It's official: organic farming can feed, and save, the world

If we had a penny for every time some smarty-pants has told us that organic farming can't feed the world, we'd be rich. Now around 60 countries have officially declared, by signing a report published yesterday, that industrial farming is not the way forward and only sustainable, local farming will be able to combat climate change, hunger and poverty.

The International Assessment of Agricultural Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD) report is the product of four years' research into global agriculture. It culminated in a meeting in Johannesburg last week where more than 400 scientists, government emissaries and representatives from the World Bank, UN and NGOs agreed that we need to change the way we farm worldwide.

The report concluded that 'success' should not be seen in terms of higher yields and 'technological fixes', the idea behind industrial farming. Instead, it says, 'success' should be measured in what the report calls "agroecological terms". These include environmental impacts, food trade arrangements and rural populations' ability to sustain their way of living.

Robin Maynard from the Soil Association argues that this holistic way of producing food can be achieved by farming organically. "This is exactly what organic farming at its best achieves -- producing the same amount of food for 26 per cent less energy than chemical based farming [and] delivering a greater variety and number of wildlife species," he says. "Because [this kind of farming] doesn't depend on vast quantities of expensive agrichemicals, [it] is more accessible and adaptable to smaller scale poorer farms in developing countries."

According to Greenpeace, the only countries not to sign the report were the US, Canada and Australia. Needless to say, this is upsetting, as it'll be difficult to move forward and turn the theory of sustainable and socially responsible global farming into a reality without these three.

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