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Organic Farming Can Indeed Feed World |
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Written by Kiki Hubbard
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Friday, 28 March 2008 |
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Organic farms' ability to compete with their conventional counterparts has been in the press a lot lately, debunking the dominant argument that organic farming cannot feed the world.
Last week, research published in the Agronomy Journal found that organic systems can produce as much as conventional systems, after the University of Wisconsin-Madison partnered with a consulting firm to examine 21 years of crop data from two sites in Wisconsin. The results show that organic forage crops, like alfalfa, yielded as much or more as conventional systems, and organic grain crops, including corn, soybean, and wheat, produced 90 percent as much as the conventional systems.
Meanwhile, scientists at Montana State University published a press release about an organic wheat plot that yielded 101 bushels per acre, a precedent-setting harvest that proves organic wheat can compete with conventional yields, contrary to their predictions.
And both of these findings follow a widely cited study published last year by University of Michigan researchers, which found that organic farming methods can yield up to three times as much food in developing countries. In developed countries, organic yields were almost equal to conventional systems.
As studies like these continue to give credence to the capacity of organic farms in our food system, it will be increasingly difficult for chemical companies to convince us that their pesticides and synthetic fertilizers are necessary to feed the world.
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