So, Is Organic Food Actually More Sustainable? - Consilience ...

So, Is Organic Food Actually More Sustainable?
At Columbia, a culture of heightened environmental consciousness has led to the proliferation of sustainable food options: Meatless Mondays at the dining halls, weekly farmers markets, and active student groups. I myself am heavily involved in this culture of “sustainable” eating, keeping to a plant-based diet and seeking out organic, non-GMO, rainforest-friendly products at the grocery store. Growing up in a liberal, eco-conscious community in Northern California, I was told time and time again that organic food was the most environmentally friendly option. Yet even with this upbringing, I never learned about our food production systems.
Naomi Zimmerman is an Environmental Science and Economics student at Barnard. She is interested in all things related to sustainability and climate justice, including climate refugees and sustainable food systems. She runs a blog about how college students can live more sustainably, and is involved with the Sustainable Initiatives Consulting Board and the Energy and Environment working group of the Roosevelt Institute.
Recently, in my sustainable development class, we learned about conventional versus organic food systems, and the fact that organic food was not always the most sustainable option blew my mind. Despite my efforts to adopt a sustainable diet, I came to realize that I, and many of my peers, do not know much about the sources of our food and their implications for the planet. Rather, we had grown to accept broad generalizations about what a sustainable diet looks like — plant based, organic, and non-GMO.
With such high stakes, we need to look beyond the labels and choose systems of food production that are the most sustainable. For me, this journey starts with the questions: What is organic food? How is it produced? And is it really more sustainable than conventional agriculture?
Organic food is grown without synthetic inputs such as chemical pesticides or synthetic fertilizers. Organic farms instead use natural approaches and fertilizers, such as crop rotation and manure, to control pests, diseases and weeds. This minimizes the exposure of farm workers, consumers, and the environment more broadly to harmful pesticides.
When used in conventional agriculture, pesticides and fertilizers can create a host of environmental issues. Certain pesticides can poison non-target organisms such as birds, fish, and plants, and harm organisms of special ecological importance, such as bees and algae. Pesticides also often contaminate soil as well as surface and groundwater. A United States Geological Service study found that over 90 percent of water and fish samples from streams contained one or more pesticides. Fertilizers that run off into streams and other waterways cause eutrophication—a process in which excess nitrogen and phosphorous buildups lead to algal blooms and excess production of carbon dioxide. The process results in acidic waterways with dead zones, or areas that are so low in oxygen that they kill marine life.
This being said, organic farm practices are not necessarily always the most sustainable option. To control pests and weeds without using pesticides, organic farmers often lay down sheets of black plastic over the soil surrounding their crops. This warms the soil and accelerates the rate of plant growth while preventing erosion. Black plastic also allows the usage of drip irrigation, which lets water drip slowly into the roots of plants, saving water. However, the glaring issue with lining huge swaths of land with single-use plastic is that it creates an immense amount of waste. Biodegradable plastic, a more sustainable alternative, isn’t allowed under United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) organic rules because it contains petroleum.
The overall sustainability of organic agriculture is further complicated when land-use is taken into consideration. Since it does not use synthetic fertilizers or pesticides, organic agriculture has a 25 percent lower crop yield compared to conventional farming. Many organic farms also rely on tilling — stirring up soil by running blades through it — to kill weeds in place of conventional pesticides and herbicides. The resulting loss of topsoil, the most agriculturally productive component of soil, contributes to these lowered yields. In a world that must use finite arable land to feed an ever-growing population, optimizing resources is crucial. A greater demand for agricultural land could incentivize even more deforestation and land clearing, threatening biodiversity and reducing carbon stocks.
On the flip side, just because produce isn’t labeled “organic,” it doesn’t mean it’s not sustainable. Many small or community-based farms grow crops in a way that is just as, if not more, sustainable than “organic” food production. Obtaining the USDA’s organic certification is very expensive and requires going through a heavily bureaucratic process. This can act as a barrier to many small farms, which may not use synthetic pesticides or fertilizers, and may even implement other sustainable practices that go far beyond requirements set by the USDA. For instance, the USDA organic requirements instruct farms to wrap food in plastic, which many smaller farms choose not to do. Small farms also tend to plant more diverse crops compared to conventional industrial agriculture. Additionally, locally sourced food creates less carbon emissions due to reduced transportation distances. Organic doesn’t necessarily equate to being local, and oftentimes the latter choice is more sustainable.
