OCA Editors’ Note:
A number of recent articles in the international press support Halweil’s assertions that affordable organic fertilizers are available for struggling farmers in poor countries. In Zimbabwe, a 50kg bag of organic fertilizer is pegged at US$22, which is
relatively cheaper to other fertilizers that are going for around US$27. In
India, input cost for organic farming is 40% less as compared to traditional farming.

Senior Researcher, Brian Halweil, appeared on NPR’s Science Friday, “

Sizing Up Sustainable Food,” last week with Michael Pollan and James McWilliams

On a recent episode of Science Friday,
when the host asked whether organic farming could feed the world, one
of the guests suggested that the impracticality lay with compost.

“The concerns with fertilizer really have to do with compost,” said
journalist James McWilliams. “Compost is extremely heavy. And this is,
in some ways, going to be tremendously unwieldy and unachievable,
especially in poor countries.”

Yes, it’s true that compost is best made and used locally. But
compost isn’t the only form of fertilizer used by organic farmers. In
addition to bulky sources like compost and manure, there are cover
crops, green manures, and leguminous plants added to the crop rotation,
some of which are more accessible and affordable for poor farmers than
chemical fertilizers. And if weight is your main concern, organic
farmers also have an array of concentrated fertilizers to choose from,
from bone and fish meal to chicken litter teas and microbial soil
inoculants. A University of Michigan team of agricultural scientists and ecologists found
that there was, in fact, no shortage of “organic” sources of nitrogen
if the world needed to depend on these for fertility. (I took a look at
this study and others a few years ago.)

At a time when the number of hungry people on the planet has just
topped one billion, this guest’s anti-compost statement was good
evidence that journalists, agricultural scientists, politicians, and
even farmers often dismiss agricultural approaches based on
misinformation. This is part of the reason that Worldwatch has launched
a project to evaluate and point the world towards agricultural
innovations that can nourish people, as well as the planet.

Which isn’t to say that an all-organic approach is necessarily the
solution. Or that an all-anything approach is the best solution. In
fact, if there were any broad conclusions from the Science Friday
discussion it was that the world’s agricultural discussion is moving
away from extremism and towards nuance. In parts of sub-Saharan Africa,
where soils are so depleted in nutrients, organic forms of fertilizer
are most effective at raising yields only after farmers use some
chemical fertilizer to build back essential nutrients. In other
situations, where poor farmers are exporting vegetables or coffee or
cashews to wealthy nations, the greatest benefits will come from
combining these long-distance markets with investment in local
processing and local marketing cooperatives that add as much value as
possible before the crops leave the country.

Past attempts to eradicate hunger, in addition to common sense, show
us that no one answer will save the world—or millions of people from
hunger and malnutrition. The most enduring solutions will suit the
setting—a pest-resistant crop variety will be indispensible in some
cases, whereas in other regions farmers will benefit most from access
to low-cost irrigation. A diversity of solutions will be the strongest
solution, just as the world’s wealth of crop and livestock diversity is
our ultimate insurance against the emergence of new diseases or more
erratic weather from climate change.

As the show wound down, I found myself channeling some commonsense
wisdom from my grandfather: “We shouldn’t let doing the perfect prevent
us from doing the good.” I suppose this is as true for our own lives as
it is for agricultural development.