Organic Nearly as Productive as Industrial Farming, New Study Says

Dr. Doug Gurian-Sherman is Center for Food Safety’s Director of Sustainable Agriculture and Senior Scientist. Prior to that, he was a senior scientist in the Food and Environment Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists. He is a widely cited expert on biotechnology and genetically engineered food. Previously, he was the founding co-director and science director for the biotechnology project at the Center for Science in the Public Interest. He also worked at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) where he was responsible for assessing human health and environmental risks from transgenic plants and microorganisms and developing biotechnology policy. Industrial agriculture has huge, unsustainable impacts on our environment. And while organic and other ecologically based farming systems (agroecology) have huge benefits, some have suggested that it will never produce enough food. Production is only one of the challenges for food security. But, according to new research, even by this measure, critics seem to have substantially underestimated the productivity of organic farming. Impressive research from Iowa State University has already begun to show that agroecological systems that don’t completely eliminate synthetic chemicals can match or exceed yields from U.S. industrial grain production and provide equal or higher profits to farmers. Now, new research by a team of U.C. Berkeley scientists shows that organic systems can also be highly productive.