Although both organic and industrial agriculture have their strengths and weaknesses, there are certain problems with industrial agriculture that necessitate the need to combine both methods. Organic agriculture can be just as productive as non-organic agriculture. It has been found that “if converted to organic production, the low-intensity agriculture present in much of the developing world would have the same or slight reduction in yields that has been reported for the developed world, where green-revolution methods now dominate.”
Quick fact 1
The loss of yields due to pests in many crops (reaching about 20-30% in most crops), despite the substantial increase in the use of pesticides (about 500 million kg of active ingredient worldwide) is a symptom of the environmental crisis affecting agriculture
Quick fact 2
Due to this lack of natural controls, an investment of about 40 billion dollars in pesticide control is incurred yearly by US farmers, which is estimated to save approximately $16 billion in US crop. (Altieri, 2000)
Quick fact 3
Industrial agriculture consumes water very quickly and in mass amounts. This is highly unsustainable on a global account.
Quick fact 4
Organic farming is Low productivity when first administered.
Quick fact 5
-Organic farmers use the cultivation method.
-Industrial farmers use the drilling method to cultivate. This means cultivated soil is prone to wind and water erosion.
Quick fact 6
Organically produced food is expensive. The cost is very often 50-100 percent more than the traditional food. This is because organic crops are not as heavily subsidized as are
-industrially grown crops are heavily subsidized. The difference to organic prices is often 50-100 percent more than the subsidised food.
Quick fact 7
The organic farmers grow crops in accordance to the season therefore organic food is not always available locally.
Quick fact 8
Industrial agriculture utilizes mass amounts of cheap synthetic fertilizers and pesticides to produce high yields.
-These pollutants greatly reduce the use of the land and causes topsoil degradation.
-These pollutants causes the extreme pollution of local rivers and water sources.
Quick fact 9
Organic can operate in small-scale settings fairly productively.
Quick fact 10
Lots of manual labor needed for Organic production.
Industrial farming challenges
The planting of one crop in mass amounts decreases biodiversity within the ecosystem within both plants and animals.
“Today as more and more farmers are integrated into international economies, imperatives to diversity disappear and monocultures are rewarded by economies of scale. In turn, lack of rotations and diversification take away key self-regulating mechanisms, turning monocultures into highly vulnerable agroecosystems dependent on high chemical inputs. The technologies allowing the shift toward monoculture were mechanization, the improvement of crop varieties, and the development of agrochemicals to fertilize crops and control weeds and pests. Government commodity policies these past several decades encouraged the acceptance and utilization of these technologies. As a result, farms today are fewer, larger, more specialized and more capital intensive. At the regional level, increases in monoculture farming meant that the whole agricultural support infrastructure (i.e. research, extension, suppliers, storage, transport, markets, etc.) has become more specialized” (Altieri, 2000).”
The extensive need of fertilizers to maintain a monoculture farm is due to the fact that the crops are being taken out of their natural habitats. Larger-scaled industrial farms have become so expanded that natural links between the soil and the crops and the animals of a farm have been destroyed. They are literally stretched out of their biological niches and cannot be functional to their full extent requiring chemical aids.
In conclusion
“Organic agriculture has the potential to contribute quite substantially to the global food supply, while reducing the detrimental environmental impacts of conventional agriculture” (Badgley, 2006).
