Conventional vs. Organic Farming: Water

In which ways does agriculture affect our environment and our daily lives? And how are conventional vs. organic farming different? Read the introductory post to this series here.

Back to the roots

A picturesque, sleepy village in the South of Germany. Tenderly, it is nicknamed the “town of fountains”. The lovely historic centre is mainly built of sandstone, the predominant rock material in this region. Among the old-styled houses, chapels and paved streets, there are fountains on every other corner. Each different and unique, they are decorated with flowers in this typical Southern German manner.

From the old town, I walk to the end of a street with blooming gardens, sheep and chicken in backyards. Here, in a solid wooden house, lives my grandmother. Every time I come and visit her, we go for a walk together. Even further out of town, there are gardens, farmland and orchards. As we walk along the small creek to the bordering forest, we talk about the past. How was it like to live here before? Which places did my grandmother love to visit? How did farming change here in the last decades?

Grim discoveries

As we walk over a tiny bridge crossing the creek, my grandmother points to some rocks on the ground. I would barely have noticed them if she hadn’t stopped me.

“Here,” she tells me, “somebody once discovered a spring of fresh water. We used to drink and use this water in the village. But we had to stop using it because it has been polluted. Today, we have to use water from another town.”

“How has the water been polluted?” I ask her, surprised.

“Too much nitrate from the agricultural land around has been washed into it… The water used to be clean and good for drinking. But then synthetic fertilizers were invented and introduced in agriculture.”

Costly losses

Somehow, at this very moment, I understood the weight of what she had just told me. Losing a source of fresh, local water not only means that you have to bring clean water to the households in a more costly, complicated way. It means that the environment we live in suffers almost irretrievable damage. The consequences of this affect every creature, every plant living in and around this creek. Including humans!

Ultimately, it means losing independence. Water is an indispensable commodity we all rely on. If a village, city or country loses access to drinking water, it means it has to depend on others to provide it. With decreasing reserves of clean water, this could have drastic consequences in the future. In some places in the world, the consequences are already felt!

How ironic that the “town of fountains” cannot even provide fresh water for its own inhabitants. The fountains in the old town still burble with the local water, but one that is not good for drinking. Ancient and proud, they stand there, accusingly.

Water protection

It is not without reason that water is often referred to as the source of life. Without drinking water, we could survive only a few days. And just the same is true for all of life on Earth; whether it is plants, insects or elephants, we all depend on clean water. Where agriculture comes into the story is through the fertilizers, pesticides and medicinal substances it carries into the environment. The soil serves as a natural filter that converts non-drinkable rainwater into clean groundwater that can be used by people.

The problem with this is that some harmful substances, like nitrate, pesticides and antibiotics from farming can cross this natural barrier, thus entering our drinking water. Nitrate, for instance, is a cancerous substance. This is especially the case when too much synthetic fertilizer is applied. But not even strict regulations as to when and how much fertilizer can be applied prevented our groundwater from being contaminated. If the groundwater is contaminated, this not only causes damage to our health but results in higher costs for water purification. in Germany alone, it is estimated that water purification could cost us over 700 million euros per year.

In addition, nitrogen and other elements that get washed into lakes, seas and rivers, cause eutrophication* and the starvation of the natural life in it.

Organic vs. Conventional Agriculture

Since organic agriculture prohibits the application of synthetic fertilizers and pesticides, it shows a high potential for the protection of groundwater and surface water. But what do scientists say about this?

On average, organic farming in the evaluated studies (1) showed reduced nitrogen inputs by 28%. The entry of potentially toxic chemical substances is also prevented in organic agriculture by simply restricting or prohibiting the use of synthetic pesticides and veterinary treatments in animal-husbandry. In summary, in 71% of the cases compared, the organic variant had clear advantages over conventional management regarding water quality.

In the next episode, we’ll look at how farming affects soil fertility and why this is so important for us.

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Sources:

(1) Sanders J, Hess J (eds) (2019) Leistungen des ökologischen Landbaus für Umwelt und Gesellschaft . Braunschweig: Johann Heinrich von Thünen-Institut, 364 p, Thünen Rep 65, DOI:10.3220/REP1547040572000

*eutrophication = when a body of water becomes overly enriched with minerals and nutrients which induce excessive growth of algae