Economic Costs
Increased production costs
To address increased production costs, two best management practices will be looked at: weed control for crops and exclusion fencing for livestock.
Weeds crowd and choke crops, steal nutrients and water, and contaminate harvests. They must be controlled or crop yields will suffer. In regards to organic crop farming, weed control is the primary challenge1, 2. Pesticides are off-limits and there are few other viable options; crop rotation, drip irrigation (which focuses water delivery to crops, limiting how much weeds get), and even manually pulling them by hand come nowhere near the efficiency of traditional chemical pesticides. The organic method analyzed for the purposes of cost comparing is mechanical tilling.
Mechanical tilling involves plowing the field, disking (a disc is an implement that consists of one or two rows of steel discs that chops the ground as it’s pulled), dragging (dragging involves pulling a harrow – an implement with a rigid frame with attached chains or teeth – which breaks up clumps of soil), and cultivating (a cultivator is an implement that is used to stir and pulverize the soil). These processes dig up any weeds present, chop them up, and push them under the soil to be used as nutrients for the crops. These processes cost about $90 an acre, not counting the increased costs necessary to put nutrients back into the fields that are loss through increased erosion2.
Chain harrow
Conventional practices utilize no-till farming, which involves a ‘burn-down’ of the field with doses of pesticides. Even with the necessary increased pesticide use due to resistant weeds, prices come to about $50 an acre2. Compared to organic production, this method saves the farmer about $40 an acre.
A best management practice associated with livestock farming is stream exclusion. Grazing livestock can cause large amounts of damage to streams and waterways – they can overgraze on plants leading to erosion as well as contribute to nitrogen and phosphorus runoff in their waste. Therefore, it makes sense to erect a boundary between grazing land and a stream.
The boundary is typically fencing. Livestock fencing runs somewhere around a dollar a foot and, depending on how long the waterway is, could cost several thousand dollars for a stream3. However, since the animals are now excluded from the stream, an alternate water source must be found. Regularly, this is done by digging a well and installing automatic livestock watering systems. Wells are another variable expense since cost depends on how deep one must be dug. Typically, though, they cost a few thousand dollars4. Livestock watering systems cost a few hundred dollars5.
Sheep excluded from a creek bed Cattle field with a free water source
In Virginia, there is cash and tax incentives that will help pay for best management practices such as this. For this type of scheme, the state will help pay up to 75% of the costs and provide a 25% tax credit on whatever is left to be paid6. However, even with this assistance, this scheme could still end up costing several thousand dollars over the conventional method’s cost – nothing.
Decreased yields
There is some disagreement as to whether crops suffer a loss of production or not in organic systems. For instance, some studies have shown that yields can be equal or better in organic production7, 8. However, most studies conclude that there is a reduction and this seems to be the general consensus of agriculture experts to date9, 10, 11, and 2. And the reductions tend to be very significant – the studies mentioned here had yield reductions from about 10-40% for a number of common crops. Weeds – and the difficulty in controlling them in organic systems – tended to explain most of the yield losses.
Livestock also see similar reductions in yields. Grass-fed steers, when compared to traditional grain-fed steers, tended to grade lower (i.e. Select) and produce 15-20% less meat. In addition, it takes about 24% longer for grass-fed steers to reach finishing weight12.
Clearly, if less food is being produced, then its prices will be higher13. If food prices rise, more of our incomes will have to be devoted to it, leaving less to be spent elsewhere. More pressing than this, though, is whether organic can even feed the world’s population14. Cheap industrial agriculture has been a boon to food production in poorer countries – boosting yields and lowering costs. Organic – with its increased production costs and reduced yields – will push food costs higher leaving even more people without.