Salon strikes back at the anti-organic arguments of Nobelist Norman Borlaug and the recent Economist article on the organic revolution.

Quoting liberally from a paper by Berkeley biologist, Christos Vasilikiotis, the piece suggests that organic farming might be better able to feed the world.

Hunger is a problem of poverty, distribution, and access to food. The question then, is not “how to feed the world,” but rather, how can we develop sustainable farming methods that have the potential to help the world feed and sustain itself. Organic management practices promote soil health, water conservation and can reverse environmental degradation. The emphasis on small-scale family farms has the potential to revitalize rural areas and their economies. Counter to the widely held belief that industrial agriculture is more efficient and productive, small farms produce far more per acre than large farms. Industrial agriculture relies heavily on monocultures, the planting of a single crop throughout the farm, because they simplify management and allow the use of heavy machinery. Larger farms in the third world also tend to grow export luxury crops instead of providing staple foods to their growing population. Small farmers, especially in the Third World, have integrated farming systems where they plant a variety of crops maximizing the use of their land. They are also more likely to have livestock on their farm, which provides a variety of animal products to the local economy and manure for improving soil fertility. In such farms, though the yield per acre of a single crop might be lower than a large farm, total production per acre of all the crops and various animal products is much higher than large conventional farms … Conversion to small organic farms therefore would lead to sizeable increases of food production worldwide.

We love it when media sling organic tomatoes at each other’s heads.