Farming for a hungry world
From Griffith REVIEW Edition 27: Food Chain
© Copyright Griffith University & the author.
Written by Anna Salleh
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Is Australian science ignoring organic-style farming?
Southeastern Australia has been gripped by one of the worst drought on record, yet Tim O'Halloran is a remarkable survivor. His farm near Balranald has been producing wheat and sheep since the 1920s. A decade or so ago, the rising price of fertiliser drove him to try a different way of farming. He reduced ploughing to a minimum, and started adding microbes and other low-cost natural materials to the soil to improve its fertility and capacity to hold water. O'Halloran says these unorthodox methods have halved his expenditure on synthetic pesticides, fertilisers and herbicides and his plants have healthier roots that dig deeper into the soil. ‘I believe if you've got a healthy soil, you'll grow a healthy crop,' he says. A few years back he made his bank manager very happy when he even earned enough to pay tax, unlike many of his neighbours.
O'Halloran calls his approach ‘biological farming'. It's different from organic farming because he doesn't rule out the use of synthetic chemicals altogether. But like organic farming it relies on emulating and working with ecological systems. It's part of a spectrum of farming approaches that is often called ecological agriculture or agro-ecology. Many think O'Halloran is either crazy or lucky but he is part of a groundswell of conventional farmers who are moving towards a farming style once associated with ‘alternative lifestylers' and a back-to-nature philosophy. Yet O'Halloran insists he's no ‘tree-hugger greenie or anything' – it's economic pressure, not philosophy that's made him change course.
In Africa too, hard times are driving farmers towards ecological farming. Case studies are documented in a 2008 report from the United Nations Environment Program and UN Conference on Trade and Development. One Kenyan vegetable farmer Susan Wekesa from the town of Kitale turned to ‘biointensive' agriculture in the wake of a three-year drought. Wekesa was able to make big savings on fertilisers and pesticides while increasing her soil's fertility and water-holding capacity, the UN report says. She doubled her vegetable yields and boosted her income, enabling her to ‘face the future proudly'. The report argues ecological agriculture, including organic agriculture, will play an important role in food security. It echoes the findings of earlier UN Food and Agriculture Organization reports, which also argued organic agriculture could help farmers cope with climate change.
THE MERITS OF organic farming are hotly debated. Critics point to evidence that organic farming is a low-yield option with dubious environmental credentials – a quaint luxury for the latté-sipping rich. Certainly conventional farmers who rely on intensive use of chemicals to maximise yields can suffer a drop in yields when first converting to organics. Some also question whether organic approaches are suitable for Australia's ancient soils. Despite numerous scientific papers for and against organic farming, the 2008 UN report emphasises there is still relatively little research on ecological farming systems like this. Nevertheless, says UN Environment Program executive director, Achim Steiner, it's clear organic farming can provide both environmental benefits and a ‘rational economic approach' for farmers who can't afford chemicals. His organization has documented the experience of farmers in seven countries across east Africa, showing, in most cases, an increase in yields and incomes with a shift towards organic farming. ‘We ourselves were surprised by the numbers,' says Steiner.
No matter what you think of farming that's labelled ‘organic', Steiner says the world is in dire need of ecological farming methods. He says pesticide and fertiliser-driven agriculture is reaching its limits, having depleted and polluted soils and water supplies. Steiner argues that feeding over nine billion people by 2050 will require a range of creative solutions. While GM technology has its attractions, says Steiner, he says its promises have been hyped. He says it would be foolish to invest in GM without looking at other ways to make farming systems more productive and resilient to climate change. ‘There is no single panacea,' says Steiner. ‘It is not the transgenic revolution. It is not the organic revolution ... there's no one right way.' He says researchers need to spend more time investigating organic and other ecological farming methods that reduce the need for external inputs like chemicals and water. ‘Organic farming deserves as much scientific scrutiny and validation as any other element of an agricultural production strategy,' says Steiner.
Dean of Agriculture at the University of Sydney, Professor Mark Adams agrees more research is needed on understanding farms as complex ecological systems. ‘We need to focus on how we can augment the natural cycle of organic matter with limited inputs where we understand the inputs more thoroughly and cost them more carefully,' says Adams. Fifth-generation Gulgong wheat and sheep farmer, Colin Seis, has been putting this idea into practice. He is another farmer who has decided to experiment with ecological farming methods out of economic necessity. In 1993 Seis came up with the idea that he could reduce the cost of ploughing and herbicides by growing wheat in the same paddock as perennial native grassland. The native pasture turned out to provide some unexpected ecological benefits. It harbours an army of spiders that gobble up insect pests, saving on pesticides, and his soils cycle water and nutrients more efficiently, slashing his need for fertiliser as well. ‘Nature had it correct in the first place so the closer you get to mimicking how it originally functioned, the more economical it will be and the easier it will be,' says Seis. He says his system, called ‘pasture cropping', has reduced his costs by two thirds and increased his profits. Lately, Seis has managed to grow a crop without any herbicides and synthetic fertiliser at all, using instead a range of concoctions that he calls ‘compost teas', ‘microbial food' and ‘organic fertilisers'. Preliminary studies of his method, now adopted by a number of other farmers throughout the country, are yielding interesting results.
Canberra-based former agribusiness consultant Dr Greg Bender says his own research has found that many farmers, using ecological farming methods, are viable because they are reducing costs. Many scientists, including Mark Adams, question the evidence for some of the methods being used by farmers who are desperate for a cheaper way of farming. Unlike many organic farming advocates, Adams believes GM crops play an important tool in feeding the world. But he is keen to see more research on different farming systems, including those that use perennial native grasslands. He says studies could help reveal useful information in the search for more ecological farming methods. This is a view supported by a 2001 report for Land and Water Australia, which found many innovative farmers were using natural systems to reduce inputs and improve soil and water management.
Adams says scientists urgently need to carry out long-term field trials on the impact of different agricultural practices on farm ecology. He points to experiments carried out at the 160-year-old Rothamstead agricultural research centre in the UK, which show ten to twenty-year studies are needed to compare the impact of different fertilisers or tillage regimes. ‘We've been way too slow in putting in place funding for long-term research,' says Adams ‘It's always been one year, two years, maybe five years if you're lucky.' In Switzerland, an organic farming research institute has been running farm-scale trials comparing the productivity and ecological benefits of organic and other methods for more than thirty years. A New Zealand trial, called ARGOS, plans to compare organic and other farming methods for twenty to thirty years. In Australia there are no such trials.
Australian agricultural research could also help farmers in developing countries that live in challenging environments such as our own, says Achim Steiner. He says research into ecological farming systems could provide a particular ‘beacon of hope' because it can cut the need for costly and polluting chemical inputs. ‘We can combine the wisdom of the farmer with the ingenuity of modern science and it is there that I see the greatest opportunity for us to feed nine billion people and not cause the kind of problems that we are already seeing today.'