Lecture Summary

Tonight I attended a lecture that was presented over a book called Tomorrow’s Table: Organic Farming, Genetics, and the Future of Food. Its was presented by the authors of the book, Pamela Ronald and Raoul Adamchak. The book was talking about the benefits of organic farming, and why this is so much better than conventional farming. Along with the benefits, there were also a few issues that came with having organic farms just like any other type of farming.
Some of the main issues that came with both organic and conventional farms is the weather. There is a huge need for fresh water throughout the world, and that number is increasing while the supply of water is decreasing. As of now 67% of the water being used goes towards agriculture and farmers just planted their billionth acre of crops so only more is going to be needed. Another weather issue that is effecting the crop is global warming and not having all the proper conditions needed to grow suitable crops for consumers.
As i was sitting in this lecture listening to it, I thought what was going on was very interesting to me. I was never really aware of the issues of growing crops, or that there was a big difference in organic crops and conventional crops. One of the big differences is the amount of pesticides used on the crops. Organic uses 97% less than conventional. I think that the since the speakers had a PowerPoint that was full of graphs and pictures that it was another reason that it kept me so in tuned to what they were talking about. Although I thought the lecture was interesting, I am not sure that I would really enjoy reading the book. I think that to me it might get kind of boring. I would be one to recommend the lecture to someone though if they came back to ISU to talk about it again. I did think it was captivating enough that others would enjoy it too.