No, not entirely. I don’t think the government should make any hard policy decisions regarding how we should farm our food and what foods we should import. I do, however, feel that information campaigns would benefit a balance approach. Information campaigns, after all, are what got the organic foods movement to where it is today (marketing campaigns are why everyone is convinced that organic is so much better despite little background knowledge, right?).

And, yes, from the US perspective decreased consumption is a way to decrease the impacts of agriculture on the world. But it was hard to bring that up in light of how many millions of people are dieing each year from under consumption (UN Estimated 36 million people die a year from starvation).

Uh oh, this whole save the planet business isn’t so easy after all.

Do you think the government should become involved with crafting organic vs. non-organic policies, i.e. subsidies, taxes, information campaigns? Do such policies already exist? Ultimately, I wonder if they should be the ones guiding behavior in this market. Could they help us to strike the proper balance between the two? This is what has been done with corn based ethanol as an alternative fuel source for gasoline. Although, that policy is rather terrible—perhaps I should have furnished a better example.

“Over time, neither organic nor conventional farming methods are sustainable when followed to extreme levels.”

You leave out one big caveat to this though: the possibility of less consumption. Whether produce is derived from organic or conventional methods, one solution is a decrease in global consumption. But for this to happen, food must be more expensive and good luck pushing that bill through congress.