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July 22, 2009
Source:
GMObelus -
Peer-reviewed news in the field of agricultural biotechnology
Despite the dismal performance
of the "organic" sector of US agriculture, efforts to make it
look healthy and productive continue. A new report by the US
Department of Agriculture (USDA) casts light on this problem.
The report, titled "Emerging
Issues in the US Organic Industry", chronicles the perennial
failure of what is obviously an unsustainable set of food
production practices. The US Congress is considering financial
incentives to increase this kind of farming.
According to the USDA, organic farmers identified lack of
consumer demand as a major marketing problem during the early
1990s. The problem was so acute that organic farmers frequently
sold organic products into conventional markets.
The organic industry determined to remedy the lack of consumer
demand through a vigorous campaign to demonize mainstream food
producers and conventional agriculture.
The campaign has been successful. "Are farmers the new
villains?"
asks Matt McKinney of the Minneapolis Star Tribune,
who adds that "conventional farmers already have seen their
public persona trashed by bestselling depictions of conventional
farms as places that abuse the land and the animals while
producing food of low nutritional quality."
There's another measure of the dubious success of demonizing
modern food production: according to the USDA, organic farmers
in the US are now unable to keep up with demand.
Those who view this as a positive development are more than
happy to exaggerate it. According to the new report, "[o]rganic
food sales increased from $3.6 billion in 1997 to $21.1 billion
in 2008". No effort is made to factor in the inflation of the US
dollar during the period, nor the impact of organic farmers
inflating the price of products they no longer had to pass off
as "conventional".
The use of dollar figures to exaggerate the growth of the
organic industry becomes apparent when the growth is expressed,
instead, in acres. During the same period, the acres devoted to
organic agriculture merely doubled -- to 0.5 percent of US crop
land and 0.5 percent of pasture land.
Anyone inclined to interpret this as a vast increase in the
per-acre productivity of organic farming over that period should
bear in mind that this cannot represent technological advances.
Organic farmers are prohibited from using modern methods, or
adopting new ones. Indeed, the
Cornucopia Institute,
which claims to represent organic agriculture, regularly files
legal actions against organic producers whose practices
look too modern -- or too productive.
The lack of organic farm productivity is just as much at fault
as the successful demonization of modern agriculture for
creating the supply/demand imbalance. Retailers who want to cash
in on the "land and animal abuser" marketing strategy are
finding that organic farmers simply can't produce very well.
This is fairly obvious in the dairy sector. The USDA reports:
The growth
hormone rbST is not available to organic producers, but was
used by 17 percent of conventional operations, who also were
much more likely to utilize regular veterinary
services and a nutritionist. [em added] The use of
these practices likely contributed to the significantly
higher production per cow on conventional versus organic
operations. Organic operations averaged about 13,600 pounds
of milk per cow in 2005, versus nearly 19,000 pounds on
conventional operations.
The problem: to be considered
"organic", cows must be denied adequate health care, and are fed
substandard diets to reduce feed costs. The neglect of organic
cows in need of medical care, and the concomitant loss in milk
quality and production, are seldom mentioned--but they are
well-documented.
The inability of organic farmers to use modern methods has other
impacts, as the report makes clear. Without access to modern
low-till/no-till technology, organic farmers must burn more
gasoline and diesel for mechanical tillage, and rely more
heavily on manual labor.
These costs, coupled with the use of low-producing seed, add up
to a dismal situation. According to the USDA:
Average
organic soybean yield was lower than that of conventional
producers (31 versus 47 bushels per acre), partly because
food-grade soybeans produce lower yield than feed-grade
soybeans. Average costs for producing organic soybeans were
as much as $6.20 per bushel higher than conventional
production in 2006, after accounting for the influence of
other factors on production costs, including organic
transition costs.
A rational assessment of the poor
performance of organic farming, compared to conventional
farming, is enough to persuade some organic farmers to make
reasonable choices.
The yield and
cost relationship shown in the ARMS data suggests that when
conventional soybean prices are high, organic systems lose
their appeal, leading to slower adoption, and even declines
in acres planted to organic soybeans.
What is worse, their heavy
reliance on manual labor makes US organic farmers less
competitive with those in developing countries, where labor
costs are lower. This creates a financial incentive to import
organic food, rather than to grow it domestically. Even worse
than that is the incentive it establishes for farmers in
food-insecure nations to continue the centuries-old farming
practices which help preserve their food insecurity.
What should we do about an agricultural sector that vilifies
most US farmers, concocts baseless food scares to advertise its
products, and in the end, wastes resources to produce less food
of quality that's often
inferior--and
even dangerous? According to Philip Brasher and Dan Piller
of the
Des Moines Register, the US Congress has an idea: The US
Federal 2008 farm bill includes money to help (modern) farms
transition to organic agriculture.
Throwing money at a failed model of agriculture, a model which
prohibits improvement, is not destined to solve its problems.
Source: GMObelus -
Peer-reviewed news in the field of agricultural biotechnology |
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