III. What Is the Best for Our Offspring?
Besides food safety, another topic in organic food and organic farming systems that might interest people is the ethical issues, for example, the environmental issues. Generally, this concern not only involves individuals themselves, but also includes the whole society. In other words, unlike to pursue food safety is a more private choice, while those ethical topics are in the public interest, and involve both social and psychological considerations.
A. Is Organic Farming Friendlier to Environment?
Nowadays, some climatic terms, such as El Niño, La Niña, greenhouse effect, and global warming, have become part of our daily lives. Moreover, more and more people are worried about water pollution, air pollution, and soil pollution, which acutely affect not only ours, but also our offspring’s living safety on the planet. Since we, human beings, do not yet have the ability to migrate to another possible planets in the universe, during last two decades we have started to consider that environmental protection is more important than in the past. There are different ways to protect and maintain our environment, and to improve our ways of agricultural practice is one of them. From 1990s, the awareness of the relationship between overusing synthetic chemicals and environmental pollution has pushed some people to think about replacing the old farming skills with alternative farming systems, including organic farming systems. However, although theoretically organic farming system should be friendlier to environment if we consider the original thinking of it, to make this theory convincing we still have to examine it in the comparison between organic and other farming systems.
The idea of “environment friendly” is too broad; thus, it has to be broken down into several areas. The water pollution caused by the leakage of nitrates and phosphates from over-fertilizing and the sewage is “eutrophication”. Basically, organic farming practice can improve the biodiversity in farming lands by increasing the percentage of organic matter (41%, compared with 35% in conventional systems), and some cases indicated that organic farming system had less nitrate leaching than conventional systems (Pimentel et al., 2005). Furthermore, in a Dutch research of milk production, it indicated that the whole impact of eutrophication could be separated into two parts, on-farm eutrophication, and off-farm eutrophication (Thomassen et al., 2008). The different utilizations of farmland between organic and conventional production system exhibits the distinct results on each system’s on-farm and off-farm eutrophication percentage in specific items, such as nitrate, phosphate, and ammonia (Thomassen et al., 2008). Although each item contributes in different percentages in each of the systems, the overall results demonstrated that in total eutrophication, organic farms are lower than conventional farms (Thomassen et al., 2008).
Besides eutrophication, total energy use during production is another topic. To be friendly to environment requires a farming system with lower total energy consumption during production. In the same study in milk production in 2008, Thomassen et al. indicated that organic farms required less energy to produce milk per unit than conventional farms because of a lower direct energy use. Another research demonstrated that the reduced use of synthetic fertilizers and pesticides in organic farming practice could efficiently lower the total energy used to produce to 60% of the energy requirement in conventional systems, although it also led to a significant reduction (206%) in annual yield in organic farming system (Castellini et al., 2006). In a 2009 report indicated that to produce 1 kg loaf of wheat bread by organic system could save 30 g CO2-equivalents, which is used to characterize the global warming potentials (GWP) per functional units (Meisterling et al., 2009). In other words, to produce wheat bread per kg by organic system emitted less greenhouse gases than by conventional system. But the study also mentioned that if the organic wheat was shipped from 420 km far away from the market, this reduction might be neutralized by the energy consumption of transportation (Meisterling et al., 2009). Thus, this indicated that not only the farming style is important, but also the transportation and trade distance might affect the whole energy consumption during the food production.
In short, observations through different ways show that organic farming has a better performance on environment protection. In fact, organic farming systems can efficiently reduce the impact of eutrophication, total energy inputs, and the emission amount of greenhouse gases. However, those significant reductions of impact to the environment might be easily diluted by the long-term transportation of ingredients. That is, if we want to be friendlier to environment, only changing the farming style doesn’t make it come true, but also requires the change of our purchasing habits, such as buying local.
B. Can Organic Farming Feed the World?
As we are worried about how to protect the environment, the concern about the benefits for the future generations includes the question – whether can we feed people around the world or not. The growth of the global population has become a heavy burden to the planet after World War II. Nowadays, the global population is over 6 billion, and as estimated by scientists, it probably will be 9 billion in 2050 (Williams, 2009; Godfray et al., 2010). However, the global food production will hardly be adequate to feed the whole 9 billion people. The current estimation indicates that we will need 70% to 100% more food in 2050, but, for example, the annual growth rate of cereal yields has shown the tendency to reduce, which exhibits the high possibility of food shortage in future (Huang et al., 2002; Godfray et al., 2010). Thus, how we can feed those extra 3 billion else will be a big issue.
