hum, facts to bolster an argument? what novel idea...

I welcome Anna Lappe’s response to my FP article, which I saw for the first time this afternoon. Her argument illustrates nicely the weak foundation of evidence used by those who promote organic farming. Lappe cited evidence from four key sources.

First was the Badgley et al. study. According to an academic commentator writing in the same journal (Renewable Agriculture and Food Systems), the Badgley study was based on analyses that “do not meet the minimum scientific requirements for comparing food production capacity in different crop production systems.” For example, roughly 80 percent of the crop yields cited as coming from “organic” farms in the developing world actually came from farming systems that were not organic, because synthetic chemicals had been employed. In addition, many of the comparisons to non-organic yields appeared to be comparisons not to green revolution farms but to yields on farms where no soil improvements had been employed at all. Also, Badgley et al. counted yield ratios if they were favorable for their argument, while omitting results from the same studies if they were non-favorable.

Lappe’s second cited source is “Agroecological Approaches to Agricultural Development,” by Jules Pretty. While this study does make claims for the advantages of agroecological approaches, strictly organic methods are not included among those approaches. The study actually lists seven valuable approaches to farming, but organic is not one of the seven. The first two approaches listed – integrated pest management and integrated nutrient management – are explicitly non-organic, because both include the use of synthetic chemicals.

Lappe’s third source is an UNCTAD report on the promise of organic farming in Africa. This report drew on non-peer reviewed studies mostly provided by organizations promoting organic projects in Africa, and most of the successes claimed came from comparisons of newly introduced organic soil treatments to current practices (in Africa this often means little or no nitrogen fertilizer use at all), rather than from comparisons between organic versus green revolution farming with nitrogen. All such studies prove is that organic soil amendments can be better than no soil amendments, not that they out-perform green revolution farming. The best farming methods almost always combine organic approaches with some nitrogen fertilizer, but unfortunately the strict organic standard does not allow farmers to do this.

Lappe’s final source was another UN report, the IAASTD, which again was not a scientific study but instead a multi-stakeholder exercise that featured participation by advocacy organizations (Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, and the Pesticide Action Network were represented on the governing body). The fact that this report had “400 authors,” many of whom were non-scientists, made it less credible to professionals. The final IAASTD report was long on assertions but frequently devoid of peer-reviewed evidence. It had only about 1/10 as many quantified factual assertions per page as the 2008 World Development Report (a report that highlighted the success of green revolution farming, not organic).

In during "I can't believe FP published this"

I love how virtually everything Lappe accuses her opponent (see: scaremongering) for she does herself. Paarlberg clearly has the better argument.

Lappes case seems to be simple and twofold:

1 - "Organic" ; done in a very specific way, can improve yields.

She doesnt say whether they can improve yields more or less than biotech crops, and she doesnt detail what the increased land, labor and animal resource requirements really are to achieve those yields. Or what it would do to food prices! Unless it also lowers prices in the bargain, is this really a sane suggestion?

2 - Paarlberg is a big lying bad person

I dont buy the theoretical yield increases from Organic, mainly because, as Paarlberg points out, the scaling of resources required to meet the organic standard are ridiculous; e.g.

(from his piece)
"" Less than 1 percent of American cropland is under certified organic production. If the other 99 percent were to switch to organic and had to fertilize crops without any synthetic nitrogen fertilizer, that would require a lot more composted animal manure. To supply enough organic fertilizer, the U.S. cattle population would have to increase roughly fivefold. And because those animals would have to be raised organically on forage crops, much of the land in the lower 48 states would need to be converted to pasture. Organic field crops also have lower yields per hectare. If Europe tried to feed itself organically, it would need an additional 28 million hectares of cropland, equal to all of the remaining forest cover in France, Germany, Britain, and Denmark combined.""

She also doesnt talk at all about the risks presented by Organic farming, which is far more likely to suffer from spoilage, infestation, blight, bad weather, and so on. GMOs specifically mitigate these risks, while organic increases them. There's no getting around this, and she doesn't even mention it. Do we really want a developing world version of the Irish Potato Famine?

