Are crop yields the Achilles heel of organic farming?

Organic agriculture can't compete with conventional in terms of crop yields, according to a new study.

|
AP Photo/Seth Perlman
Central Illinois corn and soybean farmer Dan Neuman fills his planter with soybean seeds. New research shows that conventional methods outdo organic when it comes to crop yields.

Besides occasionally finding a bug in your organic salad mix, what's the difference between conventional and organic farming?

Well, one distinction is that, acre for acre, conventional farming methods are more productive than organic, as recent research shows.

Scientists from McGill University in Montreal, Canada and the University of Minnesota looked at 66 studies that compared yields of 34 crops grown using organic and conventional methods. They found that crop yields produced using organic methods can be up to 34 percent lower  than those produced using conventional techniques.

Organic farming practices appear to be particularly inefficient for grain and vegetable crops. The researchers suggest that lower yields are the result of the types of fertilizers that organic farmers use and how they use them. Farmers using conventional methods apply fertilizer, particularly nitrogen, as crops need it. Organic farmers tend to apply fertilizer only at the beginning of the growing season, and these inputs take longer to be incorporated into the soil and absorbed by plants.

Organic yields were lower than conventional yields across the board, but the scientists found that organic methods could produce yields close to those of certain conventional crops, such as strawberries and soybeans.

“There is still a big yield difference but the study does suggest organic systems have the potential to produce comparable yields, but in a very limited number of crops,” Sonja Vermeulen, of the Copenhagen-based Consultative Group On International Agricultural Research, told Nature.

One important point is that this research analyzed only yields. "Since the world already produces more than enough food to feed everyone well, there are other important considerations," ecologist Catherine Badgley of the University of Michigan told Scientific American. Waste and distribution problems persist, so the world's food future may not just be found by increasing production.

For her next project, Verena Seufert, an Earth system scientist at McGill University, and the study’s lead author, plans to compare environmental impacts of organic and conventional farming practices. She also hopes to look specifically at the two growing methods as they are used in developing countries.

Because as Seufert told Nature, “This is where yield increases are most needed.” 

The meta-analysis was published online today in the journal Nature.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to Are crop yields the Achilles heel of organic farming?
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2012/0425/Are-crop-yields-the-Achilles-heel-of-organic-farming
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe