Tue, 10/12/2010 – 3:44pm

One of the oft-repeated criticisms of family organic farming is that family organic farmers “cannot feed the world.” The first response to this should be that chemical farming is not feeding the world, so it’s a bit like the pot calling the kettle black. The next should be to look at serious peer-reviewed studies on the question of which kind of agriculture is more productive. In one of the outakes from Sandra Steingraber’s recent interview on WGLT, she responds to the interviewer’s comment that we need chemicals and GMOs to double ag production in order to feed the world’s growing population (an almost verbatim echo of the Big Ag party line). Steingraber is correct when she says organic is just as productive as chemical ag. Not only that, but organic ag keeps people and communities healthier — physically and economically. Industrial farming is chemical-dependent, relying on synthetic chemical fertilizers, insecticides, herbicides, and fungicides. These are very expensive “inputs” for farmers — economically and health-wise. Pesticides are “cides” — they kill or sicken — not only their intended target species, but also beneficial species, and the farmers, their families, and their neighbors. What can be done about this toxic legacy that industrial farmers are leaving to future generations? The evidence from farmers’ experiences and from the scientific literature is clear. Organic farming has many advantages over industrial farming—including that farmers can spend their money in their own community — on hired labor instead of on chemicals from a multinational corporation– and that synthetic fertilizers and pesticides are replaced by ecologically and financially sound farming practices. As for empirical evidence regarding the relative productivity of industrial and organic agriculture, the most comprehensive review of the world’s publications on the yield ratio (organic farming: nonorganic farming) for different crop categories reported that this average yield ratio was “ . . . slightly <1.0 for studies in the developed world and > 1.0 for studies in the developing world.” (C. Badgley et al., 2007, Renewable Agriculture and Food Systems 22: 86-108). More specifically, the average yield ratio was 0.92 (160 examples) from developed countries and 1.80 (133 examples) from developing countries. In other words, organic farming yields are very close to non-organic yields in the developed world, and organic actually out-yields non-organic in the developing world, where most of the world’s starving and hungry people reside. There are many other studies and extensive data that contradict the mantra that organic farming cannot feed the world. To the contrary, when long-term sustainability is also taken into account, the world’s organic farmers feeding themselves, their families, their neighbors and others are by far the best way for farmers to “feed the world.”