Organic farming has its place in the agricultural ecosystem. It should by necessity be a small part of that system because organic farming is wildly less efficient than conventional farming using artificial nitrogen based fertilizers. Organic farming cannot be scaled up to a sufficient level to take the place of conventional farming as there is not enough suitable land on the planet to cope with the extra land required to offset the lower yields of organic farming when compared to conventional farming. A change to organic farming from conventional farming would not only be a technical step back, but would also bring with it starvation and deforestation as desperate people clear land of trees in order to try to grow more food on more land using a less efficient farming method.
The problem is that whilst those who understand food production know that organic is way less efficient or as productive as conventional farming, various governments don’t. Some nations, especially those in the West, are pushing for an organic transition that will leave their citizens struggling for affordable food.
Ralph Schoellhammer writing in Unherd magazine has come out and criticised, quite rightly in my view, a rush towards an agricultural method that has been abandoned because it could not keep up with the demand for food.
Mr Schoellhammer said:
The European Union is on a silent crusade against the use of synthetic nitrogen and synthetic fertilisers more generally, thereby attempting to reverse the achievements of the Haber-Bosch process that feeds billions around the world. Germany — a world leader when it comes to ideology struggling against reality — wants 30% of agricultural lands to use only organic farming methods, at a time when more and more Germans can no longer afford to buy organic products in the supermarket.
From energy to food production, Western countries are engaged in a race towards more inefficient means while promising pie-in-the-sky results to their populations. The reality, however, is that the promise of a nuclear-free, wind and solar-powered, exclusively organic farming country is less a utopia, more a dystopia that could only be achieved through a massive reduction of living standards for the lower and middle classes. To consider weakening one’s own grain production at a time when Ukraine’s grain exports are dropping by 30% is carrying over a suicidal energy policy to a farming context.
The author is dead right here. Transitioning to organic farming on a large scale is a ‘delusion’. I would not at all be surprised to find that a few years down the line those countries who transitioned to mostly organic will be reaping a whirlwind of pain with regards both food prices and food availability.
Of course organic can play a part in small to medium scale agriculture and horticulture, I create masses of compost with my chicken poo, so much so that I swap the poo with other gardeners in exchange for their home grown vegetables. But this system is not scalable to the size needed to feed either a nation or the world.
I do not disagree with you that organic is less efficient, but there is another aspect here.
“Conventional” farming (more correctly called modern farming) destroys the soil in a way that organic farming (which was the convention in farming for ~10,000 years) does not.
The lack of return of organic material to the soil in the form of compost (small scale) or manure (large scale) leads to the destruction of the humus layer in the soil and its biota.
In turn this reduces the ability of the soil to retain moisture and nutrients and leads to the risk of soil loss and a “dust bowl” forming.
Further the nutrients in organic fertilisers tend to be released over time. This reduces (but does not prevent) the risk of run-off and consequent eutrophication of water ways etc.
What is needed, I think, is a serious re-think about how we can return nutrients to the soil and improve soil quality which in turn improves crop quality and, a far from insignificant benefit, preserves the soil for future generations.
This rethink should include a combination of both methods and a separation of domestic and industrial waste streams.
The nutrients in animal waste and processed sewage (which must not contain heavy metal or other poisons if it is to be used) are not there in consistent quantities, so this should be monitored and combined with modern fertilisers so that we can optimise (or at need maximise) crop yields and also rebuild our soils – upon which our literal lives depend.
Again it might be possible to have some sort of halfway house between organic and conventional. However this is something that the market itself sorts out. The high price of fertilizers and agrochemicals encourages farmers to not waste them and apply them in the lowest possible effective amounts.
Perhaps there’s middle-ground between fully organic and inorganic fertiliser-based farming – a partial return to crop rotation? This worked well for centuries, with the 1 in 4 year fallow fields having time to recover their soil conditions before the next higher demand on their nutrients. Obviously yields were lower, but it was a sustainable system for a smaller population.
From what I can gather crop rotation is practised even on non organic farms. There may well be a half way house between organic and inorganic and some horticulturalists growing tomatoes hydroponically use insects to keep plant parasites at bay. The problem with organic is the fact that yields are much lower than compared to conventional farming.