*"…the numbers are discouraging for the organic option. The rubber really hits the road when it comes to yield. To its credit, organic does quite well in many cases: Sweet potatoes, raspberries, canola, and hay all yielded higher nationally than their conventional counterparts…
Unfortunately, there’s little hope in feeding the world with higher yields of sweet potatoes, peaches, and raspberries—much less hay. What matters most is the performance of basic row-crops. As it turns out, yields were dramatically lower for these commodities: 40 percent lower for winter wheat, 29 percent lower for corn, 34 percent lower for soy, 53 percent lower for spring wheat, 41 percent lower for rice, 58 percent lower for sorghum, and 64 percent lower for millet. Canola was the only row-crop with greater yields with organic farming.
What we might call “secondary staples” did poorly as well. The organic option yielded 28 percent lower for potatoes, 21 percent lower for sweet corn, 38 percent lower for onions, 19 percent lower for snap beans, and 52 percent lower for bell peppers. Perhaps most distressingly, some of the healthiest foods on the planet yielded comparatively poorly under organic production: 42 percent lower for blueberries, 23 percent lower for broccoli, and almost 40 percent lower for tomatoes.
Given these figures, a switch to organic agriculture would require a 43 percent increase over current U.S. cropland, according to (plant pathologist and agricultural scientist Steve) Savage.* As he puts it, “On a land-area basis, this additional area would be 97% the physical size of Spain or 71% the size of Texas.” (Yes, Texas is bigger than Spain.) These are depressing figures, especially in light of the fact that global food demand is entering a 40-year upward trend. It’s no wonder that Savage, who spent part of his career developing organic pest controls, concludes that organic “is too small and unproductive to ever be the ‘solution’ to our need to simultaneously feed the world and protect the environment,”*
This is true. There’s a role for good organic farming practices (some of which can be applied to “conventional” agriculture) and the possibility of improving efficiency of organic farming. We’re still a long, long way from meeting the world’s food needs that way.
One should be careful before referring to someone like Norman Borlaug as a “posturing ‘realist’”. He did a helluva lot more to feed hungry people than anyone at the Rodale Institute and their organic-is-the-only-way allies.
*Dr. Savage wrote a thought-provoking article on why he doesn’t buy organic food. Some of his objections are made on environmental and ethical grounds.