Organic Farming Vs The Green Revolution

When we hear about organic farming we think of clean, unadulterated food, while when people hear about the green revolution labs with genetically mutated seeds and plants come to mind. Is it a battle between nature and science though? What has each to offer to the world and what do we mean by organic farming and the green revolution?

Organic Farming

Organic farming is a way to grow crops which follows certain very strict guidelines:

• No chemical fertilizers are used on the soil
• No pesticides are sprayed on the plants
• The seeds used to produce plants have not been genetically altered
• Organic farming follows the ideal that the way our great grandparents used to farm was safer, healthier for us and better for the environment.
• Why don’t they use chemical fertilizers you might wonder? Well, the fact is that chemical fertilizers have an overabundance of the minerals a plant needs to grow.
• This is to make sure the plants are saturated and no yield is lost. A side effect of that is that the excess of the chemicals gets washed by rain into the local water sources.
• The chemicals then help phytoplankton (tiny single-cell plants) grow in the water the same way it helped the crops. These plants turn the water green and murky, taking up all the oxygen and causing the animals that breathe underwater to asphyxiate. This phenomenon can cause whole lakes to die out and rare animal species to get extinct.
• Why do we not use pesticides in organic farming?

This question has a simpler answer:

Pesticides are not only bad for plants, but also humans. If we spray too many pesticides on our plants they too, like the chemical fertilizers, get washed into the local water sources and can be consumed if the spraying happened close to the harvest of the crops. One terrible example is DDT, which was hailed a miracle against pests until it was discovered that it caused terrible side effects on marine life and even humans. Its use has been forbidden (it is now considered a weapon of chemical warfare!), but other pesticides can cause their problems just as well.

• Why not use genetically altered seeds/plants?

The only scientifically valid reason for this is because genetically stronger plants created in a lab will cause local flora to grow extinct in some cases. Genetically altered plants are created in a way to withstand weeds and be strong. Weeds may not be as useful to us as crops, but the loss of a plant species should always be a sad thing that should be prevented.

The Green Revolution

In short, the green revolution is a series of technological feats and discoveries that helped many places in the world where food was scarce to improve their crops. The “father” of this revolution was Norman Borlaug. Borlaug improved his country’s (Mexico) yield of crops in such a dramatic way that the Rockefeller Foundation sought to spread his plan to other nations in hope to diminish global famine. The revolution has been extremely successful in South America and India preventing a great famine from starting in the latter.

The basic idea of the green revolution is to improve the yield of crops by using:

• Chemical fertilizers
• Pesticides
• Genetically altered seeds/plants

As you can see the goals are exactly the opposite of organic farming.

• Why use chemical fertilizers?

In many countries where the soil is not as fertile or the water as abundant chemical fertilizers can help plants yield a lot more crops, which can save a population during drought and famine. By offering all the chemicals needed by a plant you can grow more plants in one field making a country richer and more stable, as food is one of the most basic needs of a population.

• Why use pesticides?

Often pests can destroy a whole year’s work overnight. Such pests can be immense clouds of cicadas, plant pests, fungi and others. For a farmer whose life depends on these crops, the pests are equal to killers and pesticides seem to be the only way to salvation. Not all pesticides are as dangerous to the environment and in some countries, crops could not be grown in abundance without them.

• Why use genetically altered seeds/plants?

These plants have been improved in such ways that they can withstand different harsh climates so that even during a drought a country can farm crops. Often the weather is too wet/dry or too harsh for normal crops to grow optimally. While on a bad year people died of famine, now they can rely on their genetically toughened plants to yield them some food.

What is the Verdict?

As much as Organic farming sounds like the natural and ethically correct thing to do for the environment, the green revolution has saved thousands of human lives. The first is ideal, while the second has been a practical solution to a lot of people’s pain. At the moment only a middle path seems viable and further research on crops and farming is mandatory.

Organic farming and green revolution — conversion to organic is need-of-the-day:

In many of the developing nation, because of tremendous benefits on environmental, social and health front, organic agriculture seems to be emerging as an alternative to ‘green revolution technology’. This is evident from the recent trend among an increasing number of farmers in developing nations voluntarily switch over to organic agriculture from the ‘hybrid seeds-agro-chemicals and irrigation’ based conventional farming technologies.

