Because food matters

A spate of recent reports has drawn attention to the alarming extent to which chemical pesticides have contaminated our food chain including...

A spate of recent reports has drawn attention to the alarming extent to which chemical pesticides have contaminated our food chain including water sources. The time has come to give more attention to the alternative of organic farming which can provide a permanent solution to the threat of chemical poisoning of food and water. Those who have insisted that organic agriculture cannot produce enough food have been steadily losing ground.

In 1989 the US Department of Agriculture, regarded by many as an influential promoter of chemical-intensive farming, issued a path-breaking report which admitted that organic farms are as productive as those where pesticides and synthetic fertilisers are used. This report concluded that the wider adoption of organic farming would result in 8216;8216;ever increasing economic benefits to farmers and environmental gain to the nation.8217;8217;

At the 290-hectare crop-livestock farm of Glen and Rex Spray in Ohio, USA, no herbicides were applied for over 15 years nor fertilisers purchased since 1971. Yet in the 1981-85 period, compared to the country average this farm had 32 per cent higher yields of maize, 40 per cent higher yields of soybeans and 22 per cent higher yields of oats.

Cuba provides an outstanding example of a nation that succeeded in moving from a chemical intensive agriculture to an ecology friendly approach.

Peter Rosset writes that in many cases, peasant farmers had remembered old methods and reapplied them. 8216;8216;In almost every case,8217;8217; Rosset says, 8216;8216;they said they had done two things: remembered the old techniques 8212; like intercropping and manuring 8212; that their parents and grandparents had used before the advent of modern chemicals, simultaneously incorporating biopesticides and biofertilisers into their production practices. Incidentally, many of them commented on the noticeable drop in acute pesticide poisoning incidents on their crops since 19898217;8217;.

In a paper published in 1999, Jules Pretty analysed 45 non-chemical agricultural initiatives spread across 17 African countries. From these, some 730,000 farming households have substantially improved their food production and food security. In 95 per cent of the projects where yield increases were the aim, cereal yields have improved by 50-100 per cent. Total farm food production has increased overall.

Dr Miguel Altieri, agro-ecology expert at the University of California recently estimated that there are already about 5 million hectares of farms being recuperated through ecological methods by two and a half million families around the world.

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The case for organic farming becomes stronger if we also keep in mind the need to protect birds, butterflies and other forms of life. They have been innocent victims of the spraying of chemical poisons. Organic farming will protect the health of human beings and of countless other species as well.