Will Switching to Organic Food Help the Poor?

United Nations researchers told a conference on Saturday that a large scale shift to organic food will not only help the environment; the switch may also help feed the poor.

Even though organic food is still considered a 'luxury' that only wealthy people can afford on a daily basis, a large scale global shift to organic food may help in the fight against worldwide hunger.

Researchers found that the initial yield of crops would drop roughly 50 percent when industrialized, conventional agricultures use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides are converted to more organic fertilizers. These researchers said this drop in crop production usually evens out over time, but this is one reason the push to a more wider use of organic farming has been placed on the sideline.

Researchers in Denmark discovered that the sub-Saharan Africa food supply would not be overly harmed if half of the land used for agriculture in Europe and North America were switched to organic agriculture by the year 2020.

This study found that while food production would fall, and the price of food would increase, these negative results could be off-set by land improvements and other benefits.

Niels Halberg, a senior scientist at the Danish Research Center for Organic Food and Farming, spoke at the the U.N. conference on "Organic Agriculture and Food Security", about how converting the sub-Saharan Africa farms to organic production could possibly help the hungry people in this region because they would have to rely less on importing foods from other countries.

This study indicates that if farmers went back to the old, traditional ways of farming; these farmers would save money and they would be able to grow more diverse crops because they would not have to purchase expensive chemicals and fertilizers for their fields. The report for this study went on to say that once a farmer is able to certify his crop as organic; this means the farmer would also be able to export any surplus crops for premium prices.

The researchers plugged in data on projected crop yields and commodity prices until 2020 to create models for the most optimistic and conservative outlooks.

Alexander Mueller, assistant director-general of the Rome-based U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization, praised this report because projections indicate the number of people that will go hungry in sub-Saharan Africa is expected to grow. Mr. Mueller went on to say that because the effects of climate change are mostly likely going to hurt the world's poorest, and hungriest, people; a shift to organic farming would be a benefit in helping these people.

Nadia El-Hage Scialabba, an FAO official who organized the conference, said other studies show that organic farming may be able to produce enough food per capita to feed the current population of the world.

Ms. Scialabba said some models do indicate organic agriculture has the potential to secure a global food supply just as current chemical and pesticide farming does today, but organic farming would have a much lower impact on the environment.

Ms. Scialabba was quick to point out these studies were only economic models. Ms. Scialabba also said that organic farming is now used on a commercial level in 120 countries, and this type of farming represented a $40 billion dollar market last year.

One such study, by the University of Michigan, found that a global shift to organic agriculture would yield at least 2,641 kilocalories per person per day, just under the world's current production of 2,786, and as many as 4,381 kilocalories per person per day, researchers reported. A kilocalorie is one "large" calorie and is known as the "nutritionist's calorie."

The definition of organic farming, as defined by the United Nations, is "holistic" farming that avoids the use of synthetic fertilizers and pesticides, reduces pollution, and increases the health of plants, animals and people.

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