From the archive, 9 September 1989: Organic farming gets boost in US

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/sep/09/organic-farming-food-america-agriculture

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The ecological revolution has reached the United States government’s farm support programme: a report from the National Academy of Sciences shows that chemical fertilisers and insecticides do not necessarily result in better crop yields than organic methods.

The report is an endorsement of the high productivity of organic farming and it was greeted enthusiastically yesterday by the US Department of Agriculture, long the bastion of a crops-at-any-price policy.

Previously sceptical of the claims of the organic farming lobby, an agriculture department official, Dr Charles Hess, yesterday said there had been a strategic shift.

The department would seek to ‘put US farming on an eco-sensitive basis within the life of the Bush administration’, he said.

‘Our goal is to develop techniques to maintain high agricultural output, without damaging the environment,’ Dr Hess added, noting that much of the original doubt about organic farming had been based on fears that it would cut farm produce and send food prices soaring.

The findings of the report would influence the US government’s $14 billion farm subsidy programme, Dr Hess said.

The subsidy structure has actively discouraged farmers from rotating their crops, because it cuts the nominal acreage devoted to particular products on which the subsidies are calculated.

The agriculture department has already broken the link between crop yields and price support, which encouraged US farmers to grow crops for which there was no market. A similar system has produced European Community food mountains.

‘Well-managed alternative farms use less synthetic chemicals, fertilisers, pesticides and antibiotics, without necessarily decreasing - and in some cases increasing - per-acre crop yields and the productivity of livestock systems, the report says.

‘Wider adoption of proven alternative systems would result in ever greater economic benefits to farmers and environmental gains for the nations.’

Fewer than 5 per cent of America’s 2.1 million farmers use organic methods, the agriculture department estimates, but they are being urged to consider the potential savings in production costs - through not buying chemicals - as well as the environmental benefits.

The report, Alternative Agriculture, which was funded in part by the Kellogg Foundation, argues that organic methods can reduce pollution in two ways: they cut the pollution of ground water through the run-off of chemical fertilisers and avoid insecticides.

Organic farming is a misleadingly simple word for a complex process, the report points out, which includes crop rotation, careful soil analysis, and the planned interaction of crops and livestock.

It requires greater management skills, longer working hours and more varied work from the farmers. The report says it is not clear whether America’s farmers have the skills, patience or inclination to change their ways.

Those reluctant to change will find a powerful ally in the Fertiliser Institute, voice of the $8 billion-a-year industry, which condemned the report yesterday as ‘an insult to American agriculture and to the consumer’.