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If we want to feed the world, we have to spray the countryside with poisonous chemicals. We have to splice fish genes into tomatoes, and bacteria into corn. We have to pour on chemical fertilizers. It's the only way. Organic methods are for backyard gardens, not for feeding billions. That's what you hear over and over, in the media, from politicians, from so-called experts. One of the loudest of those self-proclaimed experts is Dennis Avery of the Hudson Institute, a probusiness think tank funded by some of the world's largest agrichemical conglomerates. Avery says, over and over, things like this: "Widespread organic farming is simply not a viable option at this time. The first consequence of a global shift to organic farming would be the plowdown of at least 6 million square miles of wildlife habitat to make up for the lower yields of organic production."
Alarmist statements like this drive me crazy. They leap with suspicious speed to a conclusion no thinking person can readily embrace. They close off options that have not even been explored. They add up to a dictum so common it is developing a nickname: TINA, There Is No Alternative.
TINA statements seem designed to make us swallow just one course (to which, after all, There Is No Alternative). Often it is a course that thinking people question because, however profitable it might be to some, it imposes costs on others—to society, to the environment, to our future. Whenever I hear TINA, I start listening hard, seeking out evidence, and above all looking for alternatives.
When I listen to those who say we must intensify and bioengineer agriculture to feed the world, I notice that they are basing their arguments on three big assumptions: 1. It will take a lot more food to feed the world. 2. More-intensive industrial agriculture can produce a lot more food. 3. Organic farming cannot.
But when I look at the evidence, I find little support for any of those claims. In fact we already grow enough food to feed everyone; the excess simply is not distributed where it is needed. Industrial agriculture, far from being the salvation it promises, is actually undermining the resource base—healthy soil, clean water, and diversity of plants and animals—needed to sustain the world's growing human population in the long term. If anything can restore that resource base and at the same time eliminate hunger it is organic methods.
But can organic farming produce enough? The TINA folks seem to have fixed in their heads the notion that organic means low yield. I don't know where they get that idea. Maybe they are looking backward at preindustrial farming instead of at the performance of modern organic farms. There is a strong body of evidence that organic methods can indeed produce enough food for all—and can do it from one generation to the next without depleting natural resources or harming the environment.
For example, at the Farming Systems Trial at The Rodale Institute, a nonprofit research facility (which receives financial support from Organic Gardening) near Kutztown, Pennsylvania, three kinds of experimental plots have been tested side by side for nearly 2 decades. One is a standard high-intensity rotation of corn and soybeans in which commercial fertilizers and pesticides have been used. Another is an organic system in which a rotation of grass/legume forage has been added and fed to cows, whose manure has been returned to the land. The third is an organic rotation in which soil fertility has been maintained solely with legume cover crops that have been plowed under. All three kinds of plots have been equally profitable in market terms. Corn yields have differed by less than 1 percent. The rotation with manure has far surpassed the other two in building soil organic matter and nitrogen, and it has leached fewer nutrients into groundwater. And during 1999's record drought, the chemically dependent plots yielded just 16 bushels of soybeans per acre; the legume-fed organic fields delivered 30 bushels per acre, and the manure-fed organic fields delivered 24 bushels per acre.
"With this unique living laboratory, we have proved scientifically that organic agriculture works," says John Haberern, president of The Rodale Institute. "It is a viable alternative to conventional farming because it's an economical resource that can empower people to build healthy soil, produce healthy food, and sustain human and environmental health."
Adds Jeff Moyer, the institute's farm manager: "Our trials show that improving the quality of the soil through organic practices can mean the difference between a harvest or hardship in times of drought."
Adherents of the chemical-farming model point out that the organic rotations include a forage crop in addition to corn and beans. What that means is that at any given time, a third of the acreage is not planted with a direct cash crop. TINA proponents argue that that means a lower annual yield of corn. What they don't point out is that the forage in the organic rotation provides nourishment for cows, which in turn provide milk for humans and manure for the soil.
