EAT ORGANIC… and help save the planet

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There is no shortage of stats on how much better organic produce is for the body. It follows that 'no chemicals' would also be better for the land. But scientific evidence is mounting that organic farming is often better for the climate as well.

Most of the hype about climate change due to greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions concerns cars, heavy industry and the like. However, it's no secret that livestock generates more greenhouse gas emissions than transport. A lesser known fact is that 50% of the total CO2 increase from 1850-1990 was from land use change … mainly because of farming.

In the mid-2000's, GHG emission levels from agriculture, in both Australia and the UK, contributed to 18% of the total - despite vastly different climates and farming practises. With figures like that the 'accepted norm' of clearing, cultivation of marginal land, excessive tillage, monocultural planting, summer fallowing and vast herds of methane-producing cattle and sheep, along with their stockpiled waste, are becoming ever less acceptable.

The good news is that a paradigm shift does seem to be occurring. When weighing environmental security against food security, the environmental cost of modern farming methods is now being seen as just too high.

At a recent conference, Craig Sams of The UK Soil Association stated, "It's time to start rewarding organic farmers for locking carbon back into the soil and reducing greenhouse gases – instead of subsidising chemical farming which adds to them. The right sustainable farming methods could take us half way toward the carbon reduction targets we need to save the planet."

It is encouraging to see the beginning of mainstream acceptance of how the cropping practice of organic farmers can maintain and build soil carbon levels by up to 1 tonne per hectare per year. What's especially good about this is that storing carbon in soil effectively withholds carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

The Rodale Institute has published a report stating that if just 10,000 medium-sized farms in the converted to organic production, they would store so much carbon in the soil that it would be equivalent to taking 1,174,400 cars off the road.

And that's just the beginning of the benefits of organic farming. It can also reduce flooding risk and lower agricultural water use. As a consequence, it reduces vulnerability to drought.

This is borne out by the news that a village in Ethiopia that had converted to organic agriculture recently continued to harvest crops during a severe drought. Neighbouring villages that had continued using conventional chemical fertilisers, by comparison, had nothing.

Adding nitrogenous fertilisers can boost plant growth, but it lessens the soil's ability to hold water and the crops' root size. Even worse, up to one-half of this fertiliser may be lost to the atmosphere as nitrous oxide, a gas with 310 times the global warming power of carbon dioxide!

These statistics are made all the more horrifying by the knowledge that, in a normal season, the Australian cotton industry uses up to 100,000 tonnes of nitrogen fertiliser. If it was farmed organically, there would be no emissions, less need for irrigation and soil organic matter would be able to build.

Organic systems are also capable of being independent of fossil fuels. A 23-year side-by-side comparison study conducted by the Rodale Institute in the US showed that organic systems used just 63 percent of the energy required by conventional farming systems.

Organic farming improves food security and will make a real difference to poorer soils in many developing countries. An excellent example of this is El Salvador. Their coffee farmers who have switched to organic farming practises are thriving. In fact, they cannot meet demand for organic coffee. In contrast, those who use more conventional methods are in crisis due to the low prices their coffee brings.

Despite all this good news, the picture is far from complete and, as with so many things organic, the debate still rages. Who knows, by 2020 we might see a revitalised Australian rural sector farming energy, farming water and farming carbon, as well as farming food.

A Utopian picture or not, it is clear that sustainable farming practices have the potential to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases while simultaneously increasing productivity, reducing costs and producing wider natural resource management benefits.

Even better news from our point of view is that there have been calls to price goods according to the level of GHG impact they have. Right now, it may cost slightly more to buy organic. We can only look forward to the time when it costs less.