Borlaug Birthday Linkage
Today is the 95th birthday of Norman Borlaug, the man who invented modern industrial agriculture and (some say) fed the world. Here is Ron Bailey’s post in honor of the day, which includes these striking remarks from a 2000 interview:
Even if you could use all the organic material that you have—the animal manures, the human waste, the plant residues—and get them back on the soil, you couldn’t feed more than 4 billion people. In addition, if all agriculture were organic, you would have to increase cropland area dramatically, spreading out into marginal areas and cutting down millions of acres of forests.
At the present time, approximately 80 million tons of nitrogen nutrients are utilized each year. If you tried to produce this nitrogen organically, you would require an additional 5 or 6 billion head of cattle to supply the manure. How much wild land would you have to sacrifice just to produce the forage for these cows? There’s a lot of nonsense going on here.
For good measure, here and here are a couple of my earlier posts on organic crop yields and the sustainability of sustainable farming (be sure to read the comments!), and here is Kevin Carson’s take on why the official “Green Revolution” mythology is a load of bunk. Also, here is what I wrote about the subject of crop yields in my TAC piece on “culinary conservatism”:
Proponents of a new way of eating are on shakier ground when they claim that a widespread turn toward small-scale and deindustrialized agriculture would not affect crop yields. McKibben proudly cites a study in which sustainable farming methods were found to lead, on average, to a near doubling of food production per hectare. He does not mention the many cases in which results have been less impressive. A much discussed study published in the journal Science in 2002 found that switching to organic farming reduced yields by 20 percent, though the possibility of lessening our reliance on petroleum may be worth the investment of some extra land. Reincorporating into the human food chain some of the millions of acres where corn and sorghum are now grown for ethanol production would also make a great difference.
But no reasonable person wants to remake the world or do away with modern agricultural technologies all together. The best solutions will come through honest, case-by-case engagement with the subtle demands of specific situations. As the UC Berkeley agroecologist Miguel Altieri puts it, a sound approach to agriculture “does not seek to formulate solutions that will be valid for everyone but encourages people to choose the technologies best suited to the requirements of each particular situation, without imposing them.” (That this could just as well be the summary of the ideal domestic or foreign policy ought to argue in its favor.) Respect for tradition and social and ecological responsibility can work together with technological innovation and capitalist resourcefulness to respect the ridges and valleys of regionalism in an increasingly flattened world.
In any case, a very happy birthday to Dr. Borlaug, and many happy returns indeed. In my home, we will be eating free-range chicken and organic brussels sprouts in his honor.
(Cross-posted at Upturned Earth.)
It doesn’t seem particularly conservative to me to blithely consign away the “extra land” that would be required to make up for the 20% drop in agricultural yields. A 20% drop in productivity would require a 25% increase over today’s base line of farmland under cultivation. USDA says that number was 303 million acres of harvested cropland in 2002. Link(http://www.ers.usda.gov/StateFacts/US.htm) Tilling 75 million more acres seems like a strange manifestation of “culinary conservatism.” If not the land, than what precisely are you trying to preserve?
— John Sterling · Mar 26, 11:00 PM · #
Well, perhaps the presently-farmed land whose nutrient capacity is reduced through over-farming, or our supplies of oil and other fossil fuels, or the ecosystems that are damaged through fertilizer runoff, or the local economies that industrial agriculture has displaced, or …
More generally, I obviously see the force of these objections, but as I said in the passage I excerpted the idea that there is any serious push to convert all of our farming to organic is just silly.
— John Schwenkler · Mar 26, 11:13 PM · #
Thanks a lot for the link, John. I read the Borlaug quote in Bailey’s puff piece and was infuriated all over again. I left the following comments:
“Even if you could use all the organic material that you have—the animal manures, the human waste, the plant residues—and get them back on the soil, you couldn’t feed more than 4 billion people. In addition, if all agriculture were organic, you would have to increase cropland area dramatically, spreading out into marginal areas and cutting down millions of acres of forests.”
This suggests Borlaug doesn’t even have any idea what the available organic techniques ARE.
First, …Borlaug seems never to have heard of nitrogen-fixing cover crops (hint: they reproduce on-site without any external inputs). And if you start with fertile soil, closed-loop use of human waste and crop residue will minimize the need for new external inputs.
And second, Borlaug fails to control for the big-small dichotomy in comparing conventional to organic. Small-scale farming is, in fact, on average more efficient in output per acre compared to mechanized row-cropping on large tracts of land. The latter was developed specifically to improve output per laborer through capital-substitution, but did so at the cost of reduced efficiency in land use. Borlaug seems to think organic is just conventional row-cropping minus the synthetic chemicals, and never to have heard of intensive raised bed techniques. It’s like listening to an anti-computer rant full of references to UNIVAC and punch cards.
In fact, John Jeavons (who actually f***ing KNOWS SOMETHING about organic farming, instead of issuing dogmatic pronouncements based on ignorance) has developed his biointensive raised bed technique to the point where it can feed one person on 4000 sq. ft. (1/10 acre) without any external fertilizer inputs. It’s a fairly spartan diet (80% cereal grain, legumes and tubers, and only 20% fruit and green leafy stuff), and it requires careful composting of everything (including human waste) and returning it to the soil. But then, that’s just demonstrating the theoretical limit—in reality, we’re nowhere near a limit of one-tenth acre per capita.
P.S. I know someone’s an ignoramus when he can’t even correctly frame the issue in dispute, and instead attacks a strawman of his own choosing.
When a registered dietitian says anything over the RDA of Vitamic C is wasted because you just get more ascorbic acid in your toilet, they miss the point: each ascorbic acid molecule in your urine has a free radical attached.
Two examples from Borlaug’s spew:
1. “But there’s absolutely no research that shows that organic foods provide better nutrition.”
Absolutely? What about research showing depletion of trace minerals from the use of conventional NPK fertilizers, and higher trace mineral content in organic vegetables. He might have a legitimate argument that the research is inconclusive, but by overstating himself in this way he just looks like an opinionated old ass who doesn’t even know what research is out there.
2. “As far as plants are concerned, they can’t tell whether that nitrate ion comes from artificial chemicals or from decomposed organic matter.”
Way to miss the point. Would Borlaug say your body treats a Vitamin C molecule the same in food as in a synthetic pill? The molecule itself may be the same, but in food it exists in a synergistic relationship with numerous phytochemicals like bioflavonoids (including many that have never yet even been isolated and identified) that promote vitamin C absorption.
Likewise, in agriculture, a plant can absorb the nitrate ion more effectively in a healthy soil ecosystem with proper friability, and an appropriate assortment of microflora and microfauna (e.g., nitrogen-fixing bacteria, mycorrhizae, etc.) existing in a symbiotic relationship with root hairs.
In short, whatever Borlaug’s knowledge about the kinds of plant breeding he practiced, his opinion on organic farming is of precisely the same value as that of any random guy in a bar who’s never had his hands in the dirt in his life: namely somewhere between Jack S**t and F**k All.
— Kevin Carson · Mar 27, 06:02 AM · #