Organic Agriculture's Contribution to Sustainability

Abstract

Sustainability is about ecosystem integrity, social well-being, economic resilience, and good governance. According to the current state of knowledge and development, how does organic agriculture contribute to each of these sustainability dimensions? Sustainability has first been equated with environmental soundness in order to ensure the continued provision of goods and services to present and future generations. Organic agriculture, as defined by the Codex Alimentarius Commission, "is a holistic production management system that avoids use of synthetic fertilizers, pesticides and genetically-modified organisms, minimizes pollution of air, soil and water, and optimizes the health and productivity of interdependent communities of plants, animals and people." In organic agriculture, limiting external inputs necessitates adaptation to local conditions in order to harness ecosystem services and increase production efficiency. To this end, the main organic strategies include: rotations, diversification and integration of crop, livestock, tree, and fish to the extent possible in order to optimize nutrient cycling; use of local varieties and breeds in order to increase the system resilience to stress; use of biological pest control to enhance predators; and promotion of symbiotic nitrogen fixation and biomass recycling. Organic management is associated with several positive impacts on land and water, including: increased soil fertility and thus, enhanced productivity; better soil structure that increases stability to environmental stress; better soil moisture retention and drainage, which result in 20 to 60% less irrigation requirements; less water pollution and nitrate leaching in groundwater; reduced erosion by wind, water, and overgrazing (currently, 10 million hectares of land is lost annually by unsustainable agricultural practices); and better soil carbon sequestration rates. A new meta-analysis indicates that soil organic carbon stocks were 3.5 metric tons per hectare higher in organic than in non-organic farming systems and that organic farming systems sequestered up to 450 kg more atmospheric carbon per hectare and year through CO bound into soil organic matter. Overall, energy use by organic farms may be reduced by one-third, as compared to conventional enterprises, due to more efficiency in biological nitrogen fixation. Existing studies report less energy use on organic farms, from 10-70% in Europe and 29-37% in the USA, with exceptions for some crops. The heart of the matter is that chemical agriculture uses 2 kcal of fossil fuel to produce 1 kcal of food energy. This low energy efficiency is compounded by higher oil prices that lead to higher farm input prices, in addition to peak oil, sooner or later. The energy issue requires more attention to paradigms such as organic agriculture in order to face future food challenges. In line with the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change 4th Assessment Report recommendations for agriculture, organic management addresses climate change through inherent practices such as: crop rotations and farming system design; nutrient and manure management; livestock management, 2