University of Vaasa - Vaasan yliopisto

unacknowledged. Pesticide use, for example, can lead to health problems in the
farmer, resulting in fewer productive working hours.
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They also include the vicious circle of chemical use known as the ‘treadmill’ effect
(Myers 1999). Research has revealed that overuse of herbicides and pesticides can
induce resistance in pests, weeds and diseases. Also, as pesticide use increases, rather
than the target pest being killed, friendly organisms such as earthworms which
improve soil quality, and bird species, which would otherwise have eaten many of
the pests, are destroyed instead (Pretty 2005; Myers 1999; OTA 2007). So, even
though yields may improve temporarily, these levels are not sustainable and may
even fall over the longer term due to loss of fertility of the soil, and consequent crop
failures. Organic farming has also been shown to make land easier to plough and
help crops to sustain periods of drought better (Eyhorn et al. 2007). In contrast,
conventional farming leads to the death of helpful bacteria, makes soil acidic and
leads to the erosion of topsoil. One study showed that organic fields had eight more
inches of topsoil than their chemical-using neighbours and organic bio-sensitive
farming produced six inches more topsoil over a fifty year period – sixty times faster
than would otherwise have been expected (OTA 2007).
The need to compensate for soil infertility means that farmers are driven to buy ever
rising quantities of chemicals - whose upwardly-mobile prices are set by increasingly
powerful international suppliers (Glin et al 2006). In some parts of India agricultural
chemicals are estimated to take up to 60% of the farmer's production budget
(www.peopletree.co.uk). Most small farmers in developing countries have to take
loans to fund the costs of chemicals, the interest rates on which are high, sometimes
over 30% (Eyhorn et al 2007). In many cases they are not able to pay back these
loans and get trapped in an increasing spiral of debts. One Indian NGO (DEEP)
estimated that the economic depravity caused by use of pesticides led to 40,000
farmers committing suicide in just one Indian state, Punjab, between 1990-2007
(www.defendersofpanjab.org), resulting in a potentially large value loss both for the
industry and society.
For organic farmers on the other hand, there is considerable potential for value
addition, the result of not falling prey to the vicious cycle of non-organic methods;
they use fewer chemicals and can also obtain a price premium on the organic crop
(Pawar 2007; Eyhorn et al 2007; EJF 2007; Glin et al 2006). In fact our study
identified value addition opportunities that are currently being missed. For example,
rotation crops, such as clover, which are used in organic farming to break the pest
lifecycle, could themselves be sold as an organic crop (Eyhorn et al 2007).
Studies have also shown that after an initial fall, organic yields can go up
substantially to almost the same levels as conventional crops (Pawar 2007: Eyhorn et
al 2007). Other studies suggest that they could even be up to 21% higher (Blaise
2006). And, even though there appears to be a widespread belief that labour costs are
higher, organic farms in fact tend to use between 40% and 65% less labour for pest
management, while the labour hours needed for weeding and applying fertilizers is
about the same (Eyhorn et al. 2007; Allwood, Laursen, de Rodriguez and Bocken
2006). Variable production costs have been estimated to be 13-20% lower in the case
of organic cotton; thus gross margins would be higher, even without the price
premium that organic crops command (Eyhorn et al 2007 ) (Table 5). Overall,