Im also not sure what the actual policy implication is. What is the suggestion? That we have to convert millions upon millions of people around the world to specific, restricted farming practices which require more labor, land, resources? How does that work exactly? At least with GMO you have a *product*, and dont have to teach a process, per se.

Or is the suggestion (more likely) she just would want to BAN GMOs? That is usually what people on her side of the argument usually propose, and of course the direct result is that people will starve. Even if her analysis of the opportunities of organic is accurate (and Im doubtful that it is), there is no discussion on the costs and actual practicability of this change on a large scale. If you pinned aid to getting recipients to change to organic methods, who trains them and enforces it? It seems implausible. But I wouldnt be surprised if her answer was, "ban GMOs entirely".

She also completely sidesteps the environmental impact, which in truth for Organic farming is worse than conventional farming because it requires far more land to produce the same yields, and requires high-till processes with releases tons of carbon. Not to mention the billions of tons of manure that would need to replace current fertilizers, and its impact on water supply. And the billions of tons of methane that creating all that animal fertilizer would create. I'm not sure where they are going to get all the cows.

In short, it seems to me like a non-starter in the first place - meaning, even if you wanted to implement it, its impossible - so the argument is sort of a waste of time. This was not so much a pro Organic piece as much as a generic criticism of Paarlberg and the promise of GMOs. Also, aside from regulation and massive aid (*requiring* beneficiaries to go organic), I dont see where this policy is going. It ignores the reality that eventually we will need to continue increasing productivity on a steady basis, and without, hello TECHNOLOGY, organic reaches a limit to how much it can improve. Technology does not, and genetic designs can be adapted to meet new problems. If anything amounts to a good argument, it would be, "Use BOTH. Use some of the best practices of organic farming, and combine them with high-tech seeds, and low till practices" The problem with this is that the opposition to GMO is mainly ideological, so even though its probably the best approach, no one discusses it.

Basically, im skeptical of the benefits of expanding organic production in the developing world, and I think she sweeps virtually 100% of the actual costs under the rug. In fact, I think on a practical level it would need to be proved whether such a shift were even physically possible. Will need to examine the cited studies further.

obese should point to the reality that excess calories are being produced from current yields, and that a reduction in US farming yields would not all of a sudden starve the nation.

http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2008/09/soil/mann-text/1

of the aritcle published in National Geographic about the degredation of the quality of farming soil around the world.
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Our Good Earth
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The future rests on the soil beneath our feet.
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By Charles C. Mann
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Photograph by Jim Richardson
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Published: September 2008
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Here is the link again: http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2008/09/soil/mann-text/1

Unfortunately, the author commits the same “cherry-picking”, “mythologizing” and “scaremongering” of which she accuses Mr. Paarlberg. She conflates all of biotechnology with the sins of capitalism (even diabetes) while ignoring the next generation of publicly-funded, non-commercial GMO success stories such as green papaya PRSV. She criticizes biotech for not delivering on pro-Vitamin A enriched foods, while ignoring the fact that these crops are actually in the final stages of extensive social, economic, and biological impact studies. She ignores publicly funded, longitudinal studies in the US, UK, and Canada that show increased biodiversity and reduced pesticide and energy use on farms that have adopted GMO crops. She implies that industrial agriculture invented monoculture and its inherent risks, and that organic farmers live happily in harmony with weeds, while bees “feast on their nectar and pollen”. This is exactly the kind misplaced romanticism that Mr. Paarlberg rightly criticizes.

The most important “on-the-ground lesson of success” that Ms. Lappe ignores is also the most telling: if organic agriculture is truly as productive as the authors says, why do farmers almost universally choose “industrial” agriculture when given the choice? By Ms. Lappe’s own figures “90 percent of soy, 70 percent of corn, and 95 percent of sugarbeets” grown in the US are genetically modified. Similar rates of GMO adoption have occurred in every country in which they have been introduced, even those without the USA’s conflicted agricultural policy. Thus the people who know agriculture best have already spoken, and I would enjoy hearing their comments about Ms. Lappe’s desire for them to return manual labour, to better her peace of mind.