So, it turns out there isn’t a definitive answer to my question. When the costs and benefits are weighed for both organic and conventional agriculture, experts have argued that the most sustainable diet should ideally be sourced from both organic and conventional agriculture, depending on the type of food. Fruit and vegetables, for which nutritional value is the main priority, should be grown organically. Grains and other staple crops, in which caloric density is the main priority, should be grown conventionally. Ultimately, sustainable food production is a tradeoff between optimizing yield and minimizing environmental degradation.
Beyond the way food is produced, a sustainable diet is also about the types of foods we choose to eat. A diet that has the lowest environmental impact is plant-based and made up of local, seasonal foods. Cutting out foods with high GHG emissions, like meat and dairy, is imperative to cutting down your carbon footprint. Buying local isn’t as impactful as changing what types of foods you are buying, as transportation of food only accounts for 6 percent of the climate footprint of food systems — though, if you can, buying produce that is in season from a local farmers market is optimal.
The consumption, or lack thereof, of food is also a major driver of climate change that is often overlooked. Food that is produced but not consumed contributes to 3.3 billion tons of greenhouse gas emissions, making wasted food the third highest emitter of greenhouse gases following the US and China. Whether food was produced using conventional or organic methods is just one component in the complex webs that characterize our food system. Looking beyond labels means engaging more seriously with the environmental costs of our everyday choices, and encourages us to make more holistic and meaningful lifestyle changes.
Agroecology methods on display in the global south also demonstrate food systems far more efficient than western conventional practice. Schools of farming like zero budget natural farming (ZBNF), farmer managed natural regeneration (FMNR) also happen to be organic because it’s cheaper and these societies aren’t rich enough to be inefficient. In the west, regenerative agriculture is taking hold especially as a response to unprecedented harsh conditions: see Charles Massey, Peter Andrews or Dan Barber for write-ups of a few.
You are misled. As a farmer who has traveled extensively in the “global south” with an educated eye I can assure you that outside of,perhaps, New Zealand the US Farmers are the best Farmers around. In terms of pesticide use the “Global South” uses far more toxic pesticides and yet suffers far more crop loss agroecology bonifides or not!
I would encourage the author to engage in further research-specifically around the fossil fuel cost of producing synthetic fertilizer (anhydrous ammonia) and its carbon footprint over time. Conventional practice in most grain production is to use generous amounts of this man-made nitrogen of which the plants can only take up a certain amount, leaving the rest to chemically degrade and evaporate off the field in the form of nitrous oxide, a greenhouse gas 20-80x more powerful than carbon. Not only does organic agriculture sidestep the problems associated with the application of synthetic fertilizers, in terms of long time sustainability organic agriculture sidesteps the extremely dangerous prospect of creating soil that is dependent on a petroleum based product.
In addition, the argument that conventional ag yields higher and is therefore more efficient is mainly due to intensive breeding programs-the same breeding that could have been done for organic seed to be used in organic systems but sadly has been absent in most land grant universities for decades due to the moneyed interests of agribusiness. Also, more recently studies have looked at the nutritional differences between the two systems and found that yield does not reflect quality-organic grains and foods often contain higher nutritional values meaning that eating less of them literally is equal to eating more of the conventional. Lastly, it has been shown that organic systems regularly maintain higher soil organic matter ratios than conventional, and all organic systems are designed to build topsoil, not deplete it, with cover cropping programs and manure application if possible.
I am interested in the comparisons between the two systems because there certainly needs to be more dialogue around food production by consumers-a large population of people who have a lot at stake in the discussion but very little exposure or practice in production agriculture. However, I’m wary of casting further confusion on the Organic label-it truly is the basic standard for consumers to trust and claiming that it may or may not be more ‘sustainable’ clouds the discussion we could be having around long term food production.
I work for a 10,000 organic grain farm in Montana, and being surrounded by chemical wheat-fallow cropping I have first hand knowledge of the environmental and social differences between our systems. Feel free to reach out if you have thoughts or questions-I’m happy to discuss.
Current energy cost in 2019 is 27GJ (gigajoules) per tonne of ammonia-refined from liquid natural gas (contributing to pipelines, oil spills, deforestation etc.)
My point is simply this-study the inputs of the two systems. This is just the fertilizer, there are hundreds of chemicals, more being approved everyday, that are allowable in conventional food production, and many have an energy trail associated with their production.
