Is organic farming productive enough to feed billions of people—or will it always be a yuppie niche in a food system increasingly dependent on agrichemicals, massive animal factories, synthetic fertilizers, and biotechnology?
Nina Fedoroff, the State Department’s chief technology adviser, propounds the latter view. A trained scientist with ties to the biotech industry, Fedoroff thinks organic is a fraud. (She attained her current positon during the Bush Adminsration in Condoleeza Rice’s State Department; Secretary
Nina Fedoroff, with her previous employer. Clinton has elected to keep her on.) In a recent forum on biotech in Seed Magazine (in which I also participated), Hillary Clinton’s science czar had this to say:
Then there are the romantic agri-myths, like the “organic” one, which lots of people have bought into. It goes like this: Organic food, farmed using manure instead of chemicals, is better for you and better for the land. None of that’s true-nitrogen is nitrogen-but it’s pretty good marketing if you’re selling poor produce at exorbitant prices. (Organic farming is inefficient, so production costs are generally higher.)
I’ll leave aside for this post the “nitrogen is nitrogen” claim—whether synthetic nitrogen delivers the organic matter, micronutrient, or microbiological benefits to soil that compost and green manure do. (It’s sort of like debating whether consuming a balanced, diverse diet is any different from living on sugar water and vitamin pills. Oops—guess I couldn’t leave it aside.) Let’s focus on the value of organic—a key question for Fedoroff, since she will help shape U.S. foreign policy toward ag development in the global south.
She dismisses organic agriculture as a “myth”—an inefficient farming system that delivers “poor produce”: surely not something one should go around trying to “feed the world” with. And she does so with an air of “case closed”; she is, after all, a scientist, so whatever she says must be true.
Right? Nah. In fact, she’s using her high position in government as a megaphone to amplify and legitimize a bunch of industry-friendly nonsense. (The fact that she enjoys direct access to our top foreign-policy official should give us all pause.)
In fact, a paper (PDF) published in the peer-reviewed journal Renewable Agriculture and Food Systems by a bunch of University of Michigan ecologists cogently challenges Fedoroff’s view. They compare studies that gauge yields of organic and conventionally grown crops, and find that organic competes quite well. As a result, they conclude:
Our results suggest that organic methods of food production can contribute substantially to feeding the current an future human population on the current agricultural land base, while maintaining soil fertility.
Moreover, they indirectly address an old slur against organic promoted by Normon Borlaug, industrial agriculture’s greatest apologist. In a notorious 2000 interview with Reason Magazine, the great man declared that “if all agriculture were organic, you would have to increase cropland area dramatically, spreading out into marginal areas and cutting down millions of acres of forests.” That’s bunkum, according to the Michigan researchers. They write:
In fact, the models suggest the possibility that the agricultural land base could eventually be reduced if organic production methods were employed, although additional intensification via conventional methods in the tropics would have the same effect.
Crucially, the researchers acknowledge that a large-scale conversion to organic would be difficult—a fact that pro-organic enthusiasts often forget. They write: “In spite of our optimistic prognosis for organic agriculture, we recognize that the transition to and practice of organic agriculture contain numerous challenges-agronomically, economically, and educationally.”
And getting there would require serious government action:
The practice of organic agriculture on a large scale requires support from research institutions dedicated to agro-ecological methods of fertility and pest management, a strong extension system, and a committed public.
Let’s not forget, though, that our government for decades has been shoveling billions of dollars into subsidies and research for chemical ag—and paying little more than lip service to organic. Meanwhile, regulators have looked the other way while the food and industries consolidated into a few giant companies—ones that contribute lavishly to candidates and run well-funded lobbying operations. Fedoroff’s lofty position proves that they still wield plenty of power—let’s hope not sufficient power to make her vision of perpetual industrial-ag dominance self-fulfilling.
Ecological farms: the only real way to feed an increasingly hungry world
No to Obama’s agrichemical industry man, yes to Bed-Stuy Farm
Hot planet to Obama: What’s your Plan B?