A. The reason for this switch over may be of threefold –

• Farmers who adopted organic agriculture because of their general environmental, ideological or philosophical underpinning. This category of agriculturists’ reasons to go organic was certainly not financial incentives.
• Farmers who wanted predominantly to tap the lucrative export markets for organic products, particularly in developed countries.
• The third category of organic farmers are also emerging especially in the green revolution areas, are the ones who are switching over to organic management techniques out of compulsions rather than by choice. In these areas the land & water deterioration is maximum (maybe beyond repair), because of prolonged use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides, the yield has affected considerably — so the earnings.

B. A switch-over to organic farming can go a long way in improving the economic well-being of these impoverished cultivators if they can take advantage of the rapidly growing global markets for organic products which offer handsome premiums. The criteria for for a conversion process would be:

• Change in attitude of farmers — First, the conversion process demands a significant change in the attitude of the farmer. This is a crucial step because the approach to farming problems in an organic system is essentially different from its conventional counterpart. While the latter handles a farming problem in a piecemeal manner with a linear ‘input-output’ approach, organic farming relies on a holistic view to work with and alongside natural processes.
• Second, the conversion process necessitates major changes at the farm level, particularly within the soil. Healthy and fertile soil is the foundation of any organic agricultural system. The focus of the management under this approach is on maintenance and improvement of the overall health of the individual farm’s soil-microbe-plant-animal system. This contrasts sharply with agrochemical based conventional farming systems that leave devastating impacts on soil life and soil biological activities, e.g., elimination of natural enemies, pest resurgence, genetic resistance to pesticides, destruction of natural control mechanisms, and so on.
• The conversion period is the intermediate phase when attempts are being made to rebuild the soil ecosystems that have been destroyed by conventional agriculture over the years, to make it suitable for organic management. During this phase of soil rebuilding the converting farmer takes recourse to several organic management techniques, such as planting of legumes and green manures, use of crop residues, application of animal manures, composts and other organic wastes, carbon-based organic fertilizers etc. These techniques are aimed at creating an optimal soil condition for enhanced biological activity in the soil so that plants get fed through the soil ecosystem and not through synthetic fertilizers added to the soil.

The process of soil rebuilding invariably demands some time. These time-consuming changes at the soil level are among the prime reasons for requiring an interim period for conversion before the certification as an organic unit. The conversion period may turn out to be a difficult phase for the farmer owing to several direct and indirect costs involved in the whole process of conversion.

C. The mechanism of organic marketing is quite different from that of regular marketing of the products produced by conventional farming. Organic markets are still a niche segment in which specific buyers are targeted. Such marketing requires different skills and may call for additional costs in the initial stages. Furthermore, as required in any marketing job, reliable market information — which is very often difficult to obtain. The process of conversion may also be hindered due to other transaction costs as well, such as

• Lack of access to relevant knowledge and information;
• The dearth of training facilities and the non-existence of an adequate extension system;
• An enormous amount of mandatory documentation involved in the process of inspection and certification, which is too cumbersome to maintain for those small farmers, who are illiterate;
• Difficulties in obtaining reliable information on the domestic and international market;
• Lack of demand in the domestic markets;
• Constraints on access to international markets;
• Institutional barriers, such as scarcity of professional institutions capable of assisting the farmers throughout production, post-production and marketing processes;
• Inadequate availability of different organic inputs, such as organic seeds, bio-fertilizers, bio-pesticides etc.

Organic agriculture does not require huge investments in irrigation, energy and external inputs. Rather, it demands substantial investments in capacity building through research, training and extension. Appropriate networks should also be created in the country for dissemination of information among the farmers about international as well as local markets for organic produce. Apart, a well-thought-out subsidy and other support schemes from govt. are essential, especially, for farmers of developing nations to make the conversion to organic agriculture easier and cheaper, as has been done in some of the developed nations earlier.​