Can organic feed the world?

The Kathleen Show in Madison asks that question in an interview with Maria Rodale, author of "Organic Manifesto" and you can listen in at 2 p.m. central time, today.

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[Nils Harley Boisen]

Is it an illusion that organic agriculture can feed the world? We currently live at a time where
communication is simple, thus we are constantly bombarded with information. Sometimes this
information has a conflicting, contrasting, paradoxical character, and of our own human nature we
often adapt our attitudes to that information that we are most accustomed to hearing, or that which is
most attractive to our predisposed manner, or that which is simply the loudest. There is a common
contention amok in society against sustainable agriculture and organic agriculture as such that a world
dominated by organic cultivation would require a large scale and environmentally devastating
encroachment into undisturbed land to compensate for lower yields produced in organic agriculture.
Nobel Prize winner Norman Borlaug, an esteemed plant breeder and proponent of the “green
revolution” once said in a 2002 agricultural policy conference “We can use all the organic that is
available, but we aren't going to feed six billion people with organic fertilizer” (Pew Charitable Trusts,
2002). In reviewing a book titled “Enriching the Earth: Fritz Haber, Carl Bosch, and the
Transformation of World Food” that charts the discovery of nitrogen fixation and it’s impact on the
world food supply, respected Cambridge chemist John Emsley’s (2001) conclusion on the book’s
underlying message was “The greatest catastrophe that the human race could face this century is not
global warming but a global conversion to “organic” farming - an estimated 2 billion people would
perish” (Emsley 2001). Even some people worried about the increasing world population worry that
organic agriculture will in fact satisfy hungry populations. These information campaigns are well
established, attractive, and loud. Laymen logic stands little chance.
However, a handful of very thorough and objective contemporary research on the topic
arguably puts the “anti-organic” information campaign in the same category as information campaigns
seeking to convince that climate change is non-existent or at least non-anthropogenic. The following
meta-studies in particular, when given the benefit of the doubt if one is already sceptical, put gullible
trust in proponents like Norman Borlaug and John Emsley in an incredulous situation. It is important
to mention that it has been widely demonstrated that the “colossal” lower yields of organic agriculture,
i.e 20 – 30 percent of conventional agriculture, is a phenomenon that is only observed on extremely
industrially intensive cash crop cultivation systems under prime climatic and soil conditions (Badgley,
et al. 2006; Halberg, et al. 2006; Niggli, et al. 2007; Pretty, et al. 2001). The developing world
however is a different story. A study published in the final report from the “SAFE-World” project,
conducted by the University of Essex examined organic and ecological agricultural conversion
projects consisting of 8.98 million farmers on 28.92 million ha, equalling three percent of the 960
million hectares of arable and permanent crops in Africa, Asia and Latin America in the developing
world. Yields increased on average by 93 percent (Pretty, et al. 2001). A study conducted by
researchers from the University of Michigan estimated how much food would be available following a
global shift to organic agriculture based on 293 relevant examples of yield comparisons between
Organic and conventional agriculture from around the world. The first model applied the developed
world’s yield ratio to the rest of the planet’s, making developed-world yield decline universal
regardless of location and found the daily global per-capita kilocalorie availability to be just three
percent less than the current availability of 2786, but still ca. 12 percent higher than the average caloric
requirement of a healthy person (2200-2500 kcal) (Badgley, et al. 2006). The second model separated
the yield ratios of developing and developed nations, and reviled a daily global per-capita kilocalorie
availability 57 percent higher than current availability showing that there would be no need to clear
additional land to compensate for “lower” organic yields (Badgley, et al. 2006). Neils Halberg (2006)
from the Danish institute of agricultural sciences headed a study addressing the impact of organic
farming on food security that plugged the documented ratios of organic/conventional yields for a wide
assortment of crops into an algorithm called IMPACT created by the World bank’s international food
policy research institute, which is considered to be the most decisive model for estimating farm
production, income and the amount of hungry people on a regional and global basis. The study found
that although total yield declined in North America and Europe, global food prices were little affected
(Halberg, et al. 2006). Moreover, the algorithm showed developing nations of Latin America, Africa,
and Asia displaying a potential export of food surpluses. One keen bit of information here is that close
to one billion starving people remained hungry as a result of surpluses being bought by hands that
could afford it (Halberg, et al. 2006). If humanity and the environment don’t benefit from the antiorganic
information campaign, who then? The answer is obvious; any stakeholder in cheap
agricultural labour, liberal agricultural markets, pesticides, chemical fertilizer, high yielding industrial
livestock breeds and crop varieties, genetically modified organisms, etc.

BADGLEY, C., MOGHTADER, J., QUINTERO, E., ZAKEM, E., CHAPPELL, J.,
AVILE´S-VA´ZQUEZ, K., SAMULON, A. & PERFECTO, I. 2006. Organic Agriculture and the
Global Food Supply. Renewable Agriculture and Food Systems 22(2):86-108.

EMSLEY, J. 2001. Going one better than nature? Nature 410(6829):633-634.

HALBERG, N., SULSER, T., HØGH-JENSEN, H., ROSEGRANT, M. & KNUDSEN, M. 2006. The
impact of organic farming on food security in a regional and global perspective. Pp. 277-322. Global
Development of Organic Agriculture: Challenges and Prospects.

NIGGLI, U., EARLEY, J. & OGORZALEK, K. 2007. Organic Agriculture and the Environmental
Stability of Food Supply. Pp. 21 in FiBL & WWF (eds.). Organic eprints. Paper presented at
International Conference on Organic Agriculture and Food Security, Rome, Italy.

PEW_CHARITABLE_TRUSTS_(PEW)_INITIATIVE_ON_FOOD_AND_BIOTECHNOLOGY.
2002. Nobel Prize Winner Speaks Out on Advantages of Biotechnology; Criticizes Organics.
Monsanto Company.

PRETTY, J. & HINE, R. 2001. Reducing Food Poverty with Sustainable Agriculture: A Summary of
New Evidence. Pp. 133. Final Report from the “SAFE-World” (The Potential of Sustainable
Agriculture to Feed the World) Research Project. Centre for Environment and Society, University of
Essex.