Then, we might ask: can organic agriculture feed the world? This question has been on the table for a long time. The firm supporters of organic agriculture believe it can, while some scientists doubt that belief. As we know, in last century, the Green Revolution brought a significant success in increasing food production and saving billions of people in the poor nations. In some people’s points of views, Green Revolution and other technical improvement of farming skills created a 61% increase in food production from 1971 to 2005, while the global population only increased 55% (Rivera-Ferre, 2008). It seems that we will have the ability to feed the world even the total population will be 9 billion after another 40 years. However, some scientists seem not to agree with this statement. This issue is more complicated than we might think. As Godfray et al. said that we have to create another “revolution” in food production, but “…[it] will be constrained as never before by the finite resources provided by Earth’s lands, oceans, and atmosphere (Godfray et al., 2010).” Due to ongoing urbanization available farmland has been dramatically decreasing. In the past five decades, the global arable land has only increased approximately 9%, and in 2020, it is estimated that the urbanized customers and the newborn 2 billion population will need 40% more food (Huang et al., 2002; Godfray et al., 2010). And the question is: based on the current production efficiency of organic farming system, can we feed the world?
In fact, lower yield always is the “Achilles’ heel” of organic farming systems. According to most research, the annual yield in organic farming system was basically lower than other farming systems. In cereal production, basically, organic farms produced 30% to 50% less than conventional farms (Pimentel et al., 2005). According to six-year studies, the annual yield of organic farms was unstable (Swezey et al., 2007). There are several factors causing the lower yield in organic farms, such as the pressure of weed competition, diseases, different cultivar choices (GM crops are allowed in conventional farm, which have significantly higher yield), specific species (individual crops have different yield patterns), the less yield of feed crops, and the lower average livestock numbers per farm (Pimentel et al., 2005; Swezey et al., 2007; Greer et al., 2008; Wheeler & Crisp, 2010). And currently, those problems have not yet been solved.
As Wager in his article published in 2009 argued, “Most of the 6,000 year history of agriculture has been, by definition, organic. The poor yield of this type of agriculture is the main reason for hunger, malnutrition, soil degradation and poverty in much of the developing world.” Although there might be some ways that we can improve skills in the future farming practice to create a better yield in organic farming system, currently, it seems to be impossible to feed the world by only organic agriculture.
TBC.
Besides food safety, another topic in organic food and organic farming systems that might interest people is the ethical issues, for example, the environmental issues. Generally, this concern not only involves individuals themselves, but also includes the whole society. In other words, unlike to pursue food safety is a more private choice, while those ethical topics are in the public interest, and involve both social and psychological considerations.
A. Is Organic Farming Friendlier to Environment?
Nowadays, some climatic terms, such as El Niño, La Niña, greenhouse effect, and global warming, have become part of our daily lives. Moreover, more and more people are worried about water pollution, air pollution, and soil pollution, which acutely affect not only ours, but also our offspring’s living safety on the planet. Since we, human beings, do not yet have the ability to migrate to another possible planets in the universe, during last two decades we have started to consider that environmental protection is more important than in the past. There are different ways to protect and maintain our environment, and to improve our ways of agricultural practice is one of them. From 1990s, the awareness of the relationship between overusing synthetic chemicals and environmental pollution has pushed some people to think about replacing the old farming skills with alternative farming systems, including organic farming systems. However, although theoretically organic farming system should be friendlier to environment if we consider the original thinking of it, to make this theory convincing we still have to examine it in the comparison between organic and other farming systems.
The idea of “environment friendly” is too broad; thus, it has to be broken down into several areas. The water pollution caused by the leakage of nitrates and phosphates from over-fertilizing and the sewage is “eutrophication”. Basically, organic farming practice can improve the biodiversity in farming lands by increasing the percentage of organic matter (41%, compared with 35% in conventional systems), and some cases indicated that organic farming system had less nitrate leaching than conventional systems (Pimentel et al., 2005). Furthermore, in a Dutch research of milk production, it indicated that the whole impact of eutrophication could be separated into two parts, on-farm eutrophication, and off-farm eutrophication (Thomassen et al., 2008). The different utilizations of farmland between organic and conventional production system exhibits the distinct results on each system’s on-farm and off-farm eutrophication percentage in specific items, such as nitrate, phosphate, and ammonia (Thomassen et al., 2008). Although each item contributes in different percentages in each of the systems, the overall results demonstrated that in total eutrophication, organic farms are lower than conventional farms (Thomassen et al., 2008).
