Organic Yields High

http://www.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idUSN1036065820070710

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Organic farming can yield up to three times as
much food as conventional farming in developing countries, and holds its
own against standard methods in rich countries, U.S. researchers said on
Tuesday.

They said their findings contradict arguments that organic farming --
which excludes the use of synthetic fertilizers and pesticides -- is not
as efficient as conventional techniques.

"My hope is that we can finally put a nail in the coffin of the idea
that you can't produce enough food through organic agriculture," Ivette
Perfecto, a professor at the University of Michigan's school of Natural
Resources and Environment, said in a statement.

She and colleagues analyzed published studies on yields from organic
farming. They looked at 293 different examples.

"Model estimates indicate that organic methods could produce enough food
on a global per capita basis to sustain the current human population,
and potentially an even larger population, without increasing the
agricultural land base," they wrote in their report, published in the
journal Renewable Agriculture and Food Systems.

"We were struck by how much food the organic farmers would produce,"
Perfecto said.

"Corporate interest in agriculture and the way agriculture research has
been conducted in land grant institutions, with a lot of influence by
the chemical companies and pesticide companies as well as fertilizer
companies, all have been playing an important role in convincing the
public that you need to have these inputs to produce food," she added.