Try taking a look at the carbon footprint of Chilean nitrate,a common organic fertilizer. Do you have any idea about the increased fuel and carbon cost of transporting and spreading 5 to 10 tons an acre of manure or compost to replace a few hundred pounds of conventional fertilizer? I can assure you the average organic farm fertility practice does not come out looking so sweet!
Please do more research. Explore the realities of agriculture in the US. Pesticides & herbicides have wrecked havoc on the natural world including humans. Dow Chemical et al prefers profits to health. It would be of benefit, especially for children, to have a category of food labelled ‘grown pesticide & herbicide free’. I think you should spend some time with individual growers to get a much clearer understanding of the serious problems besetting American ag.
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Kenneth Moholt Siebert
3 years ago
Nice article, pointing out that simple labels do not tell the whole story. You quote statistics that organic production uses 45% less energy than “conventional”. Not sure how unbiased that statistic is, given the source. My own experience in my vineyard is that there are a number of practices (permanent sod cover in middles of the rows, for example, and pasturing sheep thereon, or leaf removal in the canopy at key times in the season) that are not specifically organic nor conventional, but make big differences in the system. Otherwise, for me, the organic methods tend to use more energy. For example, mildew is a problem in vineyard. Using organic listed materials (which have a shorter efficacy and tend to be bulkier) to control mildew on the whole means more trips through the vineyard burning more diesel and compacting the soil more. As a result, while I use organic methods most of the time (when based upon a careful tracking of disease pressure I can stretch intervals of treatment), I am not puritanical about it, because being puritanical (for me) compromises big picture sustainability goals. To make an analogy with human health, for the most part, good diet and exercise will keep you healthy, but sometimes if you get a nasty bug, antibiotics make sense.
Kenneth, I agree. Let me add that the tillage organic farmers do to reduce weeds is not a sustainable practice. It reduces soil structure and burns diesel fuel. Additionally, organic farmers often rely on a pesticide called stylet oil which is highly refined petroleum. It seems to me to qualify as a synthetic petrochemical. And it’s used two or three times a year in many vineyards and is very far from a sustainable practice.
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Rebekah Page
3 years ago
I honestly skimmed the entire article and I still don’t understand how they can say that organic isn’t the most sustainable….
You grow small batches of healthy foods you sell it all.
Big agriculture systems have acres and acres, of wasted food that could be sent to poorer communities but they don’t, a) for fear of a lawsuit, and b) because it’s better to let it rot and write it off as a loss and get paid because you didn’t sell it at market when the reality is that it never even got put in a bushel.
Big Agriculture will select and choose only the perfect specimens of the foods they grow to send to stores and markets. It’s heavily sprayed with all kinds of crap to keep bugs and blights away.
While organic foods may be odd shaped not look perfect and have blemishes or critter bites in them.
It is not “big ag” that chooses not to sell blemished produce to the supermarket it is the consumer (you and me) that refuse to buy it! As a farmer I can tell you I’d love to sell it all as fresh pack but the market doesn’t allow that. Most culls go to processing in any case so not the issue you seem to think.
I specifically buy blemished and odd shaped fruit and veggie lots from a CSA as do many, if articles written on the subject are a reflection. Food waste is one of the most that startling realities of our time, and one that has its hands in any number of issues, from hunger all the way to climate.
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Manu
3 years ago
Great discussion Naomi
Also check out
Institute for responsible technology
Wonder what you thinks of their research?
And of course EWG
Thanks for your work!!!!!
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Vasuki
3 years ago
This is a misleading article. Organic farming is usually done with multi crop patterns and crop rotations. Please read the books by Dr. Vandana Shiva to learn about sustainable organic farming. If people reduce food wastage and meat intake, it can have huge impact on sustainable farming.
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Stevewfromford
3 years ago
First the author should define “sustainable”. Only then can one determine if one system or another more closely fits the requirements.
As a lifelong large scale organic farmer I do not believe I could reasonably conclude that organic is more likely to prevail in a per unit of yield basis although it is getting closer due to all the innovation going on.
In any case all of agriculture has a 9000 year history of constantly increasing yields so how is that not sustainable? You seem like a concerned young lady so my advice is to go get your hands dirty and work for a year each on a large organic farm as well as a large conventional farm growing similar crops in a similar climate. Far too complex to understand merely from a classroom!
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Mona
3 years ago
Not everyone that is organic uses black plastic. Those that do often use it more than once. Also there are other row cover choices that organic farms often use as well as other methods entirely.
Nothing is black and white, not everyone is looking for the label organic exclusively. Many of us make relationships with local farmers that can’t afford to pay for the label and still use those growing practices. Also, not everyone uses tiling that does organic sustainable growing, but conventional farming does.
