. The food purchased by Berkeley, farmed using organic methods, is supposedly more Earth-friendly than the food served elsewhere on campus. But in pushing the theory that organic farming is the solution to humanity's agricultural problems, proponents of those methods have blinded the public and Yale's administration to both the disadvantages of organic techniques and the viable alternative; though organic farming can be less damaging than chemical-intensive industrial agriculture, it has three major disadvantages. First, organic farms require the use of manure as fertilizer. Implemented on the scale necessary to feed 250 million Americans, manure fertilizer -- and associated biotoxins -- would pose a significant public health problem. E. coli is a danger when it taints our (organically farmed) strawberries; imagine what would happen if it tainted our water supply. Any complete transition to organic farming would result in high levels of biologically hazardous runoff pollution from manure, as well as the peripheral pollution involved in its transportation.

http://www.yaledailynews.com/article.asp?AID=23774

blah blah.. rubbish..