By all means, let us use organic agriculture where it works, but let us also accept that biotechnology can be (and has been) separated from perceived problems of industrialization including chemical use and concentration of wealth. Misleading articles such as this do not contribute to a fair debate.

I applaud Ms. Lappe's willingness to cite sources in her thoughtful response to Mr. Paarlberg's essay. As she addresses important areas of emphasis which are misrepresented in Paarlberg's work (the tortured logic behind Paarlberg's concept of "de-facto organic" is certainly below his pay grade), she shows a welcome desire to promote substantive debate by identifying her information sources. It is to be expected that Mr. Paarlberg would give these sources a thorough working-over, and I would leave it to readers to engage in their own analysis of the studies' validity rather than blindly trusting either author. I'm pleased that Mr. Paarlberg has followed her lead in his response, but I wish he would have pointed readers to the math behind his dramatic but dubious assertion that widespread organic production would threaten Europe's forests.

As many readers must realize, claims like these may make for good applause lines, but it is telling that Mr. Paarlberg keeps the sources to himself.

I am not convinced that either side's macro studies provide conclusive evidence on optimal yields. However, from a pragmatic standpoint it makes sense to invest first in proven, transformative investments such as infrastructure and knowledge building, which promote lasting independence rather than reliance on monopolistically controlled input chains (yes, Monsanto, I'm calling you out.)

Thankfully, there is much less disagreement about these approaches than Mr. Paarlberg would have us think.

Both Lappe & Paarleberg make very good points. I think the answer to a more robust, while ecologically sustainable, farming system requires a mixture of their ideas.

First off, modern agriculture (MA) relies heavily on water, petro-chemicals, and nitrogen. Without the external influx, the green revolution would be nil. Well, excessive nitrogen and fertilizer runoff from farms is dramatically altering the riparian ecosystems. A reduction in use of chemicals would be gladly appreciated. Also, MA's use of our freshwater is worse than initially seen at a glance. Much of the water used comes from our precious groundwater aquifers, which are being depleted at an alarming rate. We don't have the knowledge and/or drive to replenish them to make them ever so slightly sustainable. Couple this with retreating snow pack in the mountain ranges, a massive source of surface and groundwater, means we need to begin bracing for a reduction in agricultural water usage.

This brings us to where MA can acutely help. GMO's can be utilized, in addition to their increased disease resistance, to require less water for their manufacture. But I don't think GMO's are good in and of themselves. They are a pinnacle of the spread of monoculture and massive reductions in the genetic variety within crop species. (Not to mention the seedless crops that require farmers to keep coming back to the supplier, and lawsuits against small farmers by Big Ag for crop contamination, these are the business problems). So while its great that MA can reduce the potential of famine right now, biological evolution indicates there will come something that will devastate our crops, and if all we have is a couple genetic varieties for all of our food, woe to us.

Two major changes to our system can tackle this. One being the re-evaluation of subsidies, both within and beyond the borders. We don't need that much corn or soy, and please don't grow water intensive crops in sagebrush deserts. Two being a subsidized push to move farmers away from monoculture and into permaculture. Maybe if you allow some level of natural competition among species, the bugs eating our crops will be eaten themselves. I understand it becomes more labor intensive when you can't combine a straight mile of wheat because you're growing apple trees. But the world is not a factory with right angles and sanitized floors, as the pre-eminent animal steward, we need to flow and work within its bounds.

MA will drive us fat right off a cliff, OA will thin us into less plentiful times. We need both.

This is an example from a real farmer that has seen both sides.

Take it how you want to.

I and a neighbor own ground across from each other, with the same soil type and structure, we recieved the same amount of rain, it is as close to a comparison that you can get in a real life situation as you can get.

