Organic versus Conventional Farming: What is missing from the research

Small actions compound.

A meta-analysis comparing organic and conventional farming recently came up in our South African agroecology group. It gathers a great deal of research, though none of it is based in Africa, so we have to be tentative about drawing firm conclusions for our own context. Still, it is carefully done and worth reading, and it raises a question worth sitting with.

What the research suggests

The simplified message is that, from a climate-change perspective, shifting to a largely plant-based diet matters more than switching to organic farming methods. The diet finding feels important and fairly uncontroversial, and may even transfer to an African context. But perhaps the deeper point is that the kind of organic farming being measured, a one-to-one commercial substitution of organic inputs for inorganic ones, is not actually what we should be aiming for.

Where intuition comes in

We have an in-built desire to be right, and we are faced with far more data than we can reasonably process. When that happens, our intuition steps in. That may sound a little fluffy, but intuition is a proxy for the subconscious, which can handle vastly more information than the conscious mind. Even the author of the study clearly wants organic to be better for the environment. There is something about a certain way of farming that simply feels right to us, and that feeling is worth listening to rather than dismissing.

Better farming is more than large-scale organic

At the same time, the bucolic image of small-scale farming can feel fantastical at the scale of a whole planet. People are moving into cities, farming is becoming more mechanised, and fewer people grow significant nutrients and calories. So neither a simple "go organic" nor a romantic "everyone grows their own" answers the question on its own.

Feeding the planet starts with one meal

Instead of asking what is right for everyone, everywhere, what if we start with what is right for ourselves, our family and our community, and shrink the timescale to today, to this meal? If we can feel the full scope of a meal, the person who harvested it, the animal it came from, the soil it grew in, we may begin to know what to eat, and when. If we allow ourselves to feel again, we may well eat differently.

Tiny choices compound

A few years ago we realised our bean growing would never provide serious protein for a growing family, but bulk-bought beans and sorghum might change our diet. At first we did not even eat beans. We bought a couple of hundred kilograms, stored them in sealed buckets, and they moved very slowly. Then something shifted, almost invisibly, and soaking and cooking them became routine. The tiny choices compounded, just as they had in our growing, and they rippled out to neighbours and friends. Grow some Swiss chard, share some spinach, and keep paying attention to your very next meal. Who knows where it leads.

This is the same thread that runs through complex versus complicated problems and how we measure a small farm, and it is why we keep asking whether growing well has to be expensive.

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