organic farming can feed the world and small farms best for the environment!

i came across two very inspiring pieces of news today.

the first is about a recent study at the University of Michigan which found that organic agriculture can produce enough food to feed us all. there have been other studies in the past which have said a similar thing, but it’s great that more and more are coming out like that now. two of the major arguments against organic agriculture (as opposed to chemical agriculture) are that it will never be able to feed us all and that it’s impossible to produce crops on a large-scale without chemical fertilisers. this study has shown otherwise. it’s nice to be getting some science on our side here. i am not an agriculturalist and it’s so frustrating when confronted by soil scientists etc who argue that if you take a plant out of the ground and consume it, you remove nutrients with it. they always argue that the only way to bring nutrients back to the soil is with synthetic fertilisers. now i have a study which says you CAN do it with nitrogen-fixing plants too!

also came across a news piece on a recent conference of IFOAM (the international federation of organic agriculture movements). they’re like the world governing body of organic agriculture. it’s great because they are speaking out against the recent FAO food crisis summit which was held in Rome in June.

here is the article by Mathias Wildt of Reuters:

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Small-scale, not industrial farming, is the answer to food shortages and climate change, organic farmers argued this week.

Meeting at the Organic World Congress this week, the International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements IFOAM — www.ifoam.org — criticized a recent U.N. food summit for touting chemical fertilizers and genetically modified (GM) crops rather than organic solutions to tackle world hunger.

The World Bank says an extra 100 million people worldwide could go hungry as a result of the sharp rise in the price of food staples in the last year.

At the U.N. food summit in Rome this month, the World Bank pledged $1.2 billion in grants to help with the food crisis.

“The $1.2 billion the World Bank says will solve the food crisis in Africa is a $1.2 billion subsidy to the chemical industry,” said Vandana Shiva, an Indian physics professor and environmental activist speaking at the forum in Modena.

“Countries are made dependent on chemical fertilizers when their prices have tripled in the last year due to rising oil prices,” she said. “I say to governments: spend a quarter of that on organic farming and you’ve solved your problems.”

She said industrial farming was based on planting a single crop on vast surfaces and heavy use of chemical fertilizers, a process that used 10 times more energy than it produced.

“The rest turns into waste as greenhouse gases, chemical runoffs and pesticide residues in our food,” she said.

In contrast, organic farms could increase output by 10 times by growing many different species of plants at the same time, which helped retain soil and water, she said. “In a one-acre farm in India they can grow 250 species of plants,” she said.

FEEDING 9 BILLION PEOPLE

The U.N.’s Food and Agriculture Organization Director General Jacques Diouf said last December there was no reason to believe that organic agriculture can substitute conventional farming systems in ensuring the world’s food security.

“You cannot feed six billion people today and nine billion in 2050 without judicious use of chemical fertilizers.”

Shiva has began a civil disobedience campaign in India against the patenting of natural seeds, particularly of crops that resist flooding and drought and can better withstand climate change.

“We need this worldwide. Seeds are for everyone,” she said.

According to IFOAM, a quarter of greenhouse gases are emitted by industrially farmed crops and livestock. The proportion rises to 40 percent when including the emissions caused by transporting commodities around the world.

IFOAM members also criticized the production of fuel from grains, citing a U.S. university study that it took 1.3 gallons of fossil fuel to make 1 gallon of ethanol from corn.

The United States and Brazil defended their use of corn and sugar cane to make ethanol to fuel cars at the UN food summit saying it was a minor factor in food price inflation.
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this is in essence what my thesis is about – the fact that chemical farming is TOO expensive for small-scale farmers and we should not be prescribing a Green Revolution for Africa without considering the fact that the people it’s being prescribed to cannot afford the inputs!! damn, this makes me angry…