Here’s some hard, responsibly farmed news to swallow: Big Organic isn’t really doing much to reduce carbon emissions. In fact, commercialized organic operations are actually contributing to greater emission of greenhouse gasses. Reality bites, dudes.
But there’s hope for truly sustainable farming yet.
The University of Oregon’s Around the O has the story:
The increasing numbers of commercialized organic operations, which now make up just 3 percent of total agricultural lands, appear to contribute to increased and more intense levels of greenhouse gases coming from each acre of farmland, reports Julius McGee, a doctoral student in the UO sociology department. His study is in the June issue of the journal Agriculture and Human Values.
The study used annual state-level data from 2000 to 2008 on organic and conventional agricultural greenhouse gases from all states but Louisiana. Alaska data were not available for the first two years. McGee also collected data on socioeconomic and agricultural indicators believed to influence industry growth trends. He then analyzed greenhouse gas emissions using a fixed-rate panel regression that allowed him to indirectly control for unseen variables.
The study does not rule out the possibility that large-scale organic operations eventually will reduce greenhouse gas emissions, but, for now, McGee said, higher emissions are likely to continue unless actions are taken to correct course.
The GLP aggregated and excerpted this blog/article to reflect the diversity of news, opinion and analysis. Read full, original post: Big Organic farming isn’t as clean as we may have thought
