The expansion of the human population to over seven billion people during the twentieth century was made possible by the enhancement of agricultural yields through innovation. As the world’s population expands towards ten billion, it is continued access to innovation, rather than new land, that will be needed to keep pace with increased food demand. And yet a number of European countries are still setting ambitious targets for an increase in the proportion of organically farmed land, which would reduce yields and rule out the use of land-sparing technologies such as GM and gene edited crops. Of course, people should be free to choose organic food. But policies designed to increase the amount of land under organic production are dangerously misguided because, as the evidence shows, they would make our food supply less safe, less secure and less sustainable, argue Matt Ridley and Daniel Pearsall.  

  
Perhaps by way of a diplomatic olive branch, but in an otherwise clinical and comprehensive dismantling of the case for organic farming as the future of sustainable food production, German agricultural economist Professor Herbert Ströbel recently suggested in the journal Sustainability that organic agriculture “may contribute important technological knowledge for the further development of agriculture.”

Yes, in the same way that the first clunky mobile phones paved the way towards today’s multi-functional, internet-enabled smart phones, that may be true.

But no one is seriously clamouring for a return to mobile phones the size and weight of a house brick, and we should not be contemplating a backwards move towards outdated organic farming principles for the same reason. Because in every aspect of modern life, access to innovation makes our lives better - more efficient, safer and more sustainable.

So, for example, the expansion of the human population to over seven billion people was made possible by the enhancement of yields through innovation.

 

In the nineteenth century, agricultural output expanded primarily by taking more land from nature and bringing it under the plough. In the twentieth century, by contrast, agricultural production expanded mainly by increasing yields. Innovation achieved this. Four crucial technologies made the most difference:

 

• The tractor displaced the horse, freeing an extra 20-25 per cent of land for growing human food rather than horse feed;

 

• Nitrogen fertiliser, synthesised from molecular nitrogen in the air using energy from fossil fuels, displaced the need to produce manure or legumes from other land, or to import guano;

 

• New genetic varieties, especially short-strawed wheat and rice, hybrid maize and faster-growing chickens, gave higher yields from the same inputs;

 

• Chemical pesticides reduced crop losses to competing weeds and pests.

 

As the world’s population expands towards ten billion, it is continued access to innovation, rather than new land, that will be needed to keep pace with increased food demand. There is relatively little extra land that can be farmed easily or productively.

 

Globally, the result of changes in farming practice in the half century between 1960 and 2010 meant that roughly 68 per cent less land was needed to produce a given quantity of food (Ausubel et al. 2013). Thus, more than twice as many people were fed from a similar area of land.

 

Had yields not increased, pressure on wild lands would have become intolerable – or high food prices and mass starvation would have occurred.

 

That’s why increased productivity of farmland has been crucial to nature conservation and environmental improvement. For example, it has been calculated that if the world stopped using herbicide tolerant GM crops, then an extra 762,000 hectares of land would need to be cultivated. Most of this, 53 per cent, would be new land brought into crop production for the first time, including 167,000 hectares of deforestation (Brookes et al. 2017).

And yet a number of European countries are still setting ambitious targets for an increase in the proportion of organically farmed land, which would reduce yields and rule out the use of such land-sparing technologies.  

The EU’s ill-conceived Farm to Fork strategy, already in disarray after MEPs torpedoed its central pledge to halve pesticide use across the bloc, still retains a commitment to increase the share of organic farmland to 25%. Some member states, notably Germany, have gone further, aiming for 30%.

 

Here, the area farmed organically has been steadily declining for the past 15 years, and given its prominence in the media many people might be surprised to learn that organic farming accounts for less than 3% of total UK farmland.

 

But the Soil Association still calls for the UK to exceed Europe’s targets for organic conversion, and in shadow farming minister Daniel Zeichner, widely tipped to take on a ministerial portfolio at Defra under a prospective Labour Government, they appear to have a disciple.

 

Speaking at the Soil Association’s annual trade conference last November, Mr Zeichner said:

 

“I am very excited to hear how the organic sector, which has pioneered much of the shift to nature friendly farming, plans to address some of the inequalities within the food sector and to ensure that organic is relevant to all and benefits everyone in society to broaden its appeal and ensure that the UK can take similar steps to shift to a more organic based food system like some of the European case studies we have heard today.”

