Hope Not Hype - Third World Network

Biotechnologies for Sustainable Cultures
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systems of rural farmers by introducing technologies that integrate agro-ecological
processes in food production, while minimizing adverse effects to the environment, is key
to sustainable agriculture” (WHO, 2005, p. 35). A study commissioned by the UN
Environment Programme (UNEP) and UN Conference on Trade and Development
(UNCTAD) found from extensive African research that all “case studies which focused
on food production in this research where data have been reported have shown increases
in per hectare productivity of food crops, which challenges the popular myth that organic
agriculture cannot increase agricultural productivity” (UNEP/UNCTAD, 2008, p. x).
In the largest meta-analysis ever conducted, researchers based at the University of
Michigan have drawn the conclusion that agroecological agriculture (including organic
methods) may be capable of feeding the world and rebuilding depleted agricultural lands
in time.
Model estimates indicate that organic methods could produce enough food on a global per
capita basis to sustain the current human population, and potentially an even larger population,
without increasing the agricultural land base (Badgley et al., 2007, p. 86).
This Michigan study is important for another reason. It provided evidence that past
unfavourable evaluations of organic agriculture productivity were in large part the
consequences of short-term studies where conventional yields were being compared to
organic yields on land that had only recently been converted from conventional agriculture
(UNEP/UNCTAD, 2008).
[M]any agricultural soils in developed countries have been degraded by years of tillage,
synthetic fertilizers, and pesticide residues. Conversion to organic methods on such soils
typically results in an initial decrease in yields, relative to conventional methods, followed
by an increase in yields as soil quality is restored (Badgley et al., 2007, pp. 91-92).
The yields of conventional industrial agriculture are maintained through
intensification. Conventional agriculture draws heavily on inputs such as irrigation and
mineral and fossil fuel-derived fertilizers. Agricultural intensification masks the depletion
of soil resources through the use of external inputs.
The recent intensification of agriculture, and the prospects of future intensification, will
have major detrimental impacts on the nonagricultural terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems of
the world. The doubling of agricultural food production during the past 35 years was associated
with a 6.87-fold increase in nitrogen fertilization, a 3.48-fold increase in phosphorus
fertilization, a 1.68-fold increase in the amount of irrigated cropland, and a 1.1-fold increase
in land in cultivation (Tilman, 1999, p. 5995).
Reliance on many conventional techniques, such as fossil fuel-derived fertilizers,
however, is not sustainable (Uphoff, 2007). It is estimated, for example, that even in highyield
systems over half of the nutrients that crop plants extract from the soil are not replaced
by added fertilizers (Zoebl, 2006).