Response to Dennis Avery on the "Consequences of Organic Farming"

According to Dennis Avery of the Hudson Institute, the damages from the flooding in southeastern Minnesota were made worse by organic farming ("The Consequences of Organic Farming, Sept. 6, 2007). Let's ignore the possibility that Avery's arguments and reasoning might be biased, for the moment, and consider his claims. The best way to "protect soil effectively" is to use "low-till farming methods" that "depend on herbicides to control choking weeds." The problem with Avery's claim is that the definition of "soil protection" depends critically on your view of what constitutes healthy land and soil. Low-till farming methods that depend on pesticides may decrease the amount of mechanical tilling needed, but at the expense of other indicators of soil health. As most people learn in high school biology classes, healthy soil is created by the cycle of life, death, and decay that occurs at the microscopic level. This cycle depends upon numerous organisms that are adversely affected by pesticides. Furthermore, artificial pesticides and fertilizers are dangerous to animal and human life in high concentrations, and have poisoned wells and watersheds in Minnesota. Do we really want to curtail the kind of innovative and responsible farming methods that improve the quality of our land and water?

Some of Avery's claims are simply false. The idea that organic farms "lose about half of their crop potential" is false, unless you stick to a very limited idea of crop potential. Organic farming has been shown to use about half as much energy per dollar of crop produced. As the world's oil supplies continue their inevitable decline, we need more organic farming, not less. Synthetic fertilizers and pesticides use oil as raw ingredients. Avery's concerns about feeding an increasing global population also ring hollow. If his claim that conventional farming is the key to feeding the world is true, then how does he explain the continued existence of famine and hunger during the height of the "green revolution"? The causes of hunger are economic, environmental, and political. Organic farming will not make the situation worse. In fact, by enabling small farmers to cut their ties to multinational corporations that control the patents to new technologies such as transgenic crops, organic farming methods will be the key to giving communities the ability to feed themselves while enhancing their soil and water.

Finally, has it occurred to him that many small organic farmers actually weed their farms by hand, and therefore don't have a problem with "weeds choking out the crops"?