Industrial agriculture has huge, unsustainable impacts on our environment. And while organic and other ecologically based farming systems (agroecology) have huge benefits, some have suggested that it will never produce enough food. Production is only one of the challenges for food security. But, according to new research, even by this measure, critics seem to have substantially underestimated the productivity of organic farming.

Impressive research from Iowa State University has already begun to show that agroecological systems that don’t completely eliminate synthetic chemicals can match or exceed yields from U.S. industrial grain production and provide equal or higher profits to farmers. Now, new research by a team of U.C. Berkeley scientists shows that organic systems can also be highly productive.

I want to point out that, despite the fact that we currently produce more than enough crops to feed our global population, around a billion people are hungry around the globe. And, in the meantime, we waste between 30 to 40 percent of the food we produce. In other words, crop productivity is only one piece of the food security puzzle. Food sovereignty is another […]