Can Organic Farming Feed the World?
So you’re concerned about our farming system and its ecological footprint. You want to buy food that’s better for the environment. Maybe you’ve even come to the conclusion that organic is a more sustainable option. But then you hear critics say that organic farming doesn’t produce enough food for everyone on the planet. Seriously: is organic farming sustainable if the population keeps growing at the current rate? Can we really feed the world with organic farming? Or is it just a utopia?
Those are crucial questions. An often-cited statistic says that we’ll need to double food production by 2050 in order to meet the demand of the growing population. Another, more recent, study suggests we’ll only need to increase food production by 20% to 70%. Either way, it’s a fact that the world’s population will likely hit over 9 billion people in 2050. Will there be enough food for everyone?
Together, let’s take a closer look at the problem! And then, let’s uncover the truth about organic farming.
Contents
Why organic farming?
Organic farming started as a movement to counter the many environmental problems we face today. After World War 2, the way we farm drastically changed. And, unfortunately, often not for the better. Conventional farming resulted in many environmental disasters. In the long run, it’s not a sustainable system.
But the synthetic fertilizers and pesticides that made conventional farming successful also meant that yields sky-rocketed.
Conventional farming made sure we could feed the growing population during the past decades.
Organic farming, on the other hand, produces lower yields. Among others, that’s because organic farming doesn’t use high-energy inputs like synthetic fertilizers. Where conventional farmers use pesticides to control pests, diseases and weeds, organic farmers use mechanical and organic methods to control them. Therefore, pests and higher weed densities are also responsible for yield loss on organic farms.
If measured per hectare, conventional farming is more productive than organic farming.
Isn’t organic farming inefficient?
However, what happens if we bring in the term efficiency?
Efficiency means comparing how much input is necessary to obtain a certain output. It’s basically putting effort & costs next to the final result for comparison.
Talking about farming, we are comparing the necessary input to produce food (money, energy, time, pesticides, fertilizers etc.) with the outcome (yield, nutritional value of the food, effects on the ecosystem). According to a scientific review that looks at 528 studies comparing organic & conventional farming, organic farming is more resource-efficient.
If we look at the climate-efficiency of farming, conventional farming is considered to be more efficient than organic farming. This is because it takes up less land to produce more yield. You can read more about this argument here.
The alternative to conventional farming
However, under drought conditions – a likelier scenario with climate change on the rise – organic yields even outperform conventional yields. Taking environmental factors into account, organic farming is better at preserving biodiversity, water quality, soil fertility and so on. I’ve written more about this in my scientific review here.
And what if there’s no other way than to turn towards more sustainable farming systems?
Indeed, the state of our planet is very worrying. A group of Swedish scientists introduced the term of so-called planetary boundaries. These are the limits to the extent to which the Earth can support our human activities.
Out of a total of 9 planetary boundaries, we have already exceeded 4 of them: the integrity of the biosphere (i.e. life and biodiversity on Earth), global warming, the conversion of habitats into agricultural land, and the leaching of nitrogen and phosphorus.
All four categories are closely related to farming and our way of producing food. Modern agriculture is unfortunately highly dependent on non-renewable energy sources. And by using various chemicals it disturbs the natural balance of the environment. The condition of the soil, for example, is very alarming. Through soil erosion, we lose about 24 billion tons of fertile soil annually in the world. This further accelerates global warming, not to mention that without fertile soil it is impossible to produce food at all.
Conversely, this means that farming and food have the greatest potential to improve the state of our planet! The way in which we will grow our food will largely determine the fate of our planet.
But with the world’s population constantly rising, the key question then is: can organic farming produce enough food for everyone on the planet?
Can organic meet the demand of a growing population?
1. We already grow enough food
Critics of organic farming say that we cannot produce enough food for everyone on the planet with organic farming methods. They say that organic farming might lead to even more hunger and malnutrition than there already is. However, the truth is that there’s already more than enough food for everyone on the planet.
