Can Organic Food Save the World?

When you buy an organic food or beverage product at the local supermarket, you can feel good about a few things. You can take pride in the fact that you’re helping to improve your health by buying food that hasn’t been sprayed with pesticides or pumped full of additives. You can also know that you’re supporting a practice that’s better for the planet. And, it turns out, you’re also staking your claim that organic food and farming may be the only way to feed every person on the planet.

This recent article online for The Atlantic takes aim at the food industry, particularly those who are a part of it that claim the organic way of food and farming do not offer a way to scale in order to feed more people. The author argues otherwise, stating that time and again, research shows organic systems are capable of feeding everyone, especially in places where famine and hunger are rife. Says Barry Estabrook:

“There isn’t enough land to feed the nine billion people” is one tired argument that gets trotted out by the anti-organic crowd…. That assertion ignores a 2007 study led by Ivette Perfecto, of the University of Michigan, showing that in developing countries, where the chances of famine are greatest, organic methods could double or triple crop yields.

Marvelous. As Estabook goes on to assert, if conventional methods are so much better, then why are one billion people today without access to enough food? Perhaps organic farming should be given a chance en masse to not just make us healthier, but to give a lot of people a chance to eat at all.

Of course, this debate may rage on, and while it does, many people continue to bring about the change they wish to see in the world. As organic food options become more ubiquitous for us (the developed world), then the lessons learned of scaling it will come in handy when the resources and will are available to export these options to other, developing parts of the world. And, much like technology skipped a step (in some countries, individuals have cell phones with never having first had a land line), then maybe the shortcomings of conventional, mass-produced food won’t need to be experienced.

That kind of rapid acceptance and acceleration of a better way truly improves the quality of life for everyone.

What do you think?

Should more be done to provide farmers in other countries the resources to farm organically? And are organic options the best bet for feeding the entire planet? Leave your thoughts in the comments below.