Organic farming: Perceptions and reality

(Part I)

Last week’s issue of Manila Bulletin’s Panorama magazine was dedicated to organic farming. The weekly featured the experiences of individuals who appeared to be fairly affluent and who have “discovered” the happiness of shifting from their stress-filled urban lifestyles to the romantic idyll of healthy living in the farm growing crops, poultry and livestock in a “natural” or organic way.

Indeed, this kind of farming is growing worldwide as people from developed countries, and increasingly the urban elite in the developing countries, willingly pay a premium for food grown in this manner.

But organically grown foods are not cheap. Because of the lower yields and higher costs of production, organic food have to be sold at a premium for the farmers and retailers to keep their margins.

Consumers are willing to pay higher food prices in exchange for the perceived benefits of organic produce being more nutritious, safer, more palatable, and more benign to the environment.

The impression one gets is that organic agriculture is the way to go as far as meeting the world’s future food needs and saving the environment.

However the reality is not as rosy as organic farming advocates would make us to believe. The claimed benefits from organic farming are more perceptions than reality.

In the same Panorama magazine, one of the authors, Bulletin regular columnist Cheshire Que, a registered nurse, articulated her misgivings and posed the question: Is organic really worth it? The following articulates more clearly the background to the pros and cons of organic farming. Organic farming – what it is not

It is important that we define organic farming in contrast with conventional farming for which it is claimed to be a better alternative.

Actually organic farming embraces a number of traditional, broadly accepted but scientifically proven agronomic practices and techniques. Among these are minimum tillage; legumes cover cropping; land fallowing (resting); application of animal manures and compost; multiple cropping and crop rotation; use of improved resistant varieties; deployment of biological control agents to suppress pests and diseases, etc.

However, these agronomic practices are not unique to organic farming. Conventional farmers adopt them as well to varying degrees depending upon local soil, climate, labor and market conditions.

But what really set organic apart are the growing methods it prohibits.

Organic farming under international convention, and as defined by law under Republic Act 10068, prohibits the application of chemical fertilizers, use of synthetic pesticides and use of genetically modified organisms (GMOs), whether crops, animals and microorganisms.

Total ban on chemical fertilizers devoid of scientific bases

The Rothamsted plots in England, the widely recognized longest running crop experiments of their kind, had been continuously sown to wheat, potatoes and beans and fertilized with chemicals since 1843 and these fields are still around.

The Morrow plots continuously planted to maize and chemically fertilized since 1876 are still there in the center of the University of Illinois campus in Midwest America when I last visited my Alma Mater.

And closer to home, the rice plots at the gate of the International Rice Research Institute in Los Baños started by the late Dr. Robert Chandler in 1963 and continuously planted to three crops of rice a year, look as green and as productive as ever.

Continuous fertilization with chemical fertilizers will not render soils unfit for growing crops, provided the fertilizers are not applied in excess, and the nutrients appropriately balanced and some of the plant residues retained to preserve soil organic matter.

The real problem is excessive fertilization. But this problem applies as well to excessive application of manures, like the massive environmental and aquifer problems created by unregulated, excessive spreading of hog and dairy farm manures in pastures in Holland (where I lived for three years). And closer to home, excessive application of chicken manure on vegetables in Benguet.

In the first place, the plant roots cannot distinguish nutrients coming from composts from those out of a chemical fertilizer bag.

Neither will gastric juices in our stomachs discriminate between plant proteins from organic versus conventional farm products. All proteins regardless of source are digested into amino acids which our bodies need. Reality of lower yield And higher food prices But what are real are that the yields from organic farms are less than conventional farms. And prices of organic produce in the market are higher to compensate for the lower yields and generally higher costs of production.

Meta-analyses of hundreds of studies worldwide have consistently affirmed that organic produce are not any more nutritious nor tastier than conventionally grown food.

Claims of superiority of organic foods over conventional foods are therefore for the most part just perceptions — not reality.

However, published data as reported by US and Canadian scientists show that organic crops consistently lag behind their conventional counterparts by 10 to 35 percent in a yield per acre basis.

The yield penalty on organic crops is worst on annual row crops. In 2014, a United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) scientist reported that organic corn, organic soybean and organic cotton yields were 35 percent, 31 percent and 45 percent lower than their conventional counterparts.

Imagine how much more forestlands and grasslands have to be plowed under worldwide to grow the same amount of food if all these crops were organically produced. That much more native vegetation plowed under will have massive consequences to soil erosion and loss of biodiversity on a global scale. Besides for a land-poor country like the Philippines, we do not have that luxury.

Why the yield penalty? The yield penalty on organic farming especially on short maturing row crops is associated with the low concentration of nutrients and the slow rate of nutrient release from manure decomposition and their lack of synchrony with the nutrient demand at different stages of the life cycle of plants.

In addition to being short of the major nutrients, particularly nitrogen which crops demand in the large amounts, the rate of release of nutrients from manures is more of less uniform throughout the year. But the nutrient demand of crops is not even and surges at the rapid vegetative, flowering and fruit development stages. The plants run out of nutrients when they are most needed. Hence, the need to supplement with nutrient-dense chemical fertilizers at these crucial stages for high yields.

Because of their low nutrient density, crops would require tons and tons of manure and compost per hectare to meet the crop nutrient requirements. A few hundred kilos of manure to fertilize small vegetables plots or gardens is manageable but not if we grow crops commercially by the hectare.

Manures if at all available are bulky and expensive to assemble and spread. Merits of manures and composts

Nevertheless, the application of more animal manure and compost is meritorious for two reasons: The organic matter in manures and composts improve soil aggregation and allow for better aeration and supply of oxygen to the roots of crops for healthier plant growth.

Moreover, the complex micro-biota in manures and composts replenish/ enhance the proliferation of beneficial soil microorganisms which crops need. Chemical fertilizers which are inert and devoid of soil microorganisms are not helpful at all.

Hence, the ideal is the judicious balanced application of manures as basal fertilizers and chemical fertilizers as nutrient-rich supplements.

Not the total ban of chemical fertilizers as organic purists prescribe.

To be continued... (Part II)

***** Dr. Emil Q. Javier is a Member of the National Academy of Science and Technology (NAST) and also Chair of the Coalition for Agriculture Modernization in the Philippines (CAMP). For any feedback, email eqjavier@ yahoo.com.