Everyone in the group is discussing some chunk of the organic/local vs conventional agriculture movement today. My topic is the yield difference between the two. To begin with, the yield in organic farms has been found to be roughly 25% lower than conventional. This comes as a meta study (research compiling many different articles) from Stanford University and has limitations, admitting that the lower yield varies by plant, by area, by practices, etc. Two papers that help explain this pretty well are: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v485/n7397/full/nature11069.html%3FWT.ec_id=NATURE-20120510 and http://holisticmanagement.org/blog/organic-v-conventional-the-yield-debate/ . Unfortunately, I should immediately say that anyone looking into this needs to look at both sides of the argument to really understand it as few people do so anymore. Secondly, readers should also remember that every writer, scientific or otherwise is biased in some way, including my own, derived from being a sustainability sciences major.

I tried to find individual case studies showing both conventional surpassing organic and organic surpassing conventional (or at least comparing) and was on able to find the latter. There is not a lack of data, it is a lack of good Google skill in myself. The articles I did find are http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=4431524 and http://d3n8a8pro7vhmx.cloudfront.net/ofa/pages/98/attachments/original/1391404186/Organic-Agriculture-Can-Feed-the-World-OFA.pdf?1391404186 . If nothing else these articles should all show that the argument between conventional and organic is more complex than one is better than the other, always and by a lot. There are arguments about the slow improvements in soil using organic (thus slowly improving yield), increasing investment in learning and educating best practices for organic as was done for conventional, and organics superior ability to withstand weather extremes which are expected to be more common through global climate change (if one agrees to that. All I’ll say on that topic is that the http://keelingcurve.ucsd.edu makes it seem clear there are drastic increases in co2 since the industrial revolution). Even accounting for all of these conventional agriculture may produce more and a main argument to support it is that the high cost and slightly lower output of organic is not enough to supply the world’s growing population. The world is expected to reach 9 billion by 2050 and either continue growing or level off there, and the US is a major food producer that trades and donates (USAID) large amounts of food to other countries. Can we produce the amounts needed to supply both ourselves and those we currently supply internationally (if recommend glancing over my blog yesterday to also see the animal aspect to this, especially important as the world develops and tries to move towards the high protein western diet)? Both conventional and organic can be large scale even though few think of organic as such, and both can use pesticides with organic being limited to natural ones (caffeine, bt, sulfur). People who say either is outright better are simplifying things too much, so please stop and think about what aspects each side brings to the table and at what costs. Personally I feel both are valuable and necessary moving forward and perhaps when both improve in their sciences one may become obsolete, but right now we need to ensure we can produce and people desire both cheap and high protein food which requires quantities that leave us relying on conventional. We also have slow growth in organic and sciences behind this movement with an easier low cost input system that can be adapted to poorer areas (i.e., developing countries) and which builds nutrients in the soil instead of stripping them. I believe organic or something similar will grow and needs to for long term agricultural sustainability and feasibility, but at this moment we can’t survive a sudden switch to all organic and shouldn’t try to take that course. I want organic or an idealistic organic to be the solution, but that will have to be a slow move if a complete shift is ever be possible.