Organic Foods: Can They Feed Everyone Forever?
Apr 22, 2009 in Diet and Nutrition
In observation of earth day, this series of organic foods posts will end. Part 1 explored the effects organic foods have on personal while Part 2 touched on the global health benefits of buying organic. But this question remains to be answered: for how long is organic farming sustainable?
Although organic farms require fewer chemical inputs to grow their crop, reducing toxic runoff and worker exposure, farmers merely trade chemical use for a different input: land. Without the advantage of pesticides, fungicides, and fertilizers, organic farms yield 5% to 50% less crop per acre, and they need significantly larger fields to maintain the same output as a conventional farm.
Switching all of the worlds current farmland to strictly organic methods would reduce the global food supply by as much as 50%. And under the strained supply, costs for food would soar. Famine is already rampant in poorer nations, and a sudden switch would greatly worsen the problem (causing more health problems than agrochemical use otherwise would have, perhaps?).
Of course, as in any market where demand exceeds supply, producers seeking a profit would move in to fill the gap. If only organic farms were relied upon to meet supply needs, farmland would have to expand more than under conventional farming practices in order to reach the same level of output. Goodbye forests, hello farmland.
Realistically, the entire globe would not instantaneously switch to organic practices. But the principles of the analogy still apply to the organic community at large. As the number of consumers purchasing strictly organic produce expands, the scale will reach a point where a trade off will become necessary. What is more important: preventing runoff or preventing deforestation?
Modern farming practices are essential in maintaining the level of food output our global population requires by a high yield per acre. But heavy agrochemical use is a threat to the environment and human health. In the long run, the organic movement faces a similar problem: through endless expansion induced by inefficiency, organic farming will undermine its own founding principles of sustaining and enhancing the health of soil, plant, animal, human and planet as one and indivisible.
Extreme adherence to organic practices will come at the expense of forests, worsening global warming and threatening global health. On the other hand, if conventional farming continues using heavy levels of agrochemicals the environment and global health will still suffer.
Over time, neither organic or conventional farming methods are sustainable when followed to extreme levels. In the interest of the environment and human health globally, agriculture will need a balance between organic and conventional methods to maintain sustainability.
Happy earth day.
This article is Part 3 of 3. For the effects of organic foods on personal health, read Part 1: Does Organic Food = Better Health?, and for the effects of organic foods on global health, read Part 2: Does Organic Food = Better World?.
May 3rd, 2009 on 9:37 pm
I appreciate your “happy Earth Day” wishes, upon reaching such dreary conclusions. (You disingenuous blogger, you.) So are you trying to tell us that when it comes to both protecting the environment and living a modern, middle class lifestyle characterized by consumption and free choice, we may not be able to have our cake and eat it too?
Uh oh, this whole save the planet business isn’t so easy after all.
Do you think the government should become involved with crafting organic vs. non-organic policies, i.e. subsidies, taxes, information campaigns? Do such policies already exist? Ultimately, I wonder if they should be the ones guiding behavior in this market. Could they help us to strike the proper balance between the two? This is what has been done with corn based ethanol as an alternative fuel source for gasoline. Although, that policy is rather terrible—perhaps I should have furnished a better example.
“Over time, neither organic nor conventional farming methods are sustainable when followed to extreme levels.”
You leave out one big caveat to this though: the possibility of less consumption. Whether produce is derived from organic or conventional methods, one solution is a decrease in global consumption. But for this to happen, food must be more expensive and good luck pushing that bill through congress.
May 3rd, 2009 on 9:38 pm
“Do you think the government should become involved with crafting organic vs. non-organic policies, i.e. subsidies, taxes, information campaigns?”
No, not entirely. I don’t think the government should make any hard policy decisions regarding how we should farm our food and what foods we should import. I do, however, feel that information campaigns would benefit a balance approach. Information campaigns, after all, are what got the organic foods movement to where it is today (marketing campaigns are why everyone is convinced that organic is so much better despite little background knowledge, right?).
And, yes, from the US perspective decreased consumption is a way to decrease the impacts of agriculture on the world. But it was hard to bring that up in light of how many millions of people are dieing each year from under consumption (UN Estimated 36 million people die a year from starvation).