{"id":57281,"date":"2021-03-27T15:38:53","date_gmt":"2021-03-27T20:38:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=57281"},"modified":"2021-03-27T15:38:53","modified_gmt":"2021-03-27T20:38:53","slug":"can-organic-farming-feed-the-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=57281","title":{"rendered":"Can organic farming feed the world?"},"content":{"rendered":"<header class=\"entry-header\">\n<h3 class=\"entry-title\"><a href=\"https:\/\/smallfarmfuture.org.uk\/2021\/03\/can-organic-farming-feed-the-world\/\">Can organic farming feed the world?<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/header>\n<div class=\"entry-content\">\n<p>I discuss various aspects of so-called \u2018alternative\u2019 agriculture at some length in Chapter 6 of\u00a0<em>A Small Farm Future<\/em><sup>1<\/sup>, and I don\u2019t intend to retrace many of those steps here. But there\u2019s a couple of further things I do want to say in this blog cycle. Here, I\u2019ll focus on organic farming.<\/p>\n<p>On page 125 (and also page 150) of my book I cite a 2007 study by Catherine Badgley and co-authors<sup>2<\/sup>, one of whom is Jahi Chappell who sometimes comments here, so I\u2019m hoping he might weigh in with his thoughts on this post. Their paper suggests that organic agriculture based on biological fixation of nitrogen is capable of meeting global food demands without reliance on industrial synthesis of nitrogenous fertiliser (from now on in this post I\u2019m going to use the symbols N to refer to plant-available nitrogen, BNF to refer to biological (or \u2018organic\u2019) nitrogen fixation and SNF to refer to synthetic\/industrial nitrogen fixation). Interestingly, the Badgley paper also suggest that while organic yields in rich countries are typically lower than their \u2018conventional\u2019 counterparts, the opposite is often the case in poor countries, a point to which I\u2019ll return.<\/p>\n<p>Since the publication of my book, I\u2019ve become aware of various papers by Professor David Connor critiquing the Badgley paper, and more generally the notion that it\u2019s feasible to feed the world without SNF. Although I identify with organic\/alternative agriculture and have never used synthetic N in my own farming, I don\u2019t take an absolutely purist line about it in relation to the global food system. If SNF is necessary in some circumstances, I\u2019m not going to lose sleep over it. Still, SNF is an energy-intensive business requiring a complex industrial infrastructure&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n<p>chris smaje, small farm future, organic farming, organic food production, organic agriculture, food production<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Can organic farming feed the world? I discuss various aspects of so-called \u2018alternative\u2019 agriculture at some length in Chapter 6 of\u00a0A Small Farm Future1, and I don\u2019t intend to retrace many of those steps here. But there\u2019s a couple of further things I do want to say in this blog cycle. Here, I\u2019ll focus on [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,7],"tags":[15683,1912,10124,6013,21016,9738],"class_list":["post-57281","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment","category-survival-2","tag-chris-smaje","tag-food-production","tag-organic-agriculture","tag-organic-farming","tag-organic-food-production","tag-small-farm-future"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57281","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=57281"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57281\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":57282,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57281\/revisions\/57282"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=57281"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=57281"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=57281"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}