Source: thebittenword.com/ Flickr .

You've heard this stat before, but it's worth mentioning again: The United Nations has estimated that food production will need to nearly double from 2008 levels by the year 2050 to feed the world's growing population (nearly all from the least developed nations) and make up for shrinking agricultural land. That means that to boost yields and combat pests, farmers will need to increasingly rely on technology ranging from high-yield seeds to agricultural biotechnology to even the Internet of Things.

While progress is being made, consumers in many wealthy nations are demanding that their food be grown using organic farming principles. At a time when the world cannot falter on the path to increasing its food production, these habits can have severe consequences. Some consumers rationalize their purchasing decisions by claiming the health benefits of organic food (which have been thoroughly debunked), the avoidance of health risks associated with genetically modified foods (with which the scientific consensus disagrees), or the more environmentally friendly and sustainable approach to agriculture that organic farming enables.

The last argument might seem the most plausible. After all, organic farming forbids the use of synthetic pesticides, biotechnology, and many (but not all) pesticides. Unfortunately for Whole Foods Market shoppers, the argument doesn't quite hold up, according to shocking numbers compiled by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Ouch, organic! Is organic farming really the most sustainable form of agriculture? To answer that, we need to define the word "sustainable" from an environmental point of view. Go ahead, take a minute to think about what the word really means. I'll wait.

If you cheated and looked in a dictionary, then you would have found something similar to this:

That would mean that the most sustainable agricultural methods would maintain natural resources, or in this case, land, to which all other natural resources -- water, soil, energy input, fertilizer use, and the like -- are dependent upon. To use land and derivative natural resources as sustainably as possible requires using the least input to produce the most food. So, how does organic farming stack up?

Not so well, according to numbers from the USDA. When the department logged yield data (food produced per acre) from various crops grown organically, government researchers found that they severely underperformed the same crops grown with more traditional farming methods.

Organic Crop

See original here:
These Shocking Numbers Show Organic Farming's Biggest Downfall