To Stop Global Warming and Hunger, Let’s Turn to Organic Farming
by Timothy J. LaSalle, Rodale Institue, Kutztown, PA on 06.19.08
Timothy J. LaSalle is CEO of the Rodale Institute, a 60-year-old non-profit organization dedicated to researching sustainable farming and educating farmers and consumers about the food we eat. He will be contributing posts to TreeHugger as a guest blogger on an ongoing basis.
There is no question that a perfect storm of factors – from rising oil prices to the growing climatic impact of global warming – are creating a silent tsunami of global hunger. There is also no question that the world’s most vulnerable disproportionately live in Africa where food aid has failed to keep ahead of the hunger curve.
But the answer to this issue lies in the new “Post-Modern Green Revolution” not in the historic “Green Revolution” approach where yields are artificially increased by importing the practices of genetically engineered seeds and petroleum-based fertilizer. Dr. Norman Borlaug, Nobel prize-winner and the grandfather of the Green Revolution has been credited with saving tens millions of people around the world from starvation through his agrarian research which fed more people using fewer acres of farmland. And his methods did save many in South America and Asia.
But today’s carbon-depleted and environmentally damaged world is very different than the post World War II environment that found new peacetime uses for chemicals. Today we know more and we need to feed the world’s growing population in a way that does not compromise the air we breathe, the water we drink and the soil that nourishes us.
While many have been fed through advances in modern agriculture that increases yields with petroleum-based fertilizer and toxic chemical pesticides, many have been harmed. In a recent report the World Bank said that overuse of chemical pesticides in developing countries contributes to costly health problems and questioned whether the risks of using pesticides outweighed the benefits. Additionally, excessive use of nitrogenous fertilizer has a significant negative impact on global warming, due to agriculture's contribution of non-carbon dioxide emissions. Chemical fertilizer use for the past 50 years has produced a huge greenhouse gas burden through its manufacturing, transport and routine escape into the atmosphere from agricultural fields. Additionally chemical runoff has polluted our waterways.
There is a better way. Rodale Institute has proved (explanation by downloadable PDF file here) that organic agricultural methods can remove about 7,000 pounds of carbon dioxide from the air each year and store it in an acre of farmland. If all 434 million acres of American cropland was converted to these practices, it would be the equivalent of eliminating 217 million cars from the road, or a car for every two acres of farmland.
Our studies, which are the longest-running side-by-side studies of conventional and organic farming in the nation, also show that the organic approach does not compromise yield – in fact in drought years it increases it since more carbon in the soil allows it to hold more water. In wet years, the additional organic matter in the soil wicks water away from plant roots, limiting erosion and keeping plants in place.
Organic, regenerative farming is a site-specific approach that can affordably be adapted to any location. Most importantly, it helps people feed themselves with the materials that they already have, without hooking them on an increasingly expensive dependency on chemical inputs and high-cost seeds that are bred to only work with synthetic herbicides and pesticides. This holds farmers hostage to patented varieties at prices that continually rise – a practice that hurts all farmers, but especially those in developing countries where such hikes can mean the difference between a subsistence crop and starvation.
Changing the way we farm may be the single biggest action that the world can take to address global warming – and to help the world’s most vulnerable end the cycle of aid dependency and hunger. Most importantly, it can be done without new technology or expensive investments.
Image credit::Rural Northern Ireland, Organic Grain Crop
Thirsty for more? Check out these related articles:
- Is Organic Farming Good For Africa or Not?
- An Organic Cash Crop in the Galapagos?
- Organic Aspirations: A Tale of Two Turkish Villages
- So What's in Obama's Overstuffed Environmental Suggestion Box?
How about we start growing some Hemp makes sense.
Problem: Organic food is generally at a higher cost than non-organic foods. People are already griping about paying the increased prices of non-organics. Not until the prices are more similar will we see an increased impacting move toward organic farming.
Note: even though they refrence the elimination of 1 car per 2 acre's of farm land ... how many large industry buildings is that? One of the largest producers of green house gas is industrial and househohld electrical use.
Most African farmers already use all organic methods. Organic farming is, in fact, the default method for poor starving countries. They also use all natural wood stoves. That is why they have astronomical lung disease rates and generally don't have enough to eat.
So let me understand that you want to feed the Africans buy imposing farming techniques that grow less food at higher cost?
And one more thing. You are willing to starve African's right now to save them from the speculative dangers of slightly higher global mean temperatures decades from now?
Wow.
Organic food costs more now because it is still a specialty item. Just like any other product, the larger the production the lower the costs. In addition to that, much of the low price you pay for food right now is due to subsidies from our tax dollars. If you were to regain those dollars and apply them to your food choices you would see a lower price. If the subsidies were switched to farms using organic methods you would see similar low prices. Combine many competing farms with food producer subsidies that already exist and those high prices come right down to acceptable levels. I must say however, that I have seen an increase not only in the number of organic items available, but an increase in the number of brands available in many products and I have seen this reflected in prices.
There are choices coming available for the wood burning issue as well. I watched a TED speech recently in which one woman explained a new corn cob charcoal that was being made available to replace burning wood. It appeared to be very low cost, very renewable and much less toxic to human health.
