Organic farming drives sustainability in global agriculture

Organic farming is an important role model for changing the current agriculture and food system, argue eleven international experts in the renowned scientific journal Nature Sustainability. They call for coherent policies that support sustainable food systems, incentivize better farming practices, and raise the bar of what is acceptable in farming in the 21st century.

There is broad consensus that the way food is produced and consumed urgently needs to change. Only then can global challenges such as climate change, biodiversity loss, and poverty be addressed. However, the approach to achieving this is heavily contested: Is it more promising to make mainstream agriculture gradually more sustainable, or to promote alternative systems like organic farming?

According to the experts, both approaches can go hand-in-hand and mutually reinforce each other. This new perspective allows focusing policies on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) that have been adopted by all nations.

“For too long, we have been trapped in heated debates on which technology can feed the world. Transcending ideological barriers and vested interests now need to be at the top of the agenda to accelerate the necessary shift,” says lead author Frank Eyhorn from the Swiss development cooperation organization Helvetas.

Co-author Adrian Muller from the Research Institute of Organic Agriculture FiBL adds: “We need coherent policies to achieve sustainable food systems. We can no longer afford seemingly cheap food resulting in high environmental costs.”

A paradigm shift is already under way: The UN Food and Agriculture Organization recently recognized the role of agroecological systems, such as organic farming, in addressing the huge challenges of our current food system. Governments in Germany, Austria, India, and Kyrgyzstan, for example, are implementing policies and action plans to promote organic farming.

Source: Global Agriculture

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