It feels like the research for this article was too academic and not enough getting off campus and going to talk with actual sustainable growers about what they are doing.
And finally, the decision isn’t solely about the product but also about its impact on the enviroment. Conventional farming is horrible for the enviroment with the poisons sprayed, soil erosion, runoff, monocrops etc…
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Troy Masterson
3 years ago
Management is the key. We can grow more nutritious food without chemical fertilizers or chemicals. Example Gabe Brown, farmer in north dakota. Also cattle can be managed in a way to sequester carbon and produce more nutritious beef. Examples Greg Judy, White Oak Pastures, and Allen Williams. These are just a few. We need to promote regenerative agriculture which will improve our soils and water holding capacity. It will take a complete paradigm shift but agriculture can be the solution. Management is the key. Not technology.
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Shawn
3 years ago
This article makes some interesting points. I would strongly encourage the author to visit farmers who are involved in regenerative type farming. She suggests using manure for crop production and soil fertility but at the same time downplays the role animals have in a balanced farm i.e. eliminating consumption of meat and dairy. Animals are an integral part of a vibrant ecology. There are no plant sources that can provide us the same amount of protein along with essential trace minerals.
We farm organically but will never seek to be labelled or licensed as such because of restrictions on commonsense as well as the fact that the labels don’t guarantee the best that we can produce.
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Angela White
3 years ago
Wow! Strange how you never mentioned that the pesticides used in “Conventional” Industrial farming is killing people! It’s been PROVEN to cause Cancer and potionally many other diseases! At no time should we give in to Big AG, and their UNTESTED DEADLY CHEMICALS, who only CARE about PROFIT, not the lives of Americans!! Was Monsanto in your college, or are you connected to a Chemical company in any way?
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John Gatesby
3 years ago
Noami, you wrote excellent article and keep it up. i would like to say Using renewable power and decreasing waste are featured prominently within the media, dominating the popular environmental discourse and leaving food techniques sorely overpassed. But in my sustainable development magnificence, I Was surprised to be told that food techniques are the largest contributor to environmental degradation. The production, transportation, and intake of meals on a planet containing over 7 billion people is extremely carbon in depth. Agriculture contributes to a 3rd of the global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions because of land conversion. Additionally, international food output is predicted to double via 2050.
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William S
2 years ago
To begin with, I really liked this article, it came across as unbiased with points from both sides, I will give a full disclosure that I did not source check the statistics/statements.
However as a biochemistry major student, who has done subjects in genetics (admittedly not as a major/minor) I’m wondering why you didn’t continue to talk about GMOs (genetically modified organisms). While I understand there is a prejudice against GMOs, my understanding is that they can have a greater nutritional value and are able to grow in a wider variety of environments (important as the climate changes and growth environments change).
There is of course an issue of “Big Companies” claiming copyright over certain genetic sequences which provides an unfair monopoly over the industry (looking at you Monsanto, you evil expletive). Despite this being a major issue in terms of global corporatism and capitalism, it’s not in of itself an argument against GMOs as a sustainable alternative crop, regardless if they are grown using organic or conventional measures (yes, being a GMO will of course mean that they cannot be considered organic, however that does not mean they cannot be grown using organic methods if they prove to be more sustainable).
My question boils down to; Why did you leave out a discussion of GMOs after mentioning at the start of the article that you believed that GMO-free meant more sustainable? By not addressing that statement, you are implying, intentionally or otherwise, that you’re initial belief is correct.
For an otherwise great article, I do feel like that is quite an oversight, and potentially in future articles you may want to consider addressing all points you bring up, or only mentioning those which you plan on discussing, because by ignoring GMOs it felt like you left the conversation unfinished.
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Mikel
2 years ago
I encourage everyone to checkout the documentary Kiss the Ground. Meat doesn’t have to be a problem, and in fact is a huge part of the solution. Also the premise that organic farms yeild less seems unlikely if the people actually know what they’re doing.
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Vasuki
2 years ago
Reduce 30% of food which is wasted.
Reduce red meat, which is damaging to the environment and health.
Eat more local food.
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Mike
2 years ago
Organic fertilizer manure also runs off into rivers etc.
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Charlie
2 years ago
You article didn’t address your thoughts on why non-GMO was more sustainable than GMO. Wouldnt a combination of GMO stock and organic agricultural techniques increase yield and reduce the impact of pesticides?
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