New Study Says Organic Agriculture Can Feed the World

A new study from a research team located at the University of Michigan has just completed a study that shows that organic agriculture can match and or surpass the yields that are associated with conventional agriculture.

A new study just released by researchers at the University of Michigan has found that organic farming can yield up to three times as much food on individual farms as using low-intensive methods on the same land. In the developed world the yields are nearly equal on organic and conventional farms. This finding challenges a long standing claim that organic farming cannot produce enough food to fee the world. Ivette Perfecto is a professor at U-M’s School of Natural resources and Environment and is one of the studiy's principal authors. According to Perfecto the food production in developing countries could double or triple when using organic methods. Catherine Badgley is a research scientist at the Museum of Paleontology is also a co-author of the paper; several current and former graduate and undergraduate students from U-M were also involved.

"My hope is that we can finally put a nail in the coffin of the idea that you can’t produce enough food through organic agriculture," Perfecto said.

Organic fertilizers would help the farmers achieve those yields and it would not be necessary to put more farmland into production. The research team undertook a lengthy review of existing data about yields and nitrogen availability. The project got its start when Perfecto and Badgley were teaching a class about the global food system and visiting farms in Southern Michigan. It came to their attention that local organic farmers were producing considerable food and this inspired them to launch the study. The research began with the team compiling data from published literature. They set out to investigate the two chief objections to organic farming: low yields and lack of organically acceptable nitrogen sources. Those two objections have been refuted by their work and confirm what organic farmers have known for sometime now: that organic farming is less environmentally harmful yet can potentially produce more than enough food. Developing countries have relied on pesticides and fertilizers to grow their crops, but many developing country farmers were unable to purchase them. The researchers focused on nitrogen availability once they had finished comparing the yields of organic and non-organic farms. They did this by multiplying the current farm land area by the average amount of nitrogen available for production crops when what is known in the organic world as "green manures" were planted between growing seasons. According to Perfecto, conventional agriculture relies on using high yielding plants, mechanized tillage and synthetic fertilizers and pesticides. This conventional method has an environmental downside. One of the downsides is the creation of dead zones which are low oxygen areas where marine life cannot exist. The dead zones are primarily created by the fertilizer runoff from conventional agricultural operations. Other environmental concerns that are often associated with conventional agriculture are soil erosion, greenhouse gas emission, increased pest resistance and loss of biodiversity. The research team defined the term organic as:

practices referred to as sustainable or ecological; that utilize non-synthetic nutrient cycling processes; that exclude or rarely use synthetic pesticides; and sustain or regenerate the soil quality.

The results of this study will support what many people, in various walks of life, have been saying for years now, that organic can match or surpass the yields reached by conventional agricultural methods and will be more friendly to the environment at the same time.