Organic farms produce half to food for little eco benefit
Posted by Alan | Under Organic Food Saturday May 8, 2010
Scientists stated today that the increase of biodiversity and benefits of organic farming to wildlife are much fewer than originally thought.
In fact, while organic farms may have been thought of as friendly towards wildlife, the benefits to bees, butterflies, and birds are much less than that thought according to research by the University of Leeds due to the fact that the benefits do not make up for the lower yields of produce.
Experts from the University’s Faculty of Biological Science carried out detailed comparisons of conventional farming and organic farming and discovered that while organic farms had 12% more biodiversity present, they produced less than half of the normal yield of a conventional farm.
Leader of the project, Professor Tim Benton, said that over the next forty years in order to keep up with population increases food production will need to be doubled globally.
Benton continued to say that the results show that in order to produce this amount of food using organic farming twice the amount of land would have to be utilized.
The research studied two different farming areas located in the North Midlands and Central South West England and took into account many different variables such as topography, climate, soil type, and land use.
32 organic farms were paired with non-organic farms with some located in hot regions while others were located in cold regions in order to study the impacts of both types of farming in all environments.
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