The Daily Evergreen, WA
07-16-07
Organic farming is historically more common than it is now
Haley Paul
It is an argument that has been used by large food corporations for so long now
that most people come to regard it as fact. The corporations say: Organic farming
is great and all, but it just can’t feed the world and its growing population.
Yet recent studies from the University of Michigan and Iowa State University
show that organic farming can produce a yield as high of, if not higher for certain
crops, as conventional farming. It is time that we see that organic can feed the
world, and that it is not a type of food only for the wealthy.
To delve deeper into organic agriculture, we must stop and think about how
humans managed to survive before the advent of industrial chemicals and the
conventional food supply system. In the past, people didn’t farm one crop for
thousands of acres.
People practiced the age-old tradition of crop rotation to prevent soil diseases,
cover cropping to increase nitrogen in the soil and having crop variety to ensure
that one pest couldn’t wipe out a whole farm.
Farmers never used to rely on the techniques now used to grow food in industrial
agriculture. Since the technologies for these inputs – pesticides, synthetic
nitrogen fertilizers and genetically modified crops – are developed by
corporations, conventional farmers are dependent upon an outside source to
continue growing their food.
In the not-so-distant past, to say you were an organic farmer would not have
been an anomaly. All farms were organic because the technology to decimate
weeds with the spraying of a single chemical did not exist. It is strange that
“conventional farming” today equates to a relatively recent technological
application in farming, and “organic farming” signifies an ancient way of growing
food.
In the United States, it has taken a while for people – farmer and consumer alike
– to buy into the whole organic movement.
Farmers that witnessed increased yields with the application of the new chemical
technologies, starting in the 1960s with the Green Revolution, had little motive to
change to organic farming when there was no real demand.
And for some consumers, eating organic meant being a hippie and buying
vegetables with insect-eaten holes in the leaves. Nowadays however, organic is
nearly as common as conventional, with the original grassroots movement
morphing into a full-blown industry.
Residents of the United States find themselves in a situation where they can
have some sort of selection of organic produce, meats, and cheeses in most
grocery stores.
The problem, however, is that conventional agriculture is too cheaply subsidized
and does not reflect the real price of food. Organic, fair-trade and sustainable
agriculture, however, reflects the true costs put into growing food or raising
livestock. Hence, it is more expensive.
People have grown accustomed to inexpensive and quick food that neither
sustains us physically nor nourishes us mentally. People need to reevaluate what
they want to put into their body and focus on eating locally and organic.
Not only is it better for our health, but it is better for the environment. Focusing on
buying food regionally and buying what is in season can help reduce fossil fuel
dependence, as well as encourage smaller, more sustainable farms.