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Organics Can't Match Conventional Farm Yields
scibri writes "A comprehensive analysis published in Nature (abstract) suggests that organic farming could supply needs in some circumstances. But yields are lower than in conventional farming, so producing the bulk of the globe's diet will still require chemical fertilizers and pesticides. The meta-analysis reviewed 66 studies comparing the yields of 34 different crop species in organic and conventional farming systems. The researchers included only studies that assessed the total land area used, allowing them to compare crop yields per unit area. Many previous studies that have showed large yields for organic farming ignore the size of the area planted — which is often bigger than in conventional farming. Crop yields from organic farming are as much as 34% lower than those from comparable conventional farming practices, though in some cases, notably with strawberries and soybeans, the gap is as small as 3%."
No shit.
Why is it that most of the people that I encounter seem to have been shat from the Sphincter of Mediocrity?
Did they take into account the costs that go into production of fertilizers and pesticides? I imagine that they take up non-zero space and that transporting them costs resources as well. Though it's hard to say how much oil a bushel of wheat is worth...
I was under the assumption that organic farms yielded more crops, and that we use pesticides / non-organic grown methods because they are just more fun.
Which will we run out of first, oil or dirt?
I find the rhetorical twist here interesting: "conventional farming" is now the artificially accelerated, yield raising variant of farming. The very things that those techniques were supposed to address were increased yields, pest resistance, etc. "Organic" farming as we know it now was previously largely known as "farming". Obviously the results are not at all surprising, but there is a very sinister underlying rhetoric here. Fill in the blank: Study sponsored by: ________
If I were king I'd start by banning suburbs built on arable land. I'd also suggest that certain groups stop producing so many offspring.
-73, de n1ywb
www.n1ywb.com
I believe the point of organic farming is to minimize the negative externalities of "conventional" (I would say "industrial") farming, such as water pollution. If you have to plant 34% more acres to avoid poisoning a major river, I and many others would call that a win.
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
We could stop throwing away over 1/3 of our food, grow less beef cattle, and reduce our use of non-food agriculture like tobacco and ethanol (as a side note, we could stop using so much high fructose corn syrup too) and then maybe we'd actually be able to produce a decent amount of healthy organic food for the world. Personal and community gardens could lighten the load, as well as urban farming. It seems to me that its not the yield that we should worry about, rather the efficiency of use.
Proving once again that organics will be outclassed by synthetics? What, wrong game?
(The label "organics" always amused me.)
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
The title of the linked article is "Organic farming is rarely enough". But it is difficult to back up that "producing the bulk of the globe's diet will still require chemical fertilizers and pesticides", and so they simply skip that.
Reference again, http://www.nature.com/news/organic-farming-is-rarely-enough-1.10519
S
http://stephan.sugarmotor.org
"Organic" farming is not good in and of itself. It's better at preventing the consumption of toxic chemicals, it's more environmentally sound, and it's also more economically just (because "organic" foods are not copyrighted).
Since we can't feed the planet on organics, but we want all the benefits of organics, we need to change the way do make, use, and "protect" conventional crops. That means federal funding to develop non-copyrighted crops and promote biodiversity regardless of within organic and modified foods.
The lesson: instead of replacing modern modified foods with organics, bring modified foods up to the ethical and environmental standards of organic foods.
Yes, it's sad that children in economically depressed regions are starving so please avoid predicating an argument from that premise alone.
That isn't enough?
"Here Lies Philip J. Fry, named for his uncle, to carry on his spirit"
I wonder if the authors of the study get the point of Organic Farming?
It's not about yield, it's about removing the potentially allergenic and toxic substances in our food chain that modern farming uses from the land, air and water around us.
