At a recent conference at Michigan State’s Agricultural Research station, I observed ongoing research that may help future farmers make choices among the many types of soil management practices. A guiding principle is that Ag policy too often encourages destructive farming practices, and we should be looking for ways to help farmers become the “white hat guys” in the climate story, which is what they want to be.
The message from the Midwest is clear: Chemical-intensive, industrial-scale farming is vulnerable to spells of hot, dry weather—some of the very conditions we can expect to become common as the climate warms. In my last post, I argued that the solution to this problem favored by US policymakers—to keep industrial agriculture humming along with novel seeds engineered for “drought tolerance”—probably won’t work.
What might? I think the answer lies outside of some Monsanto-funded university lab and right beneath our feet: in the dirt. Or, more, accurately, in how farmers manage their dirt.
A while back, I wrote about this 2012 Naturepaper comparing the productivity of organic and industrial ag systems. The study found that on average, industrial systems produce crop yields on average 25 percent higher than organic ones. (I took issue with some of the assumptions behind that conclusion here.) But under conditions of extreme weather, things change:
Soils managed with organic methods have shown better water-holding capacity and water infiltration rates and have produced higher yields than conventional systems under drought conditions and excessive rainfall.
In other words, organically managed soils deal with water better—both in conditions of drought and heavy storms (the frequency of which is also expected to increase as the climate changes). Soil rich in organic matter (well-decayed remnants of plants and other living creatures) bolster soil in weather extremes by helping store water in times of scarcity and by holding together and not eroding away during heavy rains.
And why would organically managed soils contain more organic matter? It quite likely has to do with the ways conventional and organic farmers feed the soil.
If you’re a conventional farmer, you probably fertilize annually with synthetic nitrogen fertilizer in the form of anhydrous ammonia. This is isolated plant food, free of any organic matter. (It’s the equivalent of taking a vitamin pill—pure nutrients without actual food.) The only organic matter your soil gets comes from the crop residues that you leave in your field. This brings the advantage of convenience—crop nutrients come from tanks that can efficiently be sprayed on to fields. And it also gives crops a quick jot of ready-to-use nitrogen.
If you’re an organic farmer, you don’t have the luxury of blasting your soil with straight nitrogen. To replenish nutrients, you have to have physical stuff that contains nitrogen bound up in organic matter—think compost and manure. You can also grow legume cover crops that trap nitrogen from the air and deliver it to the roots of plants in a form that can be taken into the soil. In this case, too, you’re adding a nice dose of organic matter along with nitrogen, in the form of the plants that rot in the ground when the cover crops does. And, like conventional farmers, you get the benefit of crop residues left in the field.
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Now, this insight doesn’t mean that our food security depends on the farmers who manage the Midwest’s vast corn and soy fields converting to organic immediately, complete with USDA certification. But it does mean that these farmers have something important to learn from organic farming: that feeding the soil means much more than lashing it with isolated nitrogen. It also requires judicious use of manure, much more focus on compost, crop diversification (no more rotations of just corn and soy), and a new dedication to winter-season cover-cropping. Without diving into the wonky depths of agricultural economics, I can say for sure that none of this will happen without a serious nudge from US farm policy.
Here is my modest proposal, which will not make it into the once-in-five years farm bill now being debated in Congress, but may look attractive down the road as climate change proceeds apace: Stop using farm policy to prod farmers to grow as much corn, soy, and a few other commodities as possible, as is being done now and for the foreseeable future, and start subsidizing them based on how much carbon they store in their soil. As the Rodale results show, crop yields will take care of themselves as the Midwest’s soils gain organic matter.
In short, a climate-ready agriculture system will not likely arrive gift-wrapped in the form of a silver-bullet technology from the ag-biotech industry. Rather, if we achieve it, it will be because we figured out how to convince farmers en masse to use their land to sponge up carbon.
The very basic detail left out of the organic/industrial debate is that in the industrial system (like most to all industrial systems) there are a heck of a lot of externalized costs: fertilizer run-offs causing dead zones in rivers and oceans, weakening ecosystems by the use of pesticides, the depletion of resources such as natural gas, oil, and phosphorus, soil salinization and depletion (we’re slowly killing and letting unbelievably fertile areas blow away), and the subsidization of the industry has destroyed the small farming industry both in the States and in the world.
