Why is organic agriculture necessary to ensure food production?

Author: Guo Huanren (Professor, Department of Agronomy, National Taiwan University, Taiwan, China)

Conventional agriculture uses chemical fertilizers and chemical pesticides. Although it can achieve higher yields and lower labor requirements, it comes with a great many aftereffects. Conventional agriculture causes environmental pollution, not only affecting human health and causing eutrophication of rivers and coastal waters that makes it impossible for fish and shrimp to grow, but also wiping out the beneficial bacteria and insects above and below the soil, leaving behind an enormous number of harmful bacteria and pests, so that every year these two inputs, chemical fertilizers and pesticides, must be added from outside before farming can proceed.

However, manufacturing chemical fertilizers and pesticides requires petroleum; in the past petroleum was cheap, so farmers could afford it. But the Earth is gradually entering the post-petroleum era, and once the easily extracted oil is used up, petroleum prices will rise in the future, the cost of manufacturing chemical fertilizers and pesticides will soar accordingly, and a day will come when farmers can no longer afford them. By then world agricultural production will face a huge crisis, and for countries that import agricultural products, the surge in shipping costs will make it even harder to supply food from abroad.

In a commercial society, no system can offer a 100 percent guarantee, but without a system the world would fall into chaos. Under current regulations, if operators of agricultural products want to sell agricultural products or their processed goods without verification and labeling, they may not sell them under the name "organic." However, truly organic products fall into two major categories: the first is organic products that have been verified and bear a qualified label; the second is products bought from reputable farmer friends or farms that are not nominally called "organic" but do in fact conform to the principles of organic farming.

By contrast, organic agriculture follows the principle of ecological balance in production, relying on "free long-term workers" such as beneficial bacteria and insects to make fertilizer. This not only reduces the cost of external inputs, but also lets farmland provide food sustainably, lets waters naturally provide fish, and lets humans avoid the harm of toxic substances.