Comments
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Meredith Niles Posted 2:11 pm
23 Jun 2009
reported have shown increases in per hectare productivity of food crops, which challenges the popular myth that organic agriculture cannot increase agricultural productivity."
I encourage everyone to read it and check it out at: http://www.unctad.org/en/docs/ditcted200715_en.pdf
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The Other Borden Posted 6:27 pm
23 Jun 2009
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Eileen2 Posted 7:52 pm
23 Jun 2009
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Meredith Niles Posted 6:29 am
24 Jun 2009
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Eileen2 Posted 6:55 am
24 Jun 2009
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Meredith Niles Posted 7:53 am
24 Jun 2009
However, I would like to draw your attention to one of the summary points in the beginning of the report: "There is ample evidence (see later in this section) that production of organic food and beverages for both export and domestic markets can result in increased farmer incomes. This reduces poverty and improves food security of farming households as well as their access to education and healthcare."I'm not saying its a black and white issue or that its cut and dry, but the U.N. has done some extensive work on this issue and has important things to say. I think its worth listening to the potential positive outcomes of organic agriculture for the very things we both seem to be trying to promote- access to education, womens rights and food security.
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Eileen2 Posted 9:51 am
24 Jun 2009
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Meredith Niles Posted 9:57 am
24 Jun 2009
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Eileen2 Posted 10:21 am
24 Jun 2009
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brownie Posted 6:51 am
30 Jun 2009
Since in the future there will be very few folks in the US willing to farm to earn a living that requires food stamps to make ends meet, the agri-businesses being no dummies, they or the one or two that will survive, want the rest of the world to produce cheap ingredients for the stuff they call food at least for the next few quarters so they can pay their lobbyiest and get their bonuses. What our ag policies do to foreign ag culture insures we will continue to create a lot of wars as our policies upset local economies. In one sense this is good since it cuts down on the world populations that need to be feed and insures a sustainable military industrial complex. To pay for the wars they can sell us cheap food.The State Department Science Advisior who believes "nitrogen is nitrogen claim" sort of like a protein is a protien until you feed the same species one of its own protiens and a prion is created, ought to check out the world's phosphorus reserves.Without this vital and often unconsidered non renewable element you can't produce alot of the pesticides used, think round-up or the massive yields she beleive only chemical farming can sustain. Simply at the present rate of use by the end of this century there will not be very much available P to chemcialy farm, so if you think farther than the next quarter, the world's farmers will have little choice but to revert to organic methods if they want to grow food.The US produces about 20% of the world's phosphorous, China I beleive is no. 2. Most of the known reserves are in place like Morrocco, Togo and Camerroon. 60 to 70% of the US phosphorous comes from mines in Florida around Tampa. Due to the fact that our current agricultural policy sort of separates production and consumption and alot of the elements like NPK are used once then flushed away,unlike in nature's plan where they are used many many times over, it is estimated that these mines will be depleted within the next decade at current production rates. There is no subsitute for Phosphorous.There are susbistutes for stuff like Oil.Also since it is a vital irrepalcable ingredient in making conventional explosives needed by the military I am sure at some point they will pipe in. If the public was upset about sending soldiers to war without protective equipment I am sure they and military will be real distraught sending soldiers to fight without explosives. Hand grenades and bombs that don't explode are not much bettter than throwing rocks.So without the P it is doubtful conventional agricultural will feed millions let alone billions. Simply in the long term the world farmers will have no choice but to revert to methods and practices that have feed people for millions of years give or take a week or two. Either that or the world's population will be reduced not due to the wars caused by fighting over limited and dwindling amounts of available P but due to time honored population reduction events like famine and starvation.So if the world decides not to send us the ingredients for the food American eat, or because they have also run out of P have nothing to export, or due to war the foreign food chain is disrupted, I am sure Americans will eat the " inefficiently grown poor produce" from organic farms rather than nothing at all. That is if there are any farmers left in the US to grow the food.So in the long run the debate over organic vs conventional to me is just a lot of nonsense since the current agri business food chain is only as strong as it weakest link which in this case is the P.
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