One of the more tired mantras of industrial agriculture is that there is no alternative to farming with fossil fuels, in industrial monoculture. An important study has recently been released about organic farming, evaluating 293 case studies. Their conclusions?
organic agriculture has the potential to contribute quite substantially to the global food supply, while reducing the detrimental environmental impacts of conventional agriculture.
Moreover, while organic yields were a little lower in industrialised countries as compared with industrial agriculture, they were between two and three times higher in developing countries. This put an important boot into the attempts of fertilizer companies to turn farmers in the Global South into pesticide junkies, and all in the name of ‘development’.
I’m particularly pleased that one of the authors is a fellow, er, Fellow, at the Institute for Food and Development Policy. Do visit the press release and accompanying podcast here.