This is one of the best, most complete arguments for organic farming that I've read. It is very well thought out, well stated, and includes actual data to back up the claims. We should put our hubris aside and emulate nature - its had a long time to perfect this and knows better than we do.
@nicole - you are only accounting for the visible costs of our existing food industry. A great deal of the cost is hidden in government subsidies (for large scale corn and soy only), health care costs (~30% of american adults have type 2 diabetes which was renamed from 'adult onset' because so many children now have it), and non-sustainable practices that rely heavily on crude oil, and destroy the environment. Furthermore the 'wastes' produced from industrial corn and animal products is toxic, whereas organic techniques use the wastes from one species to feed another (like how nature works). Field corn, *the* crop that rules our food industry, sells for a lot less than it costs to grow. This is not sustainable, organic farming can be.
@thedude - "also show that the organic approach does not compromise yield", polyculture organic farming creates a *more* robust farm that produces the same amount of food in good years and more food in bad years because the soil and plants are better equipped to handle harsh environments. Industrial farming techniques lead to precarious crops that fail much more easily.
TheDude,
I believe that there is great diversity in the practices and methods of organic farming. With assistance directed towards more sustainable and practical solutions for the African farmers their yields should increase.
And they aren't trying to grow less food at higher cost, the cost of labourers in African nations is much different than the cost of labourers in most of North America. The direct cost of chemical based farming is actually greater than the cost of organic farming in most of these nations.
Organic farming methods can if properly followed for the land/crop/agriculture type increase yields.
I put in a whole long comment but it didn't seem to post so I'll recap it.
@nicole - you are only accounting for the visible costs of the existing food industry. Our food costs a great deal more than we pay for it:
- government subsidies for big corn and soy (taxpayer dollars)
- healthcare costs (increasing 'western' diseases including the renaming of 'adult onset' diabetes to 'type 2' since so many children now have it)
- environmental impact due to harsh chemicals and non-sustainable practices. That means we can't keep it up forever and the higher we build our house of cards the farther we will fall. We are robbing future generations to maintain our existing systems.
@thedude -
organic yields are just as high as conventional yields (as stated in the post above). In addition organic polyculture farms are more robust and can better withstand harsh weather in bad years. This means that, while it is more work, organic farming will ultimately yield more food than conventional farming while leaving the planet in better shape for the future.
Chemical farming is not sustainable, plain and simply. What costs you are looking at in the short term are nothing compared to what you would be looking at when you literally can't farm your field without some form of fertilizer because you depleted the soil and pesticides because you didn't practice natural methods of weeding out your bugs.
You want to talk about astronomical rates of disease? We work in full hazmat suits when working with our chemicals. We wash them constantly. We drink out of purified wells. Africa? They don't have the water to wash out all the fertilizer and pesticide, they don't drink out of purified water and they don't have the equipment to walk around in hazmat suits when dealing with this material much less working with it everyday probably in sandals and shorts handling it with their bare hands.
read "a biologist's view on motherhood"...
we are polluting our bodies, our soils and our waters with chemical fertilisers and pesticides.
then we wonder why children are born with severe defects, lower IQs and less boys and more girls are being born.
as a species, we sure no how to irradicate ourselves.
support wen.org.uk
Industrial agriculture exists to reduce the labor costs of food. With enough labor and time, agriculture without chemical fertilizers / pesticides / herbicides can be as productive or even more so than our conventional industrial agriculture. However, you have to look at the economics of it to determine whether or not if it is worth doing. In much of North America, the labor costs to implement organic agriculture will generally be a money pit if one has to compete against conventional agriculture, but the premium for organic produce can make up the difference. In short, technology here is cheaper and more profitable than labor. In Africa, labor is usually far cheaper than technology, so it makes more sense to spread knowledge than technology (whether biotech or other ag tech). With knowledge of appropriate technology, they will be far better off than they are now. This may not always be the case, but for now it is. After all, we are all seeing the prices of industrial agriculture rise astronomically, even faster than the end prices of the produce we sell. At some point the economics of it won't pencil out, and then a major change will occur before our eyes. It's just not clear what that change will be... feast or famine?
If we continue with chemical agriculture, eventually the soil will go infertile and far more people will starve. This is a difficult but an obvious choice.
It is interesting that none of the prior comments mention the dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico or the now in the news algea bloom
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/06/30/asia/china.php
Olympic nightmare: A red tide in the Yellow Sea.
Wish Obama would take another stand on biofuels
http://www.plentymag.com/blogs/political/2008/06/baracks_biofuel_blooper.php
Barack’s biofuel blooper is worth reading, wish we could get word to him to reconsider his misguided stance on biofuels and the mass famine that we will see soon as the result.
Hope Obama will use the FISA Opportunity see
Keith Olbermann, MSNBC Countdown comment
http://www.truthout.org/article/obamas-fisa-opportunity
it is an amazing break that would profoundly change direction on many problems not so closely related to the environment as this blog and comment section but well worth noting.
NC State University has several great programs for organic crop production:
http://www.organicgrains.ncsu.edu/
Center for Environmental Farming Systems
http://www.cefs.ncsu.edu/
AND we have a minor in agroecology (sustainable farming):
http://www.cropsci.ncsu.edu/agroecology/