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  • From: "Tradingpost" <tradingpost@lobo.net>
  • To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [Livingontheland] Organic farming can feed the world, U-M study shows
  • Date: Mon, 19 May 2008 14:42:56 -0600


Organic farming can feed the world, U-M study shows
http://www.ns.umich.edu/htdocs/releases/story.php?id=5936

ANN ARBOR, Mich.—Organic farming can yield up to three times as much food on
individual farms in developing countries, as low-intensive methods on the
same land—according to new findings which refute the long-standing claim that
organic farming methods cannot produce enough food to feed the global
population.

Researchers from the University of Michigan found that in developed
countries, yields were almost equal on organic and conventional farms. In
developing countries, food production could double or triple using organic
methods, said Ivette Perfecto, professor at U-M's School of Natural Resources
and Environment, and one the study's principal investigators. Catherine
Badgley, research scientist in the Museum of Paleontology, is a co-author of
the paper along with several current and former graduate and undergraduate
students from U-M.

"My hope is that we can finally put a nail in the coffin of the idea that you
can’t produce enough food through organic agriculture," Perfecto said.

In addition to equal or greater yields, the authors found that those yields
could be accomplished using existing quantities of organic fertilizers,
without putting more farmland into production.

The idea to undertake an exhaustive review of existing data about yields and
nitrogen availability was fueled in a roundabout way, when Perfecto and
Badgley were teaching a class about the global food system and visiting farms
in Southern Michigan.

"We were struck by how much food the organic farmers would produce," Perfecto
said. The researchers set about compiling data from published literature to
investigate the two chief objections to organic farming: low yields and lack
of organically acceptable nitrogen sources.

Their findings refute those key arguments, Perfecto said, and confirm that
organic farming is less environmentally harmful yet can potentially produce
more than enough food. This is especially good news for developing countries,
where it’s sometimes impossible to deliver food from outside, so farmers must
supply their own. Yields in developing countries could increase dramatically
by switching to organic farming, Perfecto said.

While that seems counterintuitive, it makes sense because in developing
countries, many farmers still do not have the access to the expensive
fertilizers and pesticides that farmers use in developed countries to produce
those high yields, she said.

After comparing yields of organic and non-organic farms, the researchers
looked at nitrogen availability. To do so, they multiplied the current farm
land area by the average amount of nitrogen available for production crops if
so-called "green manures" were planted between growing seasons. Green manures
are cover crops which are plowed into the soil to provide natural soil
amendments. They found that planting green manures between growing seasons
provided enough nitrogen to replace synthetic fertilizers.

Organic farming is important because conventional agriculture—which involves
high-yielding plants, mechanized tillage, synthetic fertilizers and
biocides—is so detrimental to the environment, Perfecto said. For instance,
fertilizer runoff from conventional agriculture is the chief culprit in
creating dead zones—low oxygen areas where marine life cannot survive.
Proponents of organic farming argue that conventional farming also causes
soil erosion, greenhouse gas emission, increased pest resistance and loss of
biodiversity.

For their analysis, researchers defined the term organic as: practices
referred to as sustainable or ecological; that utilize non-synthetic nutrient
cycling processes; that exclude or rarely use synthetic pesticides; and
sustain or regenerate the soil quality.

Perfecto said the idea that people would go hungry if farming went organic is
"ridiculous."

"Corporate interest in agriculture and the way agriculture research has been
conducted in land grant institutions, with a lot of influence by the chemical
companies and pesticide companies as well as fertilizer companies—all have
been playing an important role in convincing the public that you need to have
these inputs to produce food," she said.






  • [Livingontheland] Organic farming can feed the world, U-M study shows, Tradingpost, 05/19/2008

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