I farm with what are called No-Till practises, meaning the soil was never tilled, the organic matter is allowed to decay and incorporate into the soil, we spray pesticides, herbicides you name it to control weeds, we use the recommended levels, not a drop more. Our neighbor on the other hand is not completly organic, but dosent use chemicals, rather they use tillage methods to control weeds. The land owner is an elderly lady, so we do alot of tillage for her. Last year we both planted the same variety of wheat on the exact same day (being that we did it for her and she just bought the seed from us) along with OUR wheat we applied 5lbs of Nitrogen and 25lbs of phosphorus during planting and then another 45lbs of nitrogen in the spring along with chemical to control weeds. Our neighbor had us apply 5lbs of nitrogen and 25lbs of phosphorus along with planting, and used no chemical or added fertilizer in the spring. Our wheat averaged 40bushels to the acre, which is about the norm in our area of central kansas, our neighbor lady's wheat averaged around 15bushels acre. I know this due to the fact that i harvested the wheat acres for her and have the tickets to varify. It is has been proven, not necessarliy through science, but through the actual application of nitrogen that you can improve your bushels to the acre 1 bu to every 1 lbs of nitrogen, (this is for wheat in our area, and through my experience) with a dwindling effect occuring around 70lbs of nitrogen.
This is a real life experience that in my own opinion shows that with a "more organic" approach to things, it would take much more ground to produce what i can produce through conventional methods. Now there are other methods of applying fertilizer, that we dont use and, such as manure, and organic fertilizer, but "organic" methods cant match the effiencey standards set by mondern "non organic" fertilzers and chemicals.

I do agree with one thing, and this is comeing from a real farmer, we can use an incorporation of both mondern farming and organic farming practises to continue to improve our food quaility, lower prices, and continue to supply enough food to feed the world.

Dear Anna Lappe:
While I laud your well meaning article I have the following comments:
a) In your article you mention that there is an increase in diabetes and other diseases which is partly due to the food we consume. I agree with you on that. However, it has nothing to with chemically grown fruits and vegetables and more to do with how much we consume and what we consume. There is a need for the US to move towards eating a more healthy diet with more fruits and vegetables. But as Paarlberg points our the nutrition in chemically and organically grown food is not that different.
b) As Paarlberg correctly points out we need to distinguish between politics and technology. If techology has failed in some places and succeeded in others then the question arises: why? Maybe we then need to move from the realm of technology to the realm of governance and politics. Technology works but in tandem with other efficient institutions.
c) As the population is set to grow from 6 billion to 9 billion how do you propose we can increase the productivity with what will be limited land availability, so that we can actually feed the world population?
d) Finally, instead of arguing which one is better is it not time to come hand in hand to see what industrial agriculture has to offer organic farming and vise-versa?

