Organic farming can feed the world, Univ. of Michigan study shows

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Organic farming can feed the world, U-M study showsUniversity of Michigan, July 10 2007http://www.ns. umich.edu/ htdocs/releases/ story.php? id=5936Listen to podcasthttp://www.umich. edu/news/ podcast/science/ Perfectopod. mp3Podcast En Espanolhttp://www.ns. umich.edu/ htdocs/trackclic ks/clicktracker. php?pid=1064ANN ARBOR, Mich. - Organic farming can yield up to three times as much food onindividual farms in developing countries, as low-intensive methods on the sameland - according to new findings which refute the long-standing claim

thatorganic farming methods cannot produce enough food to feed the globalpopulation.Researchers from the University of Michigan found that in developed countries,yields were almost equal on organic and conventional farms. In developingcountries, food production could double or triple using organic methods, saidIvette Perfecto, professor at U-M's School of Natural Resources andEnvironment, and one the study's principal investigators. Catherine Badgley,research scientist in the Museum of Paleontology, is a co-author of the paperalong with several current and former graduate and undergraduate students fromU-M."My hope is that we can finally put a nail in the coffin of the idea that youcan't produce enough food through organic agriculture, " Perfecto said.In addition to equal or greater yields, the authors found that those yieldscould be accomplished using existing quantities of organic fertilizers,

withoutputting more farmland into production.The idea to undertake an exhaustive review of existing data about yields andnitrogen availability was fueled in a roundabout way, when Perfecto and Badgleywere teaching a class about the global food system and visiting farms inSouthern Michigan."We were struck by how much food the organic farmers would produce," Perfectosaid. The researchers set about compiling data from published literature toinvestigate the two chief objections to organic farming: low yields and lack oforganically acceptable nitrogen sources.Their findings refute those key arguments, Perfecto said, and confirm thatorganic farming is less environmentally harmful yet can potentially producemore than enough food. This is especially good news for developing countries,where it's sometimes impossible to deliver food from outside, so farmers mustsupply their own. Yields in developing

countries could increase dramatically byswitching to organic farming, Perfecto said.While that seems counterintuitive, it makes sense because in developingcountries, many farmers still do not have the access to the expensivefertilizers and pesticides that farmers use in developed countries to producethose high yields, she said.After comparing yields of organic and non-organic farms, the researchers lookedat nitrogen availability. To do so, they multiplied the current farm land areaby the average amount of nitrogen available for production crops if so-called"green manures" were planted between growing seasons. Green manures are covercrops which are plowed into the soil to provide natural soil amendments. Theyfound that planting green manures between growing seasons provided enoughnitrogen to replace synthetic fertilizers.Organic farming is important because conventional agriculture - which

involveshigh-yielding plants, mechanized tillage, synthetic fertilizers and biocides -is so detrimental to the environment, Perfecto said. For instance, fertilizerrunoff from conventional agriculture is the chief culprit in creating deadzones - low oxygen areas where marine life cannot survive. Proponents oforganic farming argue that conventional farming also causes soil erosion,greenhouse gas emission, increased pest resistance and loss of biodiversity.For their analysis, researchers defined the term organic as: practices referredto as sustainable or ecological; that utilize non-synthetic nutrient cyclingprocesses; that exclude or rarely use synthetic pesticides; and sustain orregenerate the soil quality.Perfecto said the idea that people would go hungry if farming went organic is"ridiculous. ""Corporate interest in agriculture and the way agriculture research has beenconducted in land grant

institutions, with a lot of influence by the chemicalcompanies and pesticide companies as well as fertilizer companies - all havebeen playing an important role in convincing the public that you need to havethese inputs to produce food," she said.