To Hindus, cows are sacred. Jewish dietary laws (kashrut) and Muslim dietary laws (halal) prohibit pork consumption. Traditional Catholics abstain from eating meat on Fridays during Lent. Religion and food have forever been intertwined. Food is deep, emotional stuff.
So it's perhaps not surprising that devotees of organic food often embrace with quasi-religious fervor the practice of growing food without synthetic fertilizer or pesticides. [See, for example, my blogpost about Maria Rodale.] But if we want to understand impact of organic agriculture on the planet and on our health, science -- and not faith -- ought to guide us.
New scientific research points to a key drawback of organic agriculture, unfortunately: It is typically less efficient and productive than conventional growing methods. That's a problem for fans of organic because the world has a limited supply of farmland, a billion or so undernourished people, a growing population, an expanding middle class and therefore a vast appetite for affordable and nourishing food.
If, in fact, organic methods are less productive, scaling up the production of organic food at will require more land, contribute to deforestation and cost more than growing our food using conventional methods. That suggests that organic methods alone can't feed the world in a sustainable way.
In a meta-analysis of 66 research studies called "Comparing the yields of organic and conventional agriculture" published last month in Nature, Verena Seufert, Navin Ramankutty and Jonathan A. Foley write:
Overall, organic yields are typically lower than conventional yields.
They go on to say that the yield differences are highly contextual, depending on crops and localities. The studies that they studied, it must be noted, use different methods and many are a decade or two old. This is by no means the last word on this issue. Still, they report that the yield differences
range from 5 percent lower organic yields (rain-fed legumes and perennials on weak acidic to weak-alkaline soils), 13 percent lower yields (when best organic practices are used), to 34 percent lower yields (when the conventional and organic systems are most comparable)
Of course, there are other reasons to embrace organic methods, which may be able to match or even outperform conventional farming methods under certain conditions. Organic methods reduce the use of agricultural chemicals that damage farm workers' health, for example. But, as the authors write, the yield issue should not be ignored:
To establish organic agriculture as an important tool in sustainable food production, the factors limiting organic yields need to be more fully understood, alongside assessments of the many social, environmental and economic benefits of organic farming systems.
To learn more, I called Navin Ramankutty, a geography professor at McGill University and an author of the study. Much of the debate that goes on about food today focuses on methods rather than outcomes, he told. That was obvious to me after he said it, but I'd never thought about it that way.
Organic farming is a method, or management system; it may well generates less water pollution and fewer greenhouse gases than conventional agriculture, but organic certification doesn't measure those outcomes. Likewise, locavores, a group that includes not just the folks browsing the stands at a farmer's market, but also Walmart, which has promised to buy more locally grown produce, are all about location, and the environmental benefits of localism, if any, are unclear.
One reason why we don't look at outcomes, Navin said, is that "measuring those outcomes is extremely difficulty." Broad generalizations about agriculture don't tend to hold true because, like politics, all farming is local. Florida tomatoes have a different environmental profile from those grown in California.
The findings seem narrow in
The findings seem narrow in their understandig of the food system and the variables that influence yield, consumption, health and economics.
I agree with Sam and other posts that we actually produce plenty of food to feed populations however the balance is upset by US having high subsidies particularly for corn production. There is an over production which is often used as cattle feed(instead of grass). We therefore produce huge amounts of cheap meat that has created a consumer culture that they need to consume more than a healthy diet actually requires - and unfortunately this meat is of low nutritional value compared to grass fed, be it organic or not.
Compounding problems is that much corn is sent abroad to developing countries where it floods their markets, making it impossible for local farmers to compete, this is the point where developed country subsidies negatively impact developing countries and their local production capacity. So we are creating a problem that then we try and solve with Aid.
In relation to organic versus 'conventional farming' methods, I would question the use of the term conventional. Having drive through the US where cattle production is often on large dry, dirt paddocks with 100s of head of sickly looking cattle, it seemed more like 'industialised farming' than 'convential farming'.
A middle ground, and what I would call conventional or traditional farming is practised in Australia, and probably other countries. It is not necessarily organic however due to the harmony of the farming practices with the environment there is often little feteriliser or grain required. The meat is nutritional and the animals look healthy. If you have the opportunity to drive through Australia's farmland, which I have also done, you will see paddocks that are green, full of grass with less head per acre and in much healthier condition. Even under drought conditions cattle are far healthier looking as is the environment.
Why over prodcue cattle yields when the calories needed to support a healthy diet are far less than people actually consum. Rather should we not be reducing subsidies, allowing farmers to return to smaller yields but using grass feed animals and we pay more for better quality meat - that seems better value for my shopping dollar and health, and farming communities.
This just proves that the
This just proves that the most important thing we can do for sustainablity is to promote family planning. If we do not reduce the population explosion, nothing else matters.
Expanding on a comment above:
Expanding on a comment above: when the oil embargo hit CUBA two things happened, first every house's land was converted to food crops to help feed the nation, organically perhaps by the coincidence of chemicals being unattainable, and second CUBA built the largest bicycle factory in the world at that time with human labour providing the major amount of tooling and assembly due to the shortage of oil. Every Cuban had a free bicycle and bike trailers where common. They where one of the healthiest people with good organic food, good exercise and the cleanest air to breath, comparable perhaps with our Mennonite farming communities.