I have enjoyed reading both articles and find many good arguments and facts in both. Not having access to the wealth of information that either of the authors has, means that it is easy to be swayed one way and then the next. And how each one loves to put down the arguments of the other! The comment from readers that I feel is the most balanced - and closer to the real truth of the matter is that made by M Delaney (The article did a fine job of...) on Paarlberg's article. My 30 years experience working in developing country agriculture has shown me that there are no silver bullets and no one shoe that fits all situations. For example, what is good and appropriate for an Egyptian vegetable farmer who needs to meet GLOBALGAP standards (globally accepted good agricultural practices) to get his produce into European supermarkets is very different from what a maize or cassava farmer in drought prone regions of Malawi needs to do to ensure household food security and sufficient excess for sale in the local market. The Egyptian farmer is organic - why? because by going organic some years ago he has been able to consistently meet the ever more demanding quality standards being set by retailers. At first, yes yields were lower, but not now. Many Malawian farmer have over the last five years or so have had access to subsidised inputs of hybrid seed and chemical fertilizer. The results have been dramatic with the country producing surpluses in years with good rainfall. Take away the subsidies, as was done in the early 2000s, and a couple of drought years and there was widespread famine. So, ' modern' technology can be effective, but long-term sustainability for these farmers takes more than good technology as many have pointed out.
To add to the debate about whether 'organic' has any nutritional/health advantages, this comes from Stanford University:
Is there a difference between organically and conventionally grown food? A review of over 200 studies by Crystal Smith-Spangler and colleagues of Stanford University gave these general insights:
Organic produce had a significantly lower risk of contamination with pesticide residues although the level of pesticide contamination in conventional and organic food was low, below maximum recommended levels.
Organic produce did not appear to have superior safety or nutrition quality in any other outcome measured, including risk of bacterial, heavy metal, or mycotoxin contamination.
Children who consume organic fruits and vegetables and adults who consume organic cereal may significantly reduce their pesticide exposure compared with groups consuming conventional diets. Levels of pesticide exposures in both groups were within accepted safety standards.
Although rates of bacterial contamination did not differ significantly between organic and conventionally grown meats, eggs, and milk, the antibiotic resistance of bacteria cultured from conventional meats, eggs, and milk was significantly greater than for organic products.
View http://healthpolicy.stanford.edu/events/is_there_a_difference_between_organically_and_conventionally_
grown_food__a_systematic_review_of_the_health_benefits_and_harms/ for additional information.
It would be helpful if there was less dogmatism and a more objective weighing of the pros and cons of different approaches, with an acceptance that we still have large gaps in our knowledge and understanding of natural systems.

I was eager to read this article as a counterpoint to Paarlberg's well-reasoned essay. But I'm afraid that Lappe's approach was unconvincing. By setting out to poke holes in Paarlberg's case, she failed to make her own. In fact, the tone and substance of the essay is similar to that found in rebuttals of climate change. It too often relies on attacking the messenger and exhaustively cites statistics and studies that, while interesting, do little to contradict Paarlberg's conclusions. Simply claiming that those on the other side of the debate are 'mythologizing' doesn't make it so and is insulting to people who have honest differences backed by thoughtful research. Quite frankly I expected more substance from this article but at the very least I expected a more respectful tone.

doesnt need to be organic for me to eat it

I know a couple with orange groves. They went organic and their yield has gone way down. They're worried about making ends meet. What resources are available for farmers that want to stay organic but aren't financially able to? Or resources for organic farmers to help them figure out the correct nutrition? http://foodandwinemavens.com

To paraphrase Lappe, Unfortunately, what you don't hear about in the Badgely study, or Don't Panic Go Oranic, or others with similar findings.

Readers need to hear from the critics of the critics too. e.g.

Can Organic Agriculture Feed The World?

- K.W.T. Goulding and A.J. Trewavas , AgBioView, June 24, 2009 (Rothamsted Research, Harpenden and Institute of Molecular Plant Science, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh Scotland.)

Full paper at
http://www.agbioworld.org/newsletter_wm/index.php?caseid=archive&newsid=2894

In a recent publication, Badgley et al. (2007) claimed that organic farming, if used worldwide, would provide sufficient food for a growing world population. This claim was based on a literature survey of two kinds: (1) A comparison of organic and conventional yields, assembled, so far as one can judge, from a mixture of largely research experiments of rather variable quality and sometimes unpublished material. (2) An assessment of nitrogen (N) fixed by legumes from published literature. The two were then combined to calculate, incorrectly in our view, potential food production.
We have examined the literature basis of these claims particularly on wheat. There are many omitted references that indicate organic yields are substantially lower than Badgely et al. (2007) indicated. There are calculation errors in some of the references used by Badgely et al., (2007). Also Badgely et al., (2007) are equating organic procedures only with the use of either manure or cover crops and are ignoring certified organic procedures that prohibit synthetic pesticide use. We have also examined the claims by these authors that there is sufficient N fixed to provide for fertiliser and have found that mineralisation levels are wrongly equated with the N appearing in seed yield. We agree with Badgely et al., (2007) that maintenance of organic material in soil is important but consider that this is not a specific organic procedure. There would be insufficient food for the world population provided by global organic farming.

