Flash in the Pan 

Comparing agricultural religions

On April 23, the science journal Nature published a paper titled "Comparing the Yields of Organic and Conventional Agriculture" by Verena Seufert et al. The mainstream press waded into the paper's implications but had a hard time packaging them in a headline. CNN announced "Organic yields 25 percent lower than conventional farming," while the Los Angeles Times proclaimed "Organic Farming, carefully done, can be efficient."




Yield alone, the team writes, is "only part of a range of economic, social and environmental factors that should be considered when gauging the benefits of different farming systems."


The paper asserts that the efficacy of various farming systems is context-dependent and proposes that the apparent dichotomy between organic and nonorganic is overly simplistic. Hybrid systems, the paper suggests, should be considered in some contexts. Ramankutty used his personal approach to food procurement as an example of how a hybrid system might work.

"I often buy organic food," he told me. "Partly it's because of some maybe nonscientific fear of pesticide residues in food—although it looks like scientific evidence for that is not hard to get.

"On the other hand, I wouldn't mind if a farmer was applying a little bit of chemical fertilizer. I may not buy food if somebody was applying pesticides, but I would certainly not mind if my farmer applied a little bit of chemical fertilizer on his farm. It's when we use 200 kilograms per hectare, compared to maybe 40 or 50 kilograms, that the problem arises."

  • Photo courtesy of Clearly Ambiguous

The paper notes that many organic agriculture systems are deficient in nitrogen and that production on such farms would benefit from more of it. But most conventional systems have more than enough nitrogen, thanks to the ease and cost of applying chemical fertilizer.


"There's a diminishing return to nitrogen application. If you're applying more and more fertilizer, plants take up less and less of it. If nitrogen is heavily subsidized—that is, if there's no cost to applying nitrogen—then farmers won't have any incentive to reduce the amount of nitrogen."

Organic sources of nitrogen include manure, cover crops, fish emulsion, compost and other sources, many of them labor-intensive. These sources of nitrogen do more than simply add "N," as it's called in the paper. They also add organic matter to the soil, which is crucial for the soil's microbial activity and helps retain moisture.

Shoveling shit is a lot more work than applying chemical nitrogen. But as long as fuel is cheap, chemical nitrogen will be too.

In developing countries, the farms considered in the studies that Seufert et al. analyzed are export-oriented operations, usually certified organic by international third-party organizations. Ramankutty makes a distinction between subsistence farming (which may be organic by default, due to lack of resources, without being intentionally organic) and "intensive organic" methods, which involve active techniques like composting and mulching. Subsistence farmers might not need to become certified organic if they're not catering to an organic market, but the use of organic methods can nonetheless build soil, conserve water and grow better crops.


Looking forward, Ramankutty said, the team's next step is "to look at the other side of the equation, the environmental outcomes. What do the environmental outcomes of organic versus conventional farming look like?"



  • Email
  • Favorite
  • Print

Speaking of Flash In The Pan

Readers also liked…

Big Brains Trivia Night

Big Brains Trivia Night @ Brooks and Browns Bar

Thursdays, 7:30 p.m.

All of today's events | Staff Picks

Dining Guide

© 2017 Missoula News/Independent Publishing | Powered by Foundation