Organic Farming and Food Security

The organic movement was initiated because of concerns from the widespread use of conventional farming methods deemed to be harmful to human health and the environment. It provided a platform for environmental and social reform by seeking a more conscientious approach to the land and people. Organic certification is an internationally rigorous process and the market has expanded over three-fold in ten years from 2000 to 2010 growing 8.8% and valued at 44 billion Euros or US $59 billion despite the economic downturn. Its popularity has resulted in a worldwide expansion of agricultural land use for organic production totalling 37 million hectares by 2010. Organic agriculture is a system that brings together farming with principles of ecology, health and fairness in the development for achieving sustainability in agriculture. But is it enough to provide food security?

 

There is a great dichotomy between some that believe organic farming is critical towards global food security, while other researchers strongly argue that genetically engineered crops and biotechnology are the only path to meet future needs. This argument largely stems from studies that show organic farming would require far more land to produce yields equal to conventional farming. Often stated researchers Perfecto and Badgley (2007) claim in their paper that organic farming can produce more than enough food on a per capita basis to sustain the human population without increasing the agricultural land base. However, de Ponti et al. (2011) and Seufert et al. (2012) claim that organic farming has 20-25% reduced yield gap than conventional farming. There is a greater consensus amongst studies that organic farming can only produce 80% of what conventional farming can produce and thus conclude that organic farming cannot ensure food security.

Yet there are many agricultural scientists that believe organic yields have the production potential to satisfy food availability through the improvement of soil quality and management of farming systems in accordance with agro-ecological principles. This is supported by Seufert et al. (2012) which found organic farms that used best management techniques would produce only 13% lower yields making organic farming almost rival to conventional farming. Yields depend heavily on farm management. When considering input-efficiency to output values, maximised crop rotation and mixed planting, many organic farms can out-perform their conventional counterparts in terms of yields. What is also not recognised in many studies is that many organic farms produce multiple products, so data of single crop yields may be misleading.

Feeding the world is a complex issue which also means overcoming geopolitical obstacles and global increases of meat consumption, which its production is land, water and energy intensive compared to vegetables and cereals. Additionally, organic farming is particularly appealing where economic and physical access to inputs are limited such as drought affected regions. It builds soil quality through soil carbon sequestration, uses multi-crop rotations to break pest cycles and promotes biodiversity while reducing crop residues, methods that can benefit conventional farming practices in order to become more sustainable. This is an important issue that deserves thorough and balanced considerations because the decisions from this debate will determine how future budgets will be invested.

References:

1. Badgley, C., Moghtader, J., Quintero, E., Zakem, E., Chappell, M.J., Aviles-Vazquez, K., Samulon, A., and Perfecto, I. 2007. Organic agriculture and the global food supply. Renewable Agriculture and Food Systems 22(2):86–108.

2. de Ponti, T., Rijk, B and van Ittersum., M.K. 2011. The crop yield gap between organic and conventional agriculture. Agricultural Systems 108 (2012) 1–9

3. Seufert, V., Ramankutty, N., Foley, J.A. 2012. Comparing the yields of organic and conventional agricultural. Nature, 2012; DOI: 10.1038/nature11069