If you like the idea and could care less about price, “organic” farming may be your ticket into whatever it is your buying. But if you think it’s better for the planet or feeding people prepare for a surprise.
Organic farms typically have significantly lower crop yields than traditional farming — about 40 percent less. Some crops would be halved. Now think no farms, no food. Then think 40% less food, how many more farms?
More farms, more ‘farming,’ more farmland.
Or, assuming the entire world hasn’t embraced the concept, how do we replace four meals out of ten? From whom will you procure it? What sort of farming are they practicing? How much more will food cost, and what will this do to the market, the less well-off, and the entire chain from farmer to table?
Do we end the practice of converting food (corn) into fuel (ethanol) just to feed people?
It’s a fine and dandy thing to think, “No, GMO.” To insist on this or that or embrace the latest Green Food fad. But the more you rely on organic, the more land you need for farming. At least 40% more land. Which, if you are an environmentalist who can do basic math, means less land for anything else, including solar farms.
There’s also the matter of crop failures. Farming will always run into production bumps: weather, insects, plant disease, stupid people, and weather. If you are riding the rough edge mathematically on some food-supply-to-population formula and something goes sideways, bad things happen.
Food becomes both scarce and unaffordable. Rich people will have food until the protesters and rioters kill them, steal it, and burn down their homes.
Meanwhile, back in the real world, modern farming feeds the world with food to spare for just such an eventuality. Shocks move prices up but not in a debilitating way or with the risk of empty shelves. At least not in first-world countries, which is where all the talk is about “organic.” Which, I suspect, much like everything else, is loosely defined and subject to reinterpretation based on the production and profit models of politically connected “organic farmers.”
Just like everything else involving human beings.
Food for thought.
| WUWT
