2012-04-03 Can Organic Farming Become Mainstream?

Had someone asked me five years ago to describe the organic food industry, I would have placed organic food production somewhere on the fringe. I knew of consumers who believed organic food was healthier than conventional food. These consumers are willing to pay a premium for organically grown food and are complemented by farmers who grow food organically. These organic growers need the organic price premium in order to compensate for lower yields. Everyone is happy.

But not everyone, really. Anyone prepared to take a critical look at conventional agriculture, has always been concerned about the vulnerability of that production system because of its dependence on scarce and exotic chemicals; scarce in that phosphate and nitrogen as inputs are non-renewable resources, and exotic because chemicals are carefully developed in order to address a defined problem under defined conditions. The understanding of how these exotic chemicals work and of their side effects is limited.

The above thoughts should really not be new to anyone. What follows may surprise you.

In February, I attended the first ever Canadian Organic Science Conference in Winnipeg. The conference was fascinating in many respects, but what struck me most was the growing awareness by the conference attendees that organic food production is able to compete with conventional food production on its own terms: that is, organic food producers are poised to compete in the same market place with conventional food producers.

The Rhodale Institute in Pennsylvania has been a leader in the research, development and promotion of organic food production methods since 1947. They have been running a farming systems trial for 30 years comparing conventional and organic farming systems. The Institute has recently published a report thirty years into the study. They have found that:

• Organic yields match conventional yields
• Organic outperforms conventional in years of drought
• Organic systems build rather than deplete soil organic matter, making it a more sustainable system
• Organic farming uses 45% less energy
• Organic systems produce 60% of the greenhouse gases a conventional system does
• Organic farming systems are more profitable than conventional

Organic food production is not simply the elimination of chemicals in the growing of food. An organic producer told me recently, that a conventional farmer monitors his field, and when he detects a problem, he goes to his agricultural input supplier, buys the appropriate chemical and applies it. An organic producer, on the other hand, needs to be aware of the problems he is likely to encounter two or three years earlier, and begin to deal with them then. Organic production requires an understanding of the biological systems at work in the field or garden, and a familiarity with the wide array of tools now available to the organic grower.

Nobody said organic food production is easy, but as fuel prices go up and weeds and insects develop chemical resistance, more and more of us will need to embrace organic food production.

-- Eric Rempel