Organic/Sustainable Farming
Organic/sustainable agriculture is a vague concept, owing to the different standards and ideas held by different groups and regulatory organizations. However, it generally refers to agricultural practices that attempt to minimize impacts on the environment while being economically profitable and providing enough food for an expanding world.
The organic ‘movement’ began around the 1930s and 1940s as a reaction to agriculture’s growing dependence on synthetic chemicals and fertilizers. It received little attention until about 1990, when it was addressed by the 1990 farm bill. Since then it has grown into a multi-billion dollar industry.
Organic techniques include crop rotation, green manure (i.e. cover crops grown to add nutrients to the soil), compost, and biological pest control. Synthetics are either outright excluded or strictly limited. Therefore, chemical fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides, plant and animal hormones, antibiotics, and genetically modified organisms are considered detrimental and have no place in organic agriculture.
Although organic agriculture typically reduces – or even eliminates – environmental degradation, there are numerous economic costs. Even if the subsidies for conventional agriculture were removed, its efficiency and achievement of economies of scale would still leave lower prices than organically produced goods. Reduced yields lead to the question of whether organic agriculture can provide enough food to sustain current and future populations. In addition, best management practices increase production costs for organic-produced products. This, consequently, raises their prices, limiting their appeal to the general consumer.
The idealized organic farm