Eric Holt-Gimenez, Executive Director of Food First, says: “For the past two decades, the rate of global food production has increased faster than the rate of global population growth. The world already produces more than 1 ½ times enough food to feed everyone on the planet. That’s enough to feed 10 billion people, the population peak we expect by 2050.”
The reason why around 800 million people (that’s almost 10% of the global population) still go hungry every day is not food scarcity.
It’s poverty and inequality.
People are too poor to buy food, and they don’t own the land to grow enough food for themselves. “The people making less than $2 a day – most of whom are resource-poor farmers cultivating unviable small plots of land – can’t afford to buy this food.” says Holt-Gimenez.
Ironically, the hungriest people are mostly smallholder farmers, who are responsible for feeding the majority of the world’s population. (1) The problem is not lack of food, but social inequality.
The COVID-19 pandemic is the best proof of that. The number of undernourished people rose significantly: 9.9 percent were undernourished in 2020, as opposed to “only” 8.4 percent a year earlier.
2. Where does our food end up?
Another terrible truth confirming that we already produce far more than enough food – and could do so in the future – is food waste. Globally, between 25% and 50% of all food produced is wasted (for different reasons both in developed and developing countries!). Pointing to the lower productivity of organic farming is like laughing in the face of this worldwide food waste scandal.
Improving the yields & efficiency of farming completely misses the point if we don’t tackle food waste. We first need to save the food that’s already there!
3. Challenging our modern diet
Another argument why organic farming could definitely feed the world is that much of our current food production is not used for human consumption. We could potentially feed so many more people if crops were directly used to feed our growing population.
“In reality, the bulk of industrially-produced grain crops goes to biofuels and confined animal feedlots rather than food for the 1 billion hungry. The call to double food production by 2050 only applies if we continue to prioritize the growing population of livestock and automobiles over hungry people.” argues Holt-Gimenez.
Two-thirds of the grain produced in the EU is used to feed animals, not humans. This high demand for animal products is already contributing to deforestation and a host of other environmental challenges. See my article Reconsidering Animal vs. Plant-Based Diets for a more in-depth discussion of this.
Organic farming can produce more than enough food to feed the entire population. What we need to do now is to tackle our unsustainable, unjust Western diet, where the US citizen eats 30 times more meat on average than the Ethiopian.
Is organic farming truly sustainable?
Organic farming is a necessity
A matter of survival is not just producing enough food, but producing it in a way that conserves the environment for future generations. In order to truly feed the world, we need to feed it sustainably, or we won’t be able to eat (and survive) at all.
The current farming system isn’t sustainable, we all know it. Therefore, we need a food system that will make farming possible in the future, too. A system that regenerates rather than destroys the planet.
While I’m not a fan of black-and-white thinking and strict labels, I believe that labels indicating that food is from organic or regenerative farming can be really helpful. Organic farms and organic food regularly undergo controls that check whether they comply with the certified organic standards.
However, if you personally know uncertified farmers whom you trust to be doing a good, environmentally sound job on their farm – go for it! Even better: grow your own organic food.
Organic farming can feed the world
To conclude, regenerative, organic farming…
- is more environmentally friendly, and
- is necessary if we want to feed the world sustainably in the future and in the face of climate change.
And yes, regenerative, organic farming can meet the demand for food even at the population peak expected by 2050 – if more and more farmers tap into its potential, further develop sustainable organic farming methods and if we eat less meat & waste less food. And this is not wishful, romantic thinking, it’s a reality that we need to embrace and that is well-grounded by science.
As Mahatma Gandhi famously said,
“There’s enough for everyone’s need, but not for everyone’s greed.”
Sources:
Figure: Hannah Ritchie and Max Roser (2013) – “Crop Yields”. Published online at OurWorldInData.org. Retrieved from: ‘https://ourworldindata.org/crop-yields’ [Online Resource]
(1) “Smallholder Farming and Achieving Our Development Goals,” Landesa Rural Development Institute, July 2014, 1, www.landesa.org. and Hungry for Land: Small Farmers Feed the World with Less Than a Quarter of All Farmland,” GRAIN, May 28, 2014, www.grain.org
