Though organic foods are dear to the heart of environmentalists, health freaks and many literate consumers, there is always the nagging doubt whether to day's world can support the entire population of 6 billion plus with organic foods. The logistics are nightmarish with limitations on the production infrastructure, doubts about the yield potential and the monitoring and certification facilities that can ensure that the products are in strict compliance with well laid down standards for such foods. There are many experts who feel that world has no other alternative but to switch over to organic food cultivation in the long run as the present agricultural system is not considered sustainable. Here is the view from an expert in this area.
"Yield is a tricky topic, especially if you have an agenda. I know this from our own farming: You can look at yield a lot of different ways. When a study says that conventional farms produce more per acre than organic farms, they're talking about yield, not total output. Yield is generally defined by economists as yield for a particular crop. When you farm in a monoculture, that's easy to measure. But when you farm organically, you grow several different crops. So your yield per individual crop is lower, but your total output of caloric foods is higher". "Yes. The TOTAL CALORIC yield on an organic farm far surpasses a conventional farm. That's on every credible study out there. That's not even an issue. Let's talk about grain. Because if you're talking about feeding the world, it's really about grain. Now, if you're an organic corn farmer, by definition, you can't grow corn every year. You have to get nitrogen back in the soil. So you'll grow corn, and then you'll grow a legume, and so you'll fix the nitrogen and improve the soil structure. Now, if you're a conventional farmer, you're growing just corn and nothing else but corn. So you might look at this system and say the conventional farmer got more corn. But what that doesn't show is that the organic farmer also got soybeans, switchgrass, vetch, alfalfa ...So an organic farm will absolutely yield less corn, but that doesn't mean you're yielding less food. It just means you're producing less corn. Well, there are a couple of reasons. The main reason is that it's bred for yield. If you're breeding a tomato -- or a carrot, or a sheep to produce lamb -- you can choose from a lot of characteristics". "The characteristic of choice for the last 40 years has been yield. The second characteristic is: How long can it travel? How long can it last on a supermarket shelf or in your refrigerator? When you're breeding for those characteristics, well, those are the characterisitics you're going to get. It has almost nothing to do with farming, actually. It's all about breeding. The second issue is that conventionally raised produce takes a long time to get to you, so the flavor diminishes. And they're picking fruits and vegetables when they're not ripe. In a small local system, they're generally picking it the day before they go to market. Another factor is that conventional farming relies on chemical additions to the soil. These boost yield, but do nothing to boost flavor. You get flavor from flavinoids, and you get flavinoids from biologically diverse soil -- this means there are nutrients in the soil that are feeding the plant, as it's being grown, and you're tasting that. With animals, too, conventional systems aim for the greatest yield. So we're raising animals in the cheapest possible way, and that includes feeding them really cheaply. When you're feeding corn to a pig that normally thrives on a diverse diet, or to a sheep that's naturally an herbivore, you're going to get flavors that are really dumbed down".
Basically the farmers have to move away from mono culture practice to a regime that will accommodate multi culture cultivation to ensure the fertility of the soil. Such a move is expected to address the concerns regarding lower yields in organic food production. Integrated farming, proven to be self sustaining, is yet to take roots in many countries and the economic viability of farming can be significantly improved through such systemic changes.
V.H.POTTY
http://vhpotty.blogspot.com/
http://foodtechupdates.blogspot.com
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