Read on -
http://www.agbioworld.org/newsletter_wm/index.php?caseid=archive&newsid=2894

I'm an agricultural researcher who works with organic production and also helps conventional producers move toward more sustainable practices. I see great potential in organic agricultural systems for soil and plant health, water management, and increasing local food availability for economic and biosecurity value. I also see great value in biotechnology. The use of transgenic technology in cotton (specifically insertion of genes for insect-specific toxins from the bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis) has indeed reduced insecticide use in cotton in the US (and it has NOT reduced biodiversity, notwithstanding critics' claims. There is a large body of literature on this issue, and the results are clear). Other pests formerly controlled by the massive insecticide use in cotton (most notably bug pests, such as stink bugs and plant bugs) have emerged as problems in the less-toxic environment, but even with those 'new' pests, insecticide use is less than half of what it once was. In addition, most of the insecticides being used now are much safer to the environment than those used even 15 years ago. Some of the organic insecticides (particularly botanicals) are more environmentally disruptive than a number of the new synthetic insecticides. Times have changed.

Frankly, I am tired of this "us and them" sparring. Both sides have much to offer the other, and if the gloves would go down I suspect that we could do a lot to make agriculture simultaneously more productive and more environmentally friendly. With significant water, nitrogen, and phosphate problems looming on the horizon, along with increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide (which affects nutrient uptake by plants, among other things) and climate change, folks had best start looking everywhere for best solutions rather than clinging to adversarial dogmatism.

As someone who has tried both organic and the pesticide chemical route in florida (on both 4H gardens, private gardens, florist flowers, food crops, etc).... i have to agree with this article entirely.

My favorite examples are roses. For years I would spray them religiously with all sorts of insecticides... carefully rotating, applying chemical fertilizers....
I used to have HORRIBLE spider mite infestations.... i watched sunflower populations become devastated by aphids and that miraculously adapted to whatever i sprayed. Camelias at our home had TERMINATOR strength tea scale...

It never really worked....

since then I have amended my methods. .... my fertilizers are organic (cow urine, molasses, coffee grounds, cornmeal) and my insecticides include things like sesame, neem, elderberry, garlic and chili, which i grow myself. Oil and soap can smother any insect. I now use very simple methods that are designed to syngergize with one another. Completely organice. No insects on my plants. No spider mites. No chewing insects. I can see where some insects have sampled the leaves and moved on to other places. Its rare to find an insect that can put up with a full blown organic assault!!!
Twice the level of growth. Roses blooming LIKE CRAZY. Better tasting food...... Hands down I'm a believer! !!!! :)

We have to move to a sustainable system, in this nation...and in the world. Extractive industries, including what passes for 'farming' these days, need to end. We have organic fields, vineyards, orchards and vegetable production...we rarely are bothered by insect pests or diseases...our colonies of bees are strong and healthy...as are we. Our water is pristine.

Joel Salatin at Polyface Farms is a great role model for the production of meat.

http://www.polyfacefarms.com/

Permaculture systems and local, sustainable practices will improve the world...for all of it's creatures, great and small.

Of course BigAg doesn't want to switch practices...for now, these folks aren't farmers...they are factory workers. Corn needs to be grown so close because a single stalk can't support itself. We have so much corn in the USA that there are ever more radical ways of using the products...high fructose corn syrups in just about everything...cattle in a constant state of disease from eating corn...corn as ethanol to fuel cars (what a boondoggle scheme that is)...

Time for humans to evolve and mature.

Thanks for posting this important article. Down with soil-depleting, polluting, poisoning industrial farming practices, up with sustainable, natural, soil-enriching/soil producing healthy, organic small farming!

