The Co-op Food Stores

added 09/12/08

(This article was originally written in 2004.)

by Elizbeth Ferry

The mainstream media often portrays organic agriculture as unable to feed the world’s growing population. One spokesperson for conventional agriculture even goes so far as to accuse organic agriculture as being bad for the environment. A recent Information Bulletin from the Organic Farming Research Foundation (OFRF) answers both of these challenges. I found the Bulletin article, titled “Get the Facts Straight: Organic Agriculture Yields are Good,” so well-written that I chose to base this month’s column on excerpts from it.

“Get the Facts Straight: Organic Agriculture Yields are Good” is written by Bill Liebhardt. He is a sustainable agriculture specialist at the University of California at Davis who has spent his career researching both conventional and organic agriculture.

Liebhardt was spurred to write his article after hearing a presentation by Dennis Avery. Avery is Director of the Center for Global Food Issues, a project of the Hudson Institute, and author of Saving the Planet with Pesticides and Plastics. Avery seeks to discredit organic farming, charging, among other things, that organic agriculture has low yields and is environmentally harmful. These sensational accusations lend themselves well to sound bites; Avery is often cited by the media seeking “perspective” on the pros and cons of conventional and organic agriculture.

Dennis Avery claims that 18 to 20 million square miles of wild land habitat are preserved through high-input agriculture compared to the use of organic agriculture. He asserts that organic yields are only 55 to 60 percent of conventional high-input agriculture. These ill-founded claims inspired Liebhardt to collect information from credible sources and research collected over time. He refutes Avery and presents his findings in “Getting the Facts Straight.”

Organic Yields are Good

“Since less than one per cent of agriculture research dollars are spent on organic practices, I assumed it would be difficult for organic methods to compete with conventional practices over the last ten years,” Liebhardt begins. “But that’s not what I found.” Here are the highlights of field studies of four major crops. Research was conducted at research stations.
Corn: organic yields were 94 percent of conventional yields. Data drawn from 69 cropping seasons.

• Soybeans: organic yields were 94 percent of conventional yields. Data comes from five states and 55 growing seasons.

• Wheat: organic wheat yield equaled 97 percent of the conventional yield. Information drawn from two institutions that ran experiments over the equivalent of 16 crop years.

• Tomatoes: no yield differences between organic and conventionally grown crops. Research was conducted over 14 years at the University of California.

Liebhardt then turns his attention from academic research to “the real world” of certified organic farms. This is a sample of his findings.

• Corn and soybeans: Ron and Maria Rosman operate a diversified organic farm in Harlan, Iowa, and consistently obtain yields on a par with their county averages. Average corn yields between 1991 and 2000 for the Rosman Farm were 131 bushels per acre compared with 130 bushels per acre their county. For soybeans during the same period, Rosman Farm yields matched the county yields.

• Wheat: Rex and Glen Spray, operators of a 720-acre organic farm in Mt. Vernon, Ohio, consistently obtain wheat yields on a par with their county averages. Data provided for years 1990 and1991 show yields averaging 46 bushels per acre.

• Tomatoes: Small Planet Foods, parent company to Muir Glen organic tomato products, contracts with a variety of producers of organic tomatoes. Alex McErlich, Director of Agricultural Research and Development for Small Planet Foods, states that their growers generally obtain yields of 30-36 tons per acre. They have seen yields as high as 42 tons per acre. The conventional yield average in California is 31 tons per acre. McErlich notes that while the best conventional yields can exceed those of organic, the quality of organically grown processing tomatoes is consistently higher. In fact, Muir Glen has built its reputation for quality on organic tomatoes.

“These figures illustrate that organic systems have every possibility of matching conventional system yields,” Liebhardt writes. “These yields are not considered exceptionally in the organic industry.” Similar results are maintained by thousands of organic producers around the country.

Conventional Agriculture and Water Pollution

Having answered Avery’s charge on organic yields, Liebhardt turns his attention to the environmental benefits of organic agriculture.

“What these yield figures do not reflect are the other benefits derived by organic producers and the land: increased profit per acre and improved soil quality as measured by soil structure, organic matter, biological activity, water infiltration, and water-holding capacity. This translates to higher yields during drought under organic systems, leading to production stability year after year. Nitrogen leaching is reduced considerably under organic agriculture, leading to less water pollution — a major ecological issue all over the world,” Liebhardt writes.

“This leads to an example of the kind of information Avery is willing to ignore,” continues Liebhardt. “Avery denies the threat of massive fertilizer pollution such as the Gulf of Mexico’s Dead Zone south of the Mississippi River Delta — 5,500 square miles of water with so little summer oxygen that it is unable to sustain aquatic life. While ten federal agencies, nine states, and Native American tribes are cooperating to reduce nitrogen and phosphorus run-off that ends up in the Mississippi and the Gulf of Mexico, the Hudson Institute’s Center for Global Food Issues pronounces, ‘There is no water quality crisis in the Gulf.’”

Why does the Hudson Institute ignore this information? Leibhardt has a theory. “Perhaps because the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) estimates that to eliminate the dead zone, nutrient flow into the Mississippi would need to drop by 40 percent. Under a new EPA plan, nutrient input would be cut just 30 percent, but even this would certainly cut into the profits of the agribusiness that support Avery and his institute. If we follow the money, we find that among the top contributors to the Hudson Institute are Monsanto, Dow, and Lilly — huge agricultural chemical and pharmaceutical companies.”

“The advantages of high-input and organic agricultural production systems need to be considered by both farmers and consumers, by individuals, and by nations,” Liebhardt concludes. “The choices are too important to leave the generation and dissemination of decision-influencing information only to those who have a direct financial stake in the outcome.”