alt Hacker NewsI am. I think that organic farming is based around the same kind of fake nostalgia discussed upthread, and there's really no coherent reason to avoid chemical fertilizer. Manure contributes nothing better other than a pile of contaminants and pathogens. (I'm more sympathetic to people who want to avoid herbicides, even if the best evidence is that they're safe.)
Even if you like modern organic farming, it's carefully regulated to control the risks and environmental costs of using crap. The US National Organic Program (https://www.ams.usda.gov/sites/default/files/media/5006.pdf), for example, requires 90-120 days between the application of raw manure and harvest; only properly pasteurized manure can be used in the months before harvest.
So when I was a chemist at university I saw one of those silly chain mail claims that cigarettes have polonium 210 in them. I thought "that's dumb" let me fact check that; it turns out that phosphates enrich the soil with radionuclides and radon in the soil enters plants and decays to Po210.
So actually yes I am generally in favour of archaic methods for making food because our biochemistry and the environment has had a lot longer to find equilibrium with non-synthetic solutions.
That isn't to say that we should throw away science and give up 200 years of progress on hygiene, but I also don't believe that packing chickens into their own feces then pumping them with antibiotics and washing them in chlorine is all that great either.
Maybe this solves for food scarcity and I'm all for that being available to other people but I'm perfectly willing to pay a premium on alternatives methods that eschew the use of synthetic products in my food chain.