We should be cautious about idealizing organic production, especially as it pertains to the US and California. Although there are a number of small farms, most production occurs on larger scale industrial farms where agroecological principles are not the norm. For a full review of this topic, see Julie Guthman's Agrarian Dreams: The Paradox of Organic Farming in California. Her main argument is that organic production in the US has fallen into the same capitalist logic that industrial conventional agriculture is subject to, and as a result, has come to replicate what it set out to oppose.
Further, organic production in the US has largely not addressed the social justice issues of workers rights (for a number of reasons).

So what I gather reading the back and forth is that extremism is the problem here and that Paarlberg's comment is essentially correct when stating,

"The best farming methods almost always combine organic approaches with some nitrogen fertilizer, but unfortunately the strict organic standard does not allow farmers to do this."

I was an IAASTD author and wish to make some observations in reply to Robert’s remarks about the IAASTD.

Like some others posting here, I believe that we must transition to a sustainable model for agriculture. This is not just sustainable production, but sustainable production within sustainable societies and agroecosystems (as per ULRICH’s comment). I also don't believe that we have to choose EITHER the industrial model OR starvation and sustainability; ultimately we can have both a well fed world and a more equitable agriculture-based economic system.

I agree with Robert’s statement that benefits to the farmer arise from biotechnological innovations. These are also the conclusions of the IAASTD. However, the IAASTD recognised that the farmer was also often an innovator, as are the public sector research institutions, which used to primarily assist the farmer rather than seek direct financial reward through commercialising or licensing their intellectual property. The IAASTD advocates for biotechnologies that farmers can continue to improve and adapt to their circumstances, rather than black-box imports from large patent holders.

I also agree with Robert’s statement that farmers benefit from improved access to markets. That is one reason why we cannot discuss agroecological and industrial models of production independently of the use of massive agriculture subsidies in the US and Europe. What are the barriers poor farmers face in competing in both domestic and international markets? Artificially low priced exports from the wealthy nations must be considered part of the answer.

When it comes to biotechnology, the question is: what kind works best for solving real problems for farmers? The kind of biotechnology that works best for poor and subsistence farmers so far has not been the kind that concentrates the ownership of plant germplasm in the hands of a few patent holders in the wealthy countries. To call products that are the outcome of these activities “biotechnology” but dismiss agroecological science as primitive is misleading. Here we can see convergence of thinking between the IAASTD and the World Development Report (quotes from the latter):

“Make agriculture more sustainable—and a provider of environmental services. The environmental footprint of agriculture has been large, but there are many opportunities for reducing it. Since the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio, it is generally accepted that the environmental agenda is inseparable from the broader agenda of agriculture for development. And the future of agriculture is intrinsically tied to better stewardship of the natural resource base on which it depends.”

“In 2004 the market share for the four largest agrochemical and seed companies (the concentration ratio of the top four, or CR4) reached 60 percent for agrochemicals and 33 percent for seeds, up from 47 percent and 23 percent in 1997, respectively. The CR4 in biotechnology patents was 38 percent in 2004 (table D.1). In some subsectors, global concentration is much higher—in 2004 one company had 91 percent of the worldwide transgenic soybean area. It is generally believed that when an industry’s CR4 exceeds 40 percent, market competitiveness begins to decline, leading to higher spreads between what consumers pay and what producers receive for their produce.”

Achieving a sustainable agroecosystem will take some time, especially since we have built up a tremendous debt in our agricultural soils and ecosystem services from the long-standing industrial abuses and historically poor practice in many subsistence agroecosystems. In the meantime, we will have to rely upon existing industrial production, where it is entrenched, while building the science-based agroecological model that will feed the world in the future, wherever and as quickly as we can.

That debt makes head-to-head comparisons between seemingly extreme approaches ("industrial" vs "organic") problematic on global and local scales. Not all “organic” farms benefit from the latest and customised science behind agroecological methods. One of the great insights of the Badgley et al. 2007 paper was that this debt had to be paid back in full before agroecological production demonstrated its production superiority on post-industrial soil. The good news is that agroecological methods demonstrated the capacity to pay back the debt.

