Why the Green Revolution really isn’t green
By Timothy J. LaSalle
Excerpted from The Organic Report, Fall 2008

It is disturbing to see the myth that organic farming cannot feed the world perpetrated – most recently in a New York Times interview with Nina Fedoroff, science and technology advisor to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. From its most benign interpretation, this fallacy is based on ignorance since many scientific studies prove that organic farming methods are comparable to conventional. But this disinformation is not benign since its dissemination benefits a handful of chemical companies and greatly harms hundreds of millions throughout the world whose best chance at feeding themselves may be through organic methods. 

There is no question that global hunger is an urgent issue. There is also no question that the world’s most vulnerable disproportionately live in Africa where food aid has failed to keep ahead of the hunger curve. 

But the answer to this issue lies in the new “True Green Revolution,” not in the historic “Green Revolution” approach where yields are artificially increased by importing the practices of genetically engineered seeds and petroleum-based fertilizer. Dr. Norman Borlaug, Nobel prizewinner and the grandfather of the Green Revolution, has been credited with saving tens of millions of people around the world from starvation through his agrarian research that fed more people on less acres. And his methods did save many in South America and Asia.  

But today’s carbon-depleted and environmentally damaged world is very different than the post World War II environment that found new peacetime uses for chemicals. Today we know more, and we need to feed the world’s growing population in a way that does not compromise the air we breathe, the water we drink and the soil that nourishes us.  

While many have been fed through advances in modern agriculture that increased yields with petroleum-based fertilizer and toxic chemical pesticides, many have been harmed. In a recent report, the World Bank said that overuse of chemical pesticides in developing countries contributes to costly health problems, and questioned whether the risks of using pesticides outweighed the benefits. Additionally, excessive use of nitrogenous fertilizer has a significant negative impact on global warming due to agriculture's contribution of non-carbon dioxide emissions. Chemical fertilizer use for the past 50 years has produced a huge greenhouse gas burden through its manufacturing, transport and routine escape into the atmosphere from agricultural fields. Additionally, chemical runoff has polluted our waterways. 

There is a better way. Rodale Institute has proved that organic agricultural methods can remove about 7,000 pounds of carbon dioxide from the air each year and store it in an acre of farmland. If all 434 million acres of American cropland were converted to these practices, it would be the equivalent of eliminating 217 million cars from the road, or a car for every two acres of farmland.

Our studies, which are the longest-running side-by-side studies of conventional and organic farming in the nation, also show that the organic approach does not compromise yield – in fact in drought years yield increases – in some years by as much as 70 percent – since more carbon in the soil allows it to hold more water. In wet years, the additional organic matter in the soil wicks water away from plant roots, limiting erosion and keeping plants in place. 

Organic, regenerative farming is a site-specific approach that can affordably be adapted to any location. Most importantly, it helps people feed themselves with the materials that they already have, without hooking them on an increasing expensive dependency on chemical inputs and high-cost modified seeds that are bred to only work with synthetic herbicides and pesticides. These seeds often come with built-in terminator genes that won’t let a poor farmer collect his or her own seed. This is genetic tinkering much like the extra nicotine in tobacco designed to create a desperate dependency – in this case, on seed companies. In India alone, more 100,000 farmers have committed suicide after they were enticed to get a loan to buy these seeds, and couldn’t pay back their debts when the costs of seed, fertilizer and pesticides were greater than their profits.  

Changing the way we farm may be the single biggest action that the world can take to address global warming – and to help the world’s most vulnerable end the cycle of aid dependency and hunger. Most importantly, it can be done without new technology or expensive investments.

Timothy J. LaSalle is CEO of the Rodale Institute, a 60-year-old non-profit organization dedicated to researching sustainable farming and educating farmers and consumers about the food we eat.