Share The Organic Vision, Not Rural-Urban Division

I was driving along the 5-freeway and happened upon this field of corn (pictured above) with some sustainable farming features. In front of this corn field is a hedgerow (the yellow plant). Hedgerows are used to separate a road from adjoining fields or one field from another. It is a form of environmentally minded farming which serves as windbreak to improve conditions for the adjacent crops. They sequester carbon in the soil, manage pests, and provide habitat for pollinators and other wildlife. PLEASE FORGIVE ANY TYPOS. MY WEBSITE IS NOT SECURE FROM HACKERS.

Outlined portion of photo magnified.

This is another angle of the same field.

By protecting the crops and soil from wind, a hedgerow helps avoid topsoil erosion. Unless a consumer spends time learning about why hedgerows are an important climate change adaptation feature, the value of USDA Certified Organic as step in the right direction is completely missed. 150K in graduate student loans resulted in developing a complex data-driven model for making agriculture sustainable a priority. Organic certification costs more in the short term to implement. Organic certification is currently partially subsidized with specific limits. But it pays off enormously in the long term. That certification process is notorious among farmers. Certification should be heavily subsidized and electronically streamlined in order to make it more competitive nationally with conventional farming. Non-organic farming is less sustainable in a lot of ways. Organic farms better protect a farm’s soil productivity and the surrounding community by having healthier chemical-free soil. Hedgerows are only one farming practice that a USDA Certified Organic farm can adopt.

This investment into rural parts of our country will help revitalize the rural parts of our economy that still are recovering from the 2008 financial crisis. If this organic food can help feed low income food insecure in urban areas that has additional benefits. Further, the ongoing costs of continued organic farming should be subsidized to keep it competitive with conventional because the environmental and climate adaptation benefits of organic farming accrue over time. The benefit of organic farming is not a one and done when it comes to improving soil health. Long term soil health is paramount to protecting our food system by protecting against climate change.

More specifically, all of those extra plants come with more complex root systems that give soil more structure to soak in heavy rain when a strong storm hits. That healthier soil with more soil organic carbon (SOC) also helps protect against drought because higher SOC in soil is correlated with being able to store more water in that heartier soil structure. This is critical to improving a plant’s defense  during (climate change related) heat events. Healthier soil has more life in it, called the microbiome and macrofuana, or worms and other insects. Both microbiome and macrofuana help produce new carbon-rich soil by feeding on the nutrients and organic matter associated with all plants. Farmers till their soil to loosen it before planting crops. Not tilling is an option when farming organically that provides major benefits. If the farmer doesn’t till their land this helps accumulate carbon in the soil over time as it is sequestered by a crop’s growth. The synthetic fertilizer applied to crops is produced using petrochemical inputs. Organic farming doesn’t use synthetic fertilizer, it uses organic fertilizer. This means conventional farming’s use of synthetic fertilizer is responsible for more 2.1% of climate change causing GHGs.

Conventional farmland’s soil has been treating its fields like an engine that only needs more fertilizer as fuel for decades. And the use of fertilizer has reached a plateau within the industry. A USDA Economic Research Service analysis of price of fertilizer and crop prices reveals an important trend. “Between 2002 and 2008, annual fertilizer prices paid by farmers increased rapidly—generally much faster than increases in crop prices received by farmers—and became more volatile. Fertilizer price increases through 2008 were largely driven by high energy prices and high input costs.” This suggests that the industry has reached a limit to the utility or productivity of that input. The United Nations has reported an analysis that “generating three centimeters of top soil takes 1,000 years, and if current rates of degradation continue all of the world's top soil could be gone within 60 year.”

Soil is more complex than conventional farming acknowledges in practice. Soil has a living ecosystem that is self regulating. After decades of degradation from conventional farming it takes years of organic cultivation to repair the damage from conventional farming to reestablish those natural processes. Depending on the type of soil, it can take as little as 3 to 5 years to see improvement, or up to 15 years. If that farmland’s soil begins to include more carbon and is measured appropriately via satellites, the value of that sequestered carbon should be added to the value of that farm’s land. This will encourage farmers to continue the same (regenerative) farming practices to keep that carbon in the ground. Healthier soil will result and that healthier soil will mean the farmer will eventually spend less money on fertilizer. That’s (healthy soil) money in the bank!

Small changes in how farmers implement agriculturally beneficial features like these make a difference over time. These are only a few aspects of a farm that helps qualify a farm to be USDA Certified Organic. These additional practices requires land where a crop like corn would otherwise grow and marginally more maintenance over time. Organic farming requires additional labor, time for additional workflows, and (intercropping related) seed expense. In the long term organic actually be more cost competitive. This California farm has undertaken some of organic practices to be more sustainable.

Conventional farming is already being heavily supported by the government; offering a complete federal subsidy for farms to become USDA Certified Organic would provide those farms with greater environmentally provided climate risk security. These small changes is how this farm helps to keep more NO4 (nitrous oxide) and more CO2 (carbon dioxide) in the ground over time. What’s more, farmers all around the world can start doing this if governments work together to support organic farming. AND it can happen well before 2030. That fact is not true for housing, energy, or electric vehicles.

Below is an image of a conventionally grown corn field (source). You can clearly see where the plants grow out of the soil and where the plant’s stalk begins and ends. This farm is more susceptible to topsoil erosion and that is a problem that goes beyond the farm. Why? Because when soil is blown off the farm by wind or is washed away by rain or irrigation from the farm, the chemicals used to fertilize crops or the pesticides they apply pollute the surrounding communities, water systems, ground, and can harm farm workers. As a business, a farmer spends money to buy those chemicals and that’s lost money. Organic farms better protect a farm and the surrounding community by protecting against this.

Hedgerows are only one farming practice that an organic farm does to improve the surrounding environment, protect all consumers against climate change, protect their farm from losing (expensive) nutrients due to soil erosion, make their farm more profitable, and promote healthier soil that protects their crops from extreme weather events and drought. Its a win for the farm, the consumer, the environment, and if the workers get paid more from the extra income for farming organically, its a win for labor.

Once a farmer starts earning the extra money from farming organically, they have a choice about whether they can pay their workers more. Some will and others will not. Now you know the MANY benefits of organic farming. If you were going down the aisle of your produce section and noticed that the price of organic was the same as the price of conventional, you now have the AFFORDABLE choice of making a contribution to a more sustainable world by purchasing an organic product. Everyone needs to eat and then everyone could buy organic products every week at the grocery store. That change in mass consumer behavior is a simple but powerful step and it starts to change minds about how we all can use our wallet to contribute little by little to making our way of life more sustainable.

Part of my platform is that a label should provide a comparison of how much a farm paid its labor compared to the industry average. If you cared enough to support a living wage for labor, you could also decide to buy the organic product that has a better rating for how much it pays its labor. There is a completely different set of business motivations that can be driven by the stock market’s new valuation of subsidized organic farming to make commodity farmers around the world change their production methods very very quickly. You’ll need to read my book for that.