My grandfather's farm had 4 fields, alternatingly one would be fallow every year. It would be seeded and the crop would be plowed back in.
Then the criminal chemical companies that our governments financed during the 40's, the second world war, aggressively marketed to us in the 50's with a plethora of new products, heavily advertised in just as many glossy brightly coloured magazines.
The farmers all over this continent where moving their solid walnut, maple or oak dinning room sets out to the barn to make room for the marvellous modern chrome and plastic sets, the wives insisted. I recall some articles in those mags discussing the cultural problem of the future. What where we all going to do once the new atomic energy plants where built? It seemed that with all this free energy we each would only need to work 12 maybe 14 hours per week.
The plants where built and we are now working harder today to still pay for the initial triple cost overrun likewise continuing with the rebuilds.
Perhaps the world is going to hell in a hand cart as we can't afford to fuel the motor any more.
Anyway, back to organics, thanks for this intro, much needed, much appreciated.
Marc, are you a farmer? Have
Marc, are you a farmer? Have you lived/worked on a farm? I didn't think so. It doesn't seem like you are very knowledgeable about farming, soil quality, or the environment as you write in this context. With sustainability in mind, we must recognize the basic fallacy of presuming that protection of the environment is somehow in conflict with an outcome that is good for the farmer and for food consumers. Farming must take sustainability to heart or the land will suffer. Organic farming practices attempt to do just that.
Unfortunately the farmer doing conventional non-organic agriculture seems to end up paying as much or more to the GMO seed suppliers and pesticide/herbicide marketers as (s)he makes in extra productivity in the short run.
How much of the large grain production is NOT used for basic feed of human beings? Answer: well over half. So, it is not a matter of feeding the people or not. Most of the grains you mention are grown for livestock feed and a growing fraction for biofuels. Obesity is a major and growing problem in the US, exacerbated by strange policy subsidies. A lack of balanced nutrition and healthy food supplies is contributing to this.
I think the biotic health of soils is one of the least well-understood scientific subjects, considering how close at hand the object of study is located. Organic farming techniques, permaculture, CSAs, and organic gardening in the landscape at home are all part of a sustainable solution.
I recall a study that showed the exact opposite, very high productivity per acre with organic methods in Cuba. Of course these factors will vary locally, and more manual labor may be involved.
The assumption that we can and should grow corn on every acre in the hemisphere, is part of the problem. Less monoculture, more locally optimized crops would likely be the better answer from a sustainability standpoint. Biodiversity would also be bolstered. We are undercutting the food chain and biodiversity with the current system... It is not possible nor practical to look at agriculture in isolation from these other issues, if we are to achieve sustainable practices for the middle or long term.
This article neglects a few
This article neglects a few key points about organic farming.
1. When discussing in terms of yields, the comparison is by weight. However, organic foods have much higher nutritional content. So in terms of providing people with the nutrients they need to survive, organics are at least more comparable, if not much better in land efficiency.
2. Organic soils retain water much better than conventional soils, so not only do they require less water (water scarcity is becoming an increasingly important issue globally), they also outperform conventional farming in times of drought, which will become much more frequent due to climate change, especially in regions with food scarcity.
3. When talking about meeting global nutritional needs, the issue is not so much about quantity, but distribution. We grow enough food to feed the planet and could grow even more food using organic methods without increasing land area for agriculture. Most agricultural land is used for livestock, either for grazing or for growing animal feed. Also, much of the food around the globe (I've heard ~1/3) is wasted to spoilage. Simply making sure that the food that we grow is eaten would work wonders. On top of that, you have countries like the US that eat and waste far more food than they need while people in other countries are starving. It's not about quantity. It's about distribution. If we don't improve distribution, more food doesn't mean that those who need it will even get it.
Considering all this, why address global needs by using farming methods that pollute our bodies and our planet when we can do the same thing by reducing meat consumption and improving our distribution of food?
I'm curious about the
I'm curious about the parameters of the studies. I presume that the productivity increases don't include a debit for several important systemic impacts of conventional ag. A full productivity assessment would need to include the higher fossil fuel inputs, the loss of productive topsoil and (to the point of nutritional productivity) the decline in productive ocean fisheries that conventional ag runoff is causing. Does it matter if conventional practices are more productive in calories per acre in the short term on the farm if they are undermining productivity elsewhere in the mid term and are not sustainable on the farm in the long term?
Why organic food may not
Why organic food may not be... as green as you think." Many complex, interdisciplinary factors involved here.
You may want to look at such issues as how conventional farming techniques impact on soil quality may hurt yields over time; and how the trend of growing food in smaller areas doesn't lend itself to conventional farming techniques, but can open up numerous possibilities for significant, additional acreage (e.g., in urban areas, planned communities, etc.). Not to mention the cause of the decline of bees that farmers rely on to pollinate crops, as another example.