In his recent article, Professor Ströbel explains why such a shift would be disastrous for food production, and for the environment.

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He cites data from three separate sources which show that organic farming achieves only about 50% of the yield per hectare of conventional farming, and that twice as much land is needed for organic farming to achieve the same food output.

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He explains how this additional land requirement for organic farming negatively affects greenhouse gas emissions by preventing its availability for uses with higher carbon sequestration and biodiversity value (eg forestry, nature conservation). On this basis, he calculates that conventional farming avoids 3880 kg CO2eq per hectare compared with organic farming, and notes that this figure could be substantially higher if more organic farming results in more food imports:

 

“If the lower yields of organic farming are compensated for by additional imports, the necessary land-use changes take place abroad and often cause significantly higher GHG emissions there, in particular due to the decomposition of large amounts of biomass and the transports required as well as the significantly reduced GHG sequestration due to deforestation.”

 

He calculates that the higher land requirement under organic farming also means that conventional farming supports on average 42% more biodiversity than organic farming.

 

In his conclusion, Professor Ströbel argues that, to be responsible and sustainable, Germany and the rest of Europe must not act at the expense of others by expanding organic farming. He warns that a higher demand for food imports will put pressure on international markets, increase global hunger through rising global food prices, and increase not only greenhouse gas emissions through additional land use changes, but also the loss of biodiversity.

 

But the lessons to be learned are not just about food security and sustainability.

 

The ‘naturalistic fallacy’ which underpins organic beliefs can actually result in food being less safe and more dangerous for human health.

 

Take the recent case of organic tara flour in the United States as an example. The tara plant is a small leguminous tree native to Peru. Its ground seeds were used as an ingredient in organic products sold by Daily Harvest Inc., and the flour was subsequently identified as the likely cause of a food poisoning outbreak in 2022 involving hundreds of US consumers across 39 states.

 

Last month, the US Food and Drug Administration declared that tara flour is not “Generally Recognised As Safe” as a food and banned its use and importation into the United States. But not before 470 people became ill, including 40 who had to have their gallbladders removed.

 

Organic marketeers have worked hard to make the words ‘natural’ and ‘organic’ appear synonymous. But, of course, not everything in nature is harmless, as the tara flour example demonstrates. The same is true of organic products. As Professor Dave Goulson, a biologist at the University of Sussex, recently told The Guardian, “botulinum toxin and cyanide are organic.”

 

And with speculation mounting as to the food-related source of the current Shiga Toxin E. coli outbreak which has sickened more than 100 people in the UK, we recall that Europe’s most deadly food poisoning outbreak in 2011, which affected nearly 4,000 people, killing 53, was ultimately traced to organically grown bean sprouts from a farm in Germany that had been contaminated by a virulent E.coli strain.

 

The scientific evidence indicates that the food safety risks of eating organic food are considerably greater than those of eating non-organic food. This is primarily because organic crop production relies partly on animal faeces as a fertiliser, an obvious vector for potentially lethal pathogens such as E.coli, but also because organic crops can be prone to harmful mycotoxins as a result of inadequate control of crop pests and diseases.

 

As public health expert Professor Paul Hunter warned in 2011: “..organic farms, with all that they entail in terms of not using ordinary chemicals and non-organic fertilisers, carry an extra risk." 

 

Of course, people should be free to choose organic food.

 

But policies designed to increase the amount of land under organic production are dangerously misguided because, as the evidence shows, they would make our food supply less safe, less secure and less sustainable.  

 

Matt Ridley is the author of numerous books on science. He has been a journalist and a businessman and served for nine years in the House of Lords. He lives on a farm in Northumberland. He is a member of the Science for Sustainable Agriculture advisory group.    

 

Daniel Pearsall is an independent consultant specialising in communication and policy development in the farming, food chain and agri-science sectors. He runs a small livestock farm in Scotland. He co-ordinates the Science for Sustainable Agriculture initiative.