The Hindu Business Line : Organic farming: Reality behind the myths

Critics question its capacity to feed the world while bogies are being raised about people having to return to the ‘dark ages’ of food shortage and starvation unless recourse is taken forthwith to intensive chemical farming.

It is time that the grains of fact are separated from the chaff of propaganda to prove that organic farming, which involves following natural and sustainable cultivation practices, with no chemical inputs, is the real alternative that can sustainably produce enough food for the growing world.

Organic farming can feed the world and still have enough food left over! An extensive study carried out in nearly 50 countries, both developed and developing, by a group of eight eminent scientists from the University of Michigan and Michigan State University concluded that the available food production was more than sufficient for humankind.

Enough to feed the world

They estimated the calorific value of all food supply to be 2,786 kCals per capita per day, for the total volume of food supply available in 2001. They also went on to prove that, had the same land been farmed organically, the calorific value available in 2001 would have, in fact, been much higher i.e. 4,380, kCals per capita per day! Their data is summarised in Table 1.

Organic farming yields more and uses less land for the same output level. For example, the study showed that organic farms yield 1.312 times more grain products (Table 2) than non-organic farms.

It is also significant that yields from organic farms in developing countries are higher compared to non-organic farms.(Table 2)

In developing countries, many of which are land-starved, the fact that organic farms have higher yields signals that they should forthwith switch to organic farming.

Higher productivity

A project started in 1996 under the supervision of the Bureau of Agriculture and Natural Resources (BoANR) of Tigray, in Ethiopia, in partnership with the Mekele University, the local communities and their local administration is, in fact, doing just that.

Project Tigray, as it is known, demonstrated that the introduction of ecologically sound organic principles had very quick positive impacts on the productivity and well-being of farmers with small land holdings.

The project also demonstrated that, for farmers, particularly those in marginal areas, who were not able to afford external inputs, “an organic production management system offered a real and affordable means to break out of poverty and obtain food security.”

And the oft-cited argument that organic farming requires more land holds good only for cash crops.

This is the conclusion reached by the FAO at a conference in 2007, where it observed that higher yields through non-organic farming were seen mainly in cash crops grown in ideal conditions.

Uses less energy, slows global warming

Organic farming generally uses natural, or naturally available, means for farming.

The farm is tilled by oxen, legumes are grown for nitrogen-fixing, and inter-cropping, crop rotation, composting, vermiculture, and so on, are practised to help retain moisture, fertilise the soil and protect the crop against pests. Energy use is minimal with organic farming.

Effective watershed management techniques practised on organic farms have been shown to reduce water use and raise the water table, all without poisoning the soil with chemical residues.

Contrast this with the energy used in ‘modern’ intensive farming — assorted farm implements such as tractors, threshers, harvesters that use internal combustion engines, pump-sets that dredge up massive volumes of water in irrigating the land, the massive factories manufacturing fertilisers and pesticides that poison the earth, the clean-up that needs to be carried out to replenish the soil, the effort, money and energy spent in building canals, dams, etc.

If organic farming were to be practised exclusively, some of the land being used for agriculture can actually be set aside for other uses, without any material impact on food supply.

Nitrogen fixing

The main limiting macronutrient for agricultural production is biologically available nitrogen (N) in most areas. In 2001, the global use of synthetic N fertilisers was 82 million metric tonnes.

The Michigan University paper, referred to earlier, shows that 140 million tonnes of additional nitrogen could have been fixed by the additional use of leguminous crops — 58 million tonnes more than the amount of synthetic N in use!

Need not be more expensive

Food production and distribution today are heavily subsidised, as is well known. Organic food, since it does not receive any of these subsidies, in comparison, comes across as being expensive.

Such produce can be cost-competitive if it receives the same subsidies given to non-organically grown foods, and is perhaps likely to be cheaper in view of its inherently superior yield!

How does all this affect us living in India? A recent newspaper article mentioned that the per-capita availability of food in India is a little over a fifth of the American average and just under a third of the European average.

What the article did not touch upon was that 63 per cent of Americans are overweight, with 31 per cent classified as obese. Obesity trends in Europe are similar too.

The moot point is, do we need to go through the tortuous process of obesity and its consequent public-health issues, or be smarter, learn from American and European mistakes, and continue to be a healthy India.

Anecdotal evidence of the Indian experience suggests that Indian farmers too reap the many benefits of organic farming and many worldwide have, in fact, begun calling such cultivation practices ‘Indian Farming’!

Thus, widespread adoption of organic farming in India is unlikely to materially impact the availability of food.

Given our relative scarcity of land, large farmer population and fragmented land-holdings, the benefits of organic farming appear uniquely suited to Indian conditions.

So, perhaps the time is right to make a push into adopting organic farming in right earnest, given its many benefits to both the producer and the consumer.

The FAO too supports this point of view. It is time policy is decided on the basis of genuine public interest rather than on disguised ‘scientific facts’, dictated by vested interests.

(The author is a Chennai-based business analyst. Feedback to blfeedback@thehindu.co.in)

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