Besides eutrophication, total energy use during production is another topic. To be friendly to environment requires a farming system with lower total energy consumption during production. In the same study in milk production in 2008, Thomassen et al. indicated that organic farms required less energy to produce milk per unit than conventional farms because of a lower direct energy use. Another research demonstrated that the reduced use of synthetic fertilizers and pesticides in organic farming practice could efficiently lower the total energy used to produce to 60% of the energy requirement in conventional systems, although it also led to a significant reduction (206%) in annual yield in organic farming system (Castellini et al., 2006). In a 2009 report indicated that to produce 1 kg loaf of wheat bread by organic system could save 30 g CO2-equivalents, which is used to characterize the global warming potentials (GWP) per functional units (Meisterling et al., 2009). In other words, to produce wheat bread per kg by organic system emitted less greenhouse gases than by conventional system. But the study also mentioned that if the organic wheat was shipped from 420 km far away from the market, this reduction might be neutralized by the energy consumption of transportation (Meisterling et al., 2009). Thus, this indicated that not only the farming style is important, but also the transportation and trade distance might affect the whole energy consumption during the food production.
In short, observations through different ways show that organic farming has a better performance on environment protection. In fact, organic farming systems can efficiently reduce the impact of eutrophication, total energy inputs, and the emission amount of greenhouse gases. However, those significant reductions of impact to the environment might be easily diluted by the long-term transportation of ingredients. That is, if we want to be friendlier to environment, only changing the farming style doesn’t make it come true, but also requires the change of our purchasing habits, such as buying local.
B. Can Organic Farming Feed the World?
As we are worried about how to protect the environment, the concern about the benefits for the future generations includes the question – whether can we feed people around the world or not. The growth of the global population has become a heavy burden to the planet after World War II. Nowadays, the global population is over 6 billion, and as estimated by scientists, it probably will be 9 billion in 2050 (Williams, 2009; Godfray et al., 2010). However, the global food production will hardly be adequate to feed the whole 9 billion people. The current estimation indicates that we will need 70% to 100% more food in 2050, but, for example, the annual growth rate of cereal yields has shown the tendency to reduce, which exhibits the high possibility of food shortage in future (Huang et al., 2002; Godfray et al., 2010). Thus, how we can feed those extra 3 billion else will be a big issue.
Then, we might ask: can organic agriculture feed the world? This question has been on the table for a long time. The firm supporters of organic agriculture believe it can, while some scientists doubt that belief. As we know, in last century, the Green Revolution brought a significant success in increasing food production and saving billions of people in the poor nations. In some people’s points of views, Green Revolution and other technical improvement of farming skills created a 61% increase in food production from 1971 to 2005, while the global population only increased 55% (Rivera-Ferre, 2008). It seems that we will have the ability to feed the world even the total population will be 9 billion after another 40 years. However, some scientists seem not to agree with this statement. This issue is more complicated than we might think. As Godfray et al. said that we have to create another “revolution” in food production, but “…[it] will be constrained as never before by the finite resources provided by Earth’s lands, oceans, and atmosphere (Godfray et al., 2010).” Due to ongoing urbanization available farmland has been dramatically decreasing. In the past five decades, the global arable land has only increased approximately 9%, and in 2020, it is estimated that the urbanized customers and the newborn 2 billion population will need 40% more food (Huang et al., 2002; Godfray et al., 2010). And the question is: based on the current production efficiency of organic farming system, can we feed the world?
In fact, lower yield always is the “Achilles’ heel” of organic farming systems. According to most research, the annual yield in organic farming system was basically lower than other farming systems. In cereal production, basically, organic farms produced 30% to 50% less than conventional farms (Pimentel et al., 2005). According to six-year studies, the annual yield of organic farms was unstable (Swezey et al., 2007). There are several factors causing the lower yield in organic farms, such as the pressure of weed competition, diseases, different cultivar choices (GM crops are allowed in conventional farm, which have significantly higher yield), specific species (individual crops have different yield patterns), the less yield of feed crops, and the lower average livestock numbers per farm (Pimentel et al., 2005; Swezey et al., 2007; Greer et al., 2008; Wheeler & Crisp, 2010). And currently, those problems have not yet been solved.
As Wager in his article published in 2009 argued, “Most of the 6,000 year history of agriculture has been, by definition, organic. The poor yield of this type of agriculture is the main reason for hunger, malnutrition, soil degradation and poverty in much of the developing world.” Although there might be some ways that we can improve skills in the future farming practice to create a better yield in organic farming system, currently, it seems to be impossible to feed the world by only organic agriculture.
TBC.
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