"History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme." Mark Twain
While this is no surprise, I still think that we'll eventually have to transition to large-scale organic farming anyway. Present forms of industrial farming destroy topsoil and rely on fossil fuels which will get too expensive to be used for fertilizer. It might work for now, but hopefully we'll still be alive when present methods hit a wall. To stay alive, we'll simply have to transition to organic methods. What we need to do is to engineer crops that produce high yields even when they're farmed organically, which is to say, they should resist pests, fix lots of nitrogen from the atmosphere and yield products with a higher nutritional content. Organic farming is a method that makes sense to combine with a genetically engineered product, something I would much prefer to whatever it is that I'm buying in grocery stores now.
The Rodale Institute did a 30 year side-by-side study. They found that,
- initially, organic farms created less, as fertilizers and pesticide initially gave a conventional farms a boost. This disappeared over time, as conventional farming damages and degrades the soil, reducing yeilds.
- organic outperforms conventional in years of drought.
- organic farming systems build rather than deplete soil organic matter, making it a more sustainable system.
- organic farming uses 45% less energy and is more efficient.
- conventional systems produce 40% more greenhouse gases.
- organic farming systems are more profitable than conventional.
I am not sure where that last one came from (I haven't read the final report)
I've lived my entire life in the Upper Great Plains of the US. My family is cattle-ranchers. In Iowa, where I live now, our towns and cities are covered with endless square miles of corn -- all of which is grown conventionally.
I really dislike it when those who've never even seen a farm comment "authoritatively" about farming. It's like listening to Alex Jones talk about IT: he's obviously ignorant. In fact, he's so ignorant that one doesn't even know where to start correcting him.
Bottom-line for the ignorami: shut up. You have no idea what you're talking about, and it's painfully obvious to those of us who do.
Bottom-line for the long-haired hippie freaks who want us to convert to "organic" (i.e. pre-scientific advancement farming):
It'd serve you right if we did. You'd starve. The world is fed by my neighbors. If you want them to scrape by on subsistence-level farming, fine: we'll just eat what we grow while you idiots starve.
I can't agree that GMO's are "conventional" agriculture.
"Conventional" agriculture seeds the fields with part of the last harvest, the seeds of the plants which survived in the local conditions. After about 20 generations or so, you have "land race" genetics -- plants whose genomes have self-tuned to the pests and weather of the local environment. Provided the environment remains stable and isn't affected by imported pests, such crops are far more productive than genetics imported from outside the region.
GMO's on the other hand, have one purpose and one purpose only: To allow the use of herbicides and pesticides that would kill the "natural" plant. I can guarantee you that if landrace genetics were resistant to those same herbicides and pesticides that they'd out-produce the imported GMOs.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Correct, I was just about to post to bring up mineral/protein content. We're doing soil amendments, and paying for soil tests as well as actually testing the produce. We found our potatoes were significantly higher in minerals than a store bought potato (which we had tested at the same time).
Klober's _Storey's Guide to Raising Pigs_ (2009) states on page 75 "These old, open-pollinated field-corn varieties often tested in the 13-16 percent crude protein range. This was far better than the 8 or 9 percent levels assigned to modern hybrids, and many hog producers are assigning a value or just 6 percent when formulating rations with heavily heat-dried corn."
While not certified organic, I grow veg and raise poultry and pork in an organic fashion, primarily for my own consumption. I do so in the belief that the food is healthier. I'm appalled how the conventional meat & dairy business treat their animals. I fully understand organic costs more money. On the other hand, 100 years ago American were paying a significantly larger amount of money on food.
Not only does it not stand to reason, it doesn't agree with recent history. Italy isn't starving, and Italy is breeding below replacement rate. The United States is capable of ridiculous food production and wastes a great deal of what it produces, yet they population only grows through immigration.
People can think and act on their thoughts. Many people with access to affordable birth control choose not to have children, because they decide that the benefits aren't worth the costs. They do not mindlessly breed until they starve.
If "overpopulation" is something you wish to prevent without causing increased suffering, then oppose religions and other belief systems that promote huge families, and encourage the sort of civilization rich enough to afford birth control and with enough entertainment that people don't dight out of boredom.