This ignores the global experiment of GMO crops – we have no idea about the long-term ramifications of that.
So, you have all that one one hand, plus a 25% greater yield. Big freaking whoop. And most of that 25% gets wasted on ethanol and the absurdity of corn syrup.
On the organic side, the emphasis is placed on building up the natural systems. Soil health is greatly increased, there is no pollutive run-off, water retention in the soil is increased, and natural wildlife expands (creating a healthier ecosystem, which increases crop strength).
This should be a no-brainer, except when you factor in money. Everything is about making as much profit as fast as possible – so our agricultural system is extractive instead of sustainable. It can’t last, and it won’t last. The only question is if we’re wise enough to realize that in time.
I don’t buy the 25 percent yield difference.
On yield difference, it depends on the system used and crop grown. Staple monocrops do have a very high yield in an industrial system – but again it’s a matter of destroying future productivity for present productivity. It’s the scale of the thing – it’s not easy to grow organically. A lot more effort and attention has to go into it. Industrial involves several sprays, planting, watering, and harvesting, and little other fuss (at least compared to organic) – the crops are modified to grow in extremely tight spaces and have a degree of pest and drought resistance.
If we’re talking just wheat, corn, and soybeans – it’s hard to argue that the current system isn’t efficient at maximizing yields. But beyond the long-term negative effects of the industrial system, the Western diet as a whole is too staple crop dependent (including the meat fed by monocrops). We should be eating a much more diverse diet.
If you took one acre and built an aquaponics greenhouse, this would slaughter the productivity of that same acre under an industrial monoculture. Permaculture advocates say that a peramculture forest is much higher yielding than industrial farming.
On a per dollar basis, organic farmers are much more successful than industrial farmers per acre – but this kind of ignores the fact a niche market will yield a higher price.
The “green revolution” is about industrial agriculture. We can’t knock what it has accomplished. But I think it’s like everything else we’re doing – everything is about making as much money as quickly as possible. It has no thought about the future (or very little thought), it only cares about the present. Such a system is built to fail at some future point.
In fact it’s not hard at all to argue the 25% yield difference.
1. These studies are a snapshot; we need a movie. This snapshot doesn’t show very well that while chemical ag yield potentials and nutrient content are in decline because of soil compaction, poisons, repeated but limited “fertilization” (actually destroying soil fertility) and the blowback effects of all those externalities, organic ag. done well continually replenishes and improves soil, leading to long-term increases both on and off the farm. Hippies who started organic farming in the 50s, 60s and 70s not really having any idea what they were doing have learned and have yielded to farmers who know lots more about how to do it well. The cross-fertilization of chemical farmers going organic has helped as organic has gotten mainstream, and the increased mutual help has also helped. Meanwhile, only ever-increasing amounts and toxicity of applied fertilizers and pesticides have kept chemical ag. yields high, and sooner or later this boom will bust. We may be seeing it now as fragile and unhealthy soils give out in the heat, less able to sustain life because of poorer tilth and soil biology. Chemical ag is stealing from both the past (soil legacy) and the future (fertility) while organics are preserving the past and enhancing the future. No contest.
2. The Organic people had one hand tied behind their back–the permaculture hand. Permaculture is a design system typically using created ecological communities to replace fertilizers and biocides; it also leans heavily on perennials (less tilling so lower GHGs, longer productive seasons, less labor once established…) and is pioneering the agriculture of the future (as well as the deep past), food forests.
Jane Mt. Pleasant of Cornell has shown that using even a simple ecological community, or permaculture guild like the 3 sisters can increase total calories produced per acre by 20% over monocultures. The 3 sisters are corn, beans and squash grown together so the beans grow up the cornstalks and fix nitrogen for the corn, while the squash attracts a wider array of insects so pests are kept down, while it spreads and shades the ground, retaining moisture and reducing weeds.
Local organic permaculture, the food, fiber and materials production system of the future, has hardly begun to show its potential.
Reblogged this on Alternativo21.
Accuweather has a video up on the drought. It shows the North Platte River being completely dry at this time:
http://www.accuweather.com/en/weather-news/more-than-half-of-us-counties/68840