Time is also necessary for nations to solve the non-production problems that currently prevent food from reaching the hungry, or the problems that are causing productive land and water to be diverted to propping up other unsustainable activities. For example, the current ‘need’ for corn-based ethanol is a technological solution to a political problem, e.g. the inability of US governments to increase the fuel efficiency of the US fleet among other things. In other words, a hungry world is not just a technical problem that is some ideal basket of technologies away from being solved.

The IAASTD was ground breaking in its ability to address agriculture as the all inclusive human activity that it is. Those more inclined to carve up agriculture into pieces called yield, trade and so on may have difficulty with this approach. Like all human efforts, the IAASTD will be found to have flaws. However, those flaws are not special to the IAASTD with other works, such as the World Development Report, free of such flaws. And there is no specialist publication on agriculture that I am aware of that has benefited from either the scale (global open participation in the review) or rigor (two rounds) of review that this report has. That it was multi-stakeholder does not make it less credible than a paper published by a few named authors following review by two or three anonymous referees. The underlying reports of the IAASTD are thick with references. Authors included those with impeccable technical qualifications. The World Bank, author of the World Development Report, was also one of the lead institutions behind the IAASTD.

Identifying what is agreed is the first step toward generating a consensus on what problems need solutions. I hear no disagreement with the icon of IAASTD conclusions: business as usual is not an option.

Jack Heinemann

I am very happy to see this right-on-the-mark rebuttal from Ms. Lappe. One important thing she didn't mention though is that one way to increase food sustainability and security in the developing world would be to fight more aggressively against the adoption of meat and dairy-centered diets, in both the wealthy and poorer countries. The factory farming of animals continues to grow in America and the big multinational corporations behind this growth, like Tyson, Purdue and Smithfield, are trying to expand the factory farming model around the world, especially in the developing world, including Africa. When animals are put on factory farms, feed crops such as soy and corn need to be purchased for them. Animal factory farms thus drive up the price of corn, soy and other crops for the poor. Also, these operations consume huge quantities of water, energy, and land, leading to pollution and land degradation, which also hurts farmers. Unfortunately, many companies, politicians and institutions equate eating more animal products with better nutrition. While more protein can certainly make undernourished people in the developing world healthier, there's no reason why protein increases can't come from sustainably grown plant-based foods rather than factory-farmed animal products. In fact, in countries like India where the consumption of animal products has increased in recent years, rates of heart disease, obesity and diabetes are sky-rocketing.

My 25 years experience working in developing country agriculture has shown me that there are no silver bullets and no one shoe that fits all situations. For example, what is good and appropriate for an Egyptian vegetable farmer who needs to meet globalcap standards (globally accepted good agricultural practices) to get his produce into European supermarkets is very different from what a maize or cassava farmer in drought prone regions of Malawi needs to do to ensure household food security and sufficient excess for sale in the local market. Sazeni .The Egyptian farmer is organic - why? because by going organic some years ago he has been able to consistently meet the ever more demanding quality standards being set by retailers. At first, yes yields were lower, but not now. Many Malawian farmer have over the last five years or so have had access to subsidised inputs of hybrid seed and chemical fertilizer. The results have been dramatic with the country producing surpluses in years with good rainfall. Take away the subsidies, as was done in the early 2000s, and a couple of drought years and there was widespread famine. So, ' modern' technology can be effective, but long-term sustainability for these farmers takes more than good technology as many have pointed out.

Organic is more sustainable, but many times environuts stand in the way of science. Genetic engineering is one such way, there is no reasonable way to feed the world without genetic engineering. GMO crops can be made to use less fertilizer, use less herbicides, use less pesticides. They can be engineered to contain vitamins to help malnourished starving people worldwide.

But environuts fight this.

I'm fairly green, I grow my own food, I have a compost tumbler in my backyard. I believe in sustainable agriculture, but I also believe in science.