Because high crop yield frees land for other uses including forest, and because it frees labor for leisure or other productive use.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
"Crop yields from organic farming are as much as 34% lower than those from comparable conventional farming practices"
"organic farming could supply needs in some circumstances. But yields are lower than in conventional farming, so producing the bulk of the globe's diet will still require chemical fertilizers and pesticides."
Which obviously jumps out as obviously false. Just using the number of 34% as the amount less that every crop would grow would mean that obviously Organic can feed the world because we know that far far more then that is "wasted" from western agriculture.
It has got to be something like 20% of food grown in the USA that is actually eaten by humans.
After you take out huge chunks that are thrown away, ~40%, even more that is inefficiently converted to human food through meat, and other argi land that is used to grow bio diesel or sweeteners. In fact it is probably far far less then 20%.
And of course Organics would yield less in these circumstances. Correctly done you do not grow organic produce in a monoculture field like environment that these studies are studying.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
Crop yields per what? There are a lot of inputs: water, energy, pesticides, and land, for example. Depending on which factors you leave out, you will get very different answers.
So just plant 34% more. With all the fields the government pays to leave fallow it'd finally start using more of the land again.
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As a farmer and someone who knows quite allot about all levels of food production and consumption I find this post ridiculously ironic.
Your neighbours are, of course, creating billions of tons of sweeteners and bio-fuels not food. Sure a small percentage will go to cattle who will convert it very inefficiently to food that will be eaten by humans, but that number (even without taking out the 40% that will be thrown out at the end) will be a tiny percentage of that.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
of cost reduction are what are required to meet a population growing at a geometric rate, in theory.
if you want to argue that somehow the 'resources required' to grow organics wont meet population growth, you have to prove that somehow conventional produce can meet the geometric rate increase while organics cant.
but if you go into the store, organics are not 'orders of magnitude' more expensive than conventional produce. they are usually 1 to 3 times more in cost. thats not an order of magnitude. its a pretty simple scalar multiple.
and alot of the difference in cost is because of subsidies for various industries, like the oil industry where the petroleum precursor of most fertilizers and insecticides comes from.
now, go into any supermarket, and look on the shelves. you see a huge amount of processed food, repackaged, precooked, pre-stuffed, etc etc etc. all of that 'added value' is, well, basically its waste. nobody "needs" frozen apple turnovers with chocolate icing in the pattern of a heart shape, but you can go buy it if you want. the idea that somehow organic food would be 'wasted productivity' in the food system is absolutely ridiculous when you look at all the crap in the various 'value added' isles of the supermarket. all of those are, essentially, lowering the efficiency of transporting the calories from the farm to the belly. you could simply sell 5 pound bags of flour for 2 dollars each, and get rid of the entire cereal and cracker aisle, and the people would get the same nutritional value approximately, but they would save a huge amount of money. money = resources. those resources saved could then be put back into growing 'extra food' and meeting the 'growing population'.
but that argument is fucking stupid because the 2-3 times price markup for a bag of crackers vs a bag of raw flour (which you could use to make your own goddamn crackers) is not going to cause mass starvation simply because its less efficient. all it does is make people smile because crackers taste good, and make food companies and retailers money because they can 'value add' to the raw flour and build a profit into the increased price.
now if you see organics, instead of some hippy 'impediment to growth and optimization of food supply', and, instead simply view it as another way to deliver calories or raw food products, then the arguments against them from an efficiency standpoint are just as stupid.
you cant say that organic flour is going to cause mass starvation because it costs 5 bucks a pound instead of 3 bucks a pound, when you have just repackaged that conventional flour into cheerios on the next aisle and are selling it for 6 bucks a pound.
these people are fucking idiots and should be embarassed to call themselves thinkers.
Maybe we should work on reducing demand instead of pumping our food supply full of unnatural garbage to meet the needs of an unsustainable global population.
... in the short term. 'Clean' athletes can't match steroid pumped athletes. Local workers can't match sweat shop labourers. Recycling can't match dumping rubbish in a hole. Walking can't match sprinting. Sleep can't match amphetamines. Now, make those comparisons again, but factor in Total Cost of Ownership and 'Externalities'.
