The amazing truth about organic food

 By Will Merydith

Organic food has taken a battering in recent years. The recession has undermined their extraordinary growth. The big food producers have organised a huge lobbying campaign against the benefits of organics. There is a continuing and quite wrong assumption that agricultural systems need to be big to feed a growing world population.

But as it turns out, this is not the case.

The biggest study ever carried out comparing organic food to conventional food has just been finished by the Rodale Institute in Pennsylvania, and the results are pretty explosive.

On nearly every count – on cost, resilience and energy – organics come out superior to conventional agriculture.

• Organic systems used 45 per cent less energy than conventional.

• Production efficiency was 28 per cent higher in the organic systems.

• Soil health in the organic systems increased over time while the conventional systems remain essentially unchanged.

• Organic fields increased groundwater recharge and reduced run-off.  Rather than running off the surface and taking soil with it, rainwater recharged groundwater reserves in the organic systems, with minimal erosion.

This complements one of the most important recent findings from a new economics point of view: that organic farming also helps sustain rural communities by creating more jobs - organic farms create 30 per cent more jobs per hectare than non-organic.