Production costs for so-called "conventional" farming have high negative externalities--costs that are simply not captured in a yield-per-acre formula, or even a yield-per-dollar forumula.
Which makes this metastudy not particularly useful or meaningful, because without some way of assessing those costs, we don't have enough information to know what is better.
-- IANAL, this isn't legal advice, and definitely isn't legal advice for you. Also, Squee!
Stop trying to apply your shill spin to chemicals. Everyone knows chemicals are bad for mother nature gaia and are used by the evil corporate farm lobby to increase profits and destroy kittens and the poor.
It's actually a labor issue. I talked this over last month with an engineer who's studied the various methods.
For a given area of land (they got this right) and given a market viable labor cost the modern farming techniques are more profitable and can produce more food.
But, if the cost of labor is factored out, the organic techniques, using intensive agriculture methods, are actually the better producers. I'm changing to this method on our farm this year as our labor is supplied by the family.
It's hard to expand beyond the family farm because a legal farm hand's cost breaks the profitability (address cost of living problems in the US if you want more organic food). Now then, let's compare the cost of labor in the US to the cost of labor in some countries where people live on $1.30 a day. Then things start to get more interesting.
Part of the problem is the way we're mechanized. It's nobody's fault, but the 19th century machines have driven our methods. When we have AI-guided robots to pick vegetables in the US, the equation may swing back the other way.
The nitrogen cycle problems can be solved with the right kinds of natural fixers, but you have to calculate, plan, and rotate. Anybody who wants to try this should spend $11 on this book - the author has worked out all the tables and methods through trial-and-error and engineering approaches (it's a full-color/full-sized well-made book - I'd have expected this to go for $28 at a book store - I think the author just wants it out there).
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Conventional records:
World record soybeans, 2010, 160.6 bu/acre * 60 lbs/bu = 9,636 lbs/acre
http://www.prweb.com/releases/2010/10/prweb4636574.htm
World record rice, 2011, 13.5 tons/hectare = 10,927 lbs/acre
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2011-09/20/content_13737437.htm
World record corn, 2002, 442 bu/acre * 70 lbs/bu = 30,940 lbs/acre (being generous, assuming ear corn)
burkstractor.com/eq_brochures/Case.../SeedNewsMar292006.pdf
(granted, not as good a source. find a better one)
World record wheat
World record wheat, 2010, 15.637 tons/hectare = 12,656 lbs/acre
http://www.meattradenewsdaily.co.uk/news/190310/nz___record_wheat_yield_.aspx
(lbs/bushel figures taken from http://extension.missouri.edu/publications/DisplayPub.aspx?P=G4020)
Now compare with the Dervaes family, doing permaculture in Pasadena on 1/10 of an acre. All years from 2003-2009 inclusive (newer data isn't posted) are between 4,000 lbs and 6,000 lbs on 1/10 of an acre. So 40K - 60K lbs/acre annually. That's better than world record yields on a regular basis.
but organic food has more nutrition
Bullshit. There is no nutritional difference between organic food and non-organic food. That is just a marketing ploy by the organic growers. Study after study, real studies, not ones done by the organic organizations themselves, have shown there is no difference in nutritional values.
phytoallexin made in response to mold that is the raw material the body uses to kill tumor cells
Phytoallexin is made IN plants in response to physical, biological or chemical stress, not just mold. It is essentially a plants white blood cells (to use a very basic description). So far there is no evidence that the human body uses phytoallexin's to fight tumors. Testing is being done to see if cruciferae plants, which make this compound, can be used in cancer fighting techniques.
This is one of the reasons cancer has shot up since WWII when they began using synthetic fungicides
Or maybe because people are living longer and cancer is a natural function of the body as we age. Studies have shown no conclusive link to cancer and pesticides, though some have hinted at links.
Let me guess, you subscribe to Kevin Trudeau and his "secret" remedies to cure cancer and arthritis.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower