Wheat field impacted by crown rot (Fusarium spp.), which causes the whitening and rotting of the seeds. Wheat is among the major crops grown worldwide and suffers heavy losses that could be mitigated with preventive methods Since the late 20th century, the role of mycorrhizal fungi for plant growth and yield improvement in agricultural settings has been increasingly acknowledged. Policymakers, businesses, farmers, and researchers around the world grow increasingly aware of the complexity of the processes that bring food to everyone ─ processes far, far more complex than the mechanistic input-output model of conventional agriculture, in which the input of labor and inorganic fertilizers produces stable yields as a resulting output. The process of ecology as a science, over time, has shown that a system is most stable when there are many elements to support it; much like it happens when a table has four legs instead of three. Mycorrhizal fungi have been demonstrated to be a fundamental pillar in building food production systems that produce food and endure over time, truly guaranteeing food security for the world’s tables. A benefit of Mycorrhizal Fungi Powder associations has been overlooked, however, as the focus is placed on these fungi as nutrient-absorption enhancers or as extended ‘roots’ for the plants they colonize. Biological pest control, in fact, is another of the major benefits brought by mycorrhizal fungi to agricultural settings. In addition to everything else they provide, these fungi are serving a protective function for crops twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, as a review published in 2018 explores. According to the analyses of the studies reviewed, mycorrhizal inoculants affects the pest resistance capabilities of plants in four fundamental ways: 1) Improving the overall health of the plant by increased nutrient uptake. 2) Competing with pathogens, often out-competing them entirely. 3) Generating systemic acquired resistance (SAR) in the plant. 4) Generating induced systemic resistance (ISR) in the plant. Of these, the most interesting to the scientists and researchers are the last two, as they are not just a byproduct of the arbuscular mycorrhizal (as the first two are) but direct mechanisms of pest control displayed by mycorrhizal fungi when they colonize plant roots. SAR and ISR are both the essential methods through which the immune system of a plant works: through SAR when the infection or the attack of a pathogen is local, increasing antibody count and aggressively targeting the pathogen, and through ISR when the infection is widespread, by inducing a general increase in the defensive mechanisms throughout the whole plant. The Mycorrhizal Powder naturally generates, for example, the organic compound Acibenzolar-S-methyl, often manufactured in laboratories and sold as an inorganic ‘fungicide’, when it is simply an activator of this immune response in plants. Mycorrhizal fungi act on plants as vaccines in this sense, stimulating a defensive response that is still there when real pests attack. This ensures that plants are always on their best always, in terms of their immune systems: an invaluable service in a world where up to 40% of all crops are lost to pests yearly.

To anybody in charge of anything, no matter how complex their job may be, or how ample the extent of their authority, two laws are always evident: inadequate behavior must not be rewarded, and adequate behavior must be rewarded. All rules (from kindergarten play rules to the Penal Code of countries with civil-law legal systems) are forms of rewarding socially adequate behavior and disavowing or even punishing inadequate behavior. When interacting with the market as economic agents, the governments have those same two methods ─ and in markets considered ‘free’, their method of choice is rewarding behavior that is adequate from a public standpoint. The principle is thus simple: if a business is doing good for society (by building infrastructure, educating the young, increasing competitiveness, or even just by creating jobs), the government rewards that good through subsidies. Ideally, at least, government subsidies thus go towards stimulating business activities that bring a public benefit, beyond the private benefit of their profitability. But our society is far from the ideal, and so government subsidies are not always distributed in the most efficient ways. Sometimes the subsidization is even hidden or ‘obverse’, such as when the government pays to clean up an oil spillage ─ the money is not going directly to the company responsible, but it’s still going towards keeping it profitable by absorbing some of its major costs. Sometimes the government considers that such a company’s existence is too large a benefit to be lost if only because of the impact in the overall economy should that oil company go bankrupt. This is also seen in the agricultural industry, where the government assuming production externalities is a major reason behind the relative cheapness of conventional versus organic products, a major competitive advantage of conventional producers. As a 2020 study found, if governments reverted the cost of just greenhouse gas emissions to agricultural producers, conventionally produced meats, dairy, and plant-based products could see price increases of up to 146%, 91%, and 25%, respectively. Organic produce across those three categories could also see a rise of up to 71%, 40%, and 6% ─ a much smaller increase (though still very large for the consumer), which indicates that organic production systems do not produce as many externalities or already capture a good deal of them in their current pricing structures. This is a first reason underlying the economic case for organic subsidies: if the externalities of agriculture are something that the government is going to assume in any case (to prevent price increases of the magnitude of the ones suggested above), it should attempt to stimulate the agricultural system that produces the least negative externalities. This doesn’t necessarily mean spending more money ─ it could very well be that ending subsidization of conventional agriculture, while reallocating those funds towards subsidizing organic agriculture, would reduce the money spent on subsidizing agricultural externalities. Saving money on the same service looks pretty good from a governmental standpoint, and could be a first step towards reshaping the agricultural landscape of the world. Terrace cultivation in an organic farm in Ohio, United States. Soil degradation (a major source of externalities for conventional agricultural systems) is highly reduced in organic agriculture and, with the right practices, leads even to soil improvement.

Let’s imagine the following scenario: there is a city on the margins of a river, upwards of which there is a forest. This forest makes all sort of contributions to the life of the city; it serves as a tourist attraction, as a park for the city’s population, as a refuge for a certain kind of migratory bird, as a space for research by agroforestry professionals of a nearby university, as a containing agent in case the river threatens to flood the city and, finally, as a source of wood for the local lumber industry. For the lumber industry, the goal is very much a clear one: chopping down more trees requires hiring more labor and machinery, but leads overall to higher earnings. Higher earnings and more labor requirements would lead, in turn, to more taxes for the city and reduced unemployment rates. So why not chop down the whole thing, and make a feast with the remains of the forest? For the argument's sake, let's imagine that this city (in reality the city of Bageshwar, India) is the city of our scenario: forest, river and city are all interrelated and coexist. In spite of this simple calculation, the proposal to allow the whole forest to be chopped down for wood would be unpopular at the very least, no matter how many jobs and how much of an economic boom could that bring: it is widely accepted that the forest provides many other services to the city, and focusing on exploiting just one would be unwise, unsustainable, and could end up with the city being wiped by a flood. A good forestal policy would be to establish a reforestation rate, with a maximum number of trees that can be cut each year, so that the city can have a lumber industry and a forest instead of ending up without a forest and, as a consequence of that in the long run, without a lumber industry either. That is one of the arguments underlying a 2019 paper that provides an insightful discussion into the yield gap debate between proponents of organic and conventional agriculture. What this argument seeks to propose is that we, as a society, should reframe the role that yield has in agriculture: the main concern of agriculture is to provide food security, and an unsustainable system of producing food cannot be called better simply because its yields are higher. To draw from our example, the yields of a lumber industry without forestal regulations would indeed be higher, but at what cost? What is the cost of attaining higher yields in conventional agriculture, in terms of soil erosion, eutrophication, biodiversity loss, and increased greenhouse gas emissions? Organic agriculture, the authors observe, does a far better job in balancing the evident yield requirements of agriculture with the environmental requirements that will enable the next generations to feed themselves as well. Adding to that, the authors also discuss the large variability that exists not only among studies presenting the extent of the yield gap (resulting in gap estimates that range between 9% and 25%) but also among individual cases of application of organic techniques and, especially, among regions. Organic Fertilizer could actually help increase agricultural yields in developing regions, providing, at the same time, higher resistance to changing climatic conditions and ensuring food security: a case registered in the paper notes, for example, how yields of organic corn and soybean were 37% and 52% larger than conventionally-planted corn and soybeans, under drought conditions. Our own studies in greenhouses in Qatar show that, under those specific conditions, organic methods can obtain 35%-40% higher yields with a reduction of 20% in input costs of fertilizer, water, and labor. The case-effective nature of figures like this highlights, according to the authors, another problem with the yield gap debate as it stands now: it asks how and if organic agriculture can feed the world when half the world is already fed. We already produce enough food for thousands of millions of people over the current world population. The question would be: can it feed those who need it most? And the answer to that is a rotund yes.

Organic agriculture is a fairly simple thing on its basis — only use organic fertilizers, and do not use synthetic pesticides. That is not, however, what organic agriculture is in practice around the world, where a myriad of cultivation techniques (some well known, as crop rotation; some rarer to see, as permaculture) are implemented in order to make the impact of organic fertilizers more noticeable, conserve nutrients, and reduce pest problems. A good deal of the benefits of organic agriculture is ensured or obtained through these practices, such as flower stripes and cover crops, so when one of the benefits derived from organic farming comes from the core tenets of the organic model itself, there's double cause for interest. Such is the case of a 2010 study that found an increase in species variety and evenness to be one of the major perks of organic agriculture, one which yielded the very significant benefits of 18% lower pest densities and 35% larger plants in several potato fields across Washington, United States. The authors measured not only the variety of species present in organically and conventionally managed fields (a trait in which organic fields had the upper hand) but also the rates at which all present species were present. If species diversity is important, measuring biodiversity only by the number of species present runs the risk of overestimating the real presence of these species by not measuring the actual size of their populations. A field could theoretically be very species-rich, with just a few individuals of each species being actually present. Organic fields, however, did not present this problem: whereas in conventionally managed fields up to 80% of the total insect population could belong to just one single species, this number didn't go higher than 38% in organic fields, for both pests and pest control agents. The authors further tested this observation through a meta-study that analyzed thirty-eight other similar studies, concluding that the tendency of organic agriculture towards effective biodiversity through species variety and evenness is attested around the world. A sign explains the different species of pest control agents found in this organic field in the canton of Thurgau, Switzerland. This has significant implications, that go far beyond an average of 35% larger plants. Food security is threatened daily by the possibility of a super-pest taking over the world, and the best way to combat that menace is by reducing the ability of less-developed, individual pests to take over right now. Biological means of pest control ensure that this combat does not strengthen the enemy that farmers seek to combat, and organic agriculture seems to be providing a key lesson for that, responding with a diverse arsenal of defense agents to an equally diverse set of threats.

Unfairness is unsustainable, and organic agriculture aims for sustainability: it must, consequently, be fair. Even if it is not a part of its core beliefs (about technical issues of land management), it becomes part of its core beliefs because it is a necessary concern for the sustainable agricultural future that it seeks. How can an unjust system endure over time indefinitely (a key component of sustainability) if it relies constantly on pressuring those who are worst-off to remain in that position? Conventional agriculture has that tendency, aided by the opaque nature of its systems of distribution, as a study by professor Shane Epting from the Missouri University of Science and Technology explores: ...research shows that today’s foods are the results of a highly sophisticated distribution system, one that demands intense study to understand... [and where] ethical issues emerge that require a separate area of investigation. Yet, with so many parts from across the globe, we cannot see exactly where the problems arise. Due to these conditions, globalized opacity becomes an issue, making it challenging to see the connection between foods and injustice. Organic agriculture, in contrast, aims to be guided by the principle of fairness. From its holistic vision of the world, the societies that manage ecosystems are also part of the ecosystems themselves, and their well-being is a top priority. A truly organic model should aim to establish labor conditions that can ensure its sustainable profitability over the long term, or, as the IFOAM states: Organic agriculture should provide everyone involved with a good quality of life, and contribute to food sovereignty and reduction of poverty. It aims to produce a sufficient supply of good quality food and other products. By its basic principles, organic agriculture, coupled with basic conservation practices, already does that (for example by helping smaller farms, which provide the majority of our world's food, stay afloat). Still, if it is going to become widespread, the organic model cannot remain comfortable with anything but complete fairness to all those involved — producers, distributors and sellers, but also those who live near the farms and those who consume their produce. Certification boards should ensure that this becomes part of what it legally means to be organic: organic agriculture must be fair, or it shouldn't really be called organic. Studies show that trust is everything for its profitability under the current conditions, and organic producers cannot permit that trust to sizzle and fade away.

Any gardener, no matter the scale of their work, have noticed at some point the infestation of little white insects, flying frenetically around the leaves of crops as diverse as tobacco, tomato, cabbage, or beets: it’s the whitefly, one of the most resistant pests in the world. The 2008 edition of the Encyclopedia of Entomology dedicates to this group of species (very similar to each other, if not even belonging to the same genus) the following lines: “In the past decade, whiteflies as pests and vectors of plant viruses have become one of the most serious crop protection problems in the tropics and subtropics. Yearly losses are estimated in the hundreds of millions of dollars” Enter a wasp of less than a millimeter of length: Encarsia formosa. A recently rediscovered agent of biological pest control, this minuscule wasp places its eggs within the bodies of whitefly nymphs, where their growth kills the whitefly and turns it into a chamber for the wasp larvae to grow and from which they will eventually hatch. This wasp was ‘rediscovered’ after being originally used for agriculture in the 1920s, and falling into oblivion by the mid-1940s as less complicated, cheaper, chemical pesticides appeared in the market. These seemed to be the perfect solution for the whitefly plagues until these began developing resistance very quickly: by the 1970s, Encarsia formosa was being talked about again. An Encarsia formosa individual, laying its eggs on a whitefly nymph. Between the moment they hatch (after twenty days in successive larval and pupal stages, inside the whitefly nymph’s body) and the moment they finally end their lives as adults, each Encarsia Formosa wasp can lay its eggs on over 200 whiteflies. It is particularly effective at establishing itself in tomato plants, which are at the same high-value crops and very often difficult spaces for predators to become established permanently. A tomato leaf, showing parasitized and unparasitized whitefly nymphs. The predominance of parasitized nymphs is greater with each wasp generation (one generation lasts one week) until the infestation is eliminated or controlled. AGENT PROFILE Common name(s): Encarsia formosa, no common names are used. Often-used species: Only the mentioned above. Type of predator: Not predatorial, parasitic. Potential damaging effects: None knew. Interesting literature on its usage: A general review on its usage and effects (1998), a complete thesis produced by the University of Wageningen, Netherlands, on its usage for biological control (1995).

The principles of health, ecology and fairness are brought together into the fourth and final principle of organic agriculture: the principle of care. It is a principle already present in the other three (as with any consistent philosophy, any part of it leads to the others); it is present in caring for the health of those who consume the food produced by organic agriculture, by caring for the ecosystems within which we work, and for the societies that are inherently intermingled with the productive processes that go from planting a single seed, to putting food in the world’s tables. But the principle of care goes beyond these three forms of caring, into becoming a personal value of those who engage in organic agriculture. It goes from the external into the internal, and becomes the principle of caring: caring enough about the consequences of the ways in which we produce the food that we need to survive, so as not to end up destroying our world and ourselves in the process. The principle of care is the one that guides anyone who consciously and willingly decides to switch from an unsustainable, unhealthy, unfair system of food production into something different, as organic agriculture can be. It is not exhausted by those three forms of presenting itself, and so it is also present in caring enough to review the available literature and maintain oneself up to date with the latest innovations in organic technology; it is caring enough to join organizations of producers, to offer organically managed farmland for school trips so that children can see how their food is grown; is caring enough to go beyond what is immediately profitable and into what is valuable, such as changing the public perception of what an efficient, well-managed farm should look like. It is also the principle of caring enough about the consequences of our actions (come to think of it, it could just be called the principle of responsibility) so as to not dismiss practical, ‘folk’ wisdom that can bear important insights into how agriculture in a particular area works, and not to adopt any technique that seems in line with organic agriculture without looking into it first. When we care about something, we first of all take care of not harming it. Caring in organic agriculture has that prudential dimension too. Care. That’s what organic agriculture is about, in the end. Caring, and inspiring others to care too. About where their food comes, how is it produced and how it might be ― if we are going to become a more ecologically friendly, healthier, fairer global society. It's no coincidence that pictures of hands, like this one, often figure in texts about sustainability, justice or agriculture: it's with our hands that we express concern, affection, closeness. They're virtues that we expect from those who feed us too; we expect them to care.

It was the fall in Versailles when a group of international participants (five, in total) arrived at the first meeting of a “big national conference” that the president of the French organic society Nature et Progrès, Roland Cheviot, had organized, and to which he had invited over fifty organizations from around the world. This conference decided, with the collective assent of its attendants from the United States, South Africa, France, the United Kingdom, and Sweden, to conform itself into a new formal organization: the International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements, or IFOAM, from its initials. The date was 1972, nearly fifty years ago. The original letter was sent by Roland Cheviot to the first invitees to the IFOAM conference of 1972. Only five groups responded and attended, and became the inaugural five members of the organization. Today, IFOAM – Organics International (the new official name of the organization, chosen in 2015) articulates the collective needs and desires of over 800 different members, hailing from a total of 117 countries. Their work spans all the main areas for the promotion of organic agriculture, from facilitating production to stimulating demand, to participating in the formation of national policies on organic agriculture and offering certifications for national certifiers themselves, all the way from country-wide certification bodies to locally-based Participatory Guarantee Systems (PSG) and other strategies designed to help smallholders get their own organic certification. In fact, among its policy and regulation initiatives, the IFOAM leads the single accreditation program for national certification bodies to exist at this date, guaranteeing that certifiers are certified themselves and that their approval implies a real commitment to the principles of organic agriculture. These and other IFOAM activities are detailed in the organization’s Strategic Plan 2017-2025, entirely available online (in fact, the IFOAM’s transparency is one of the reasons why it was ranked first among all NGOs by OWT’s Global Accountability Report in 2008). The growth of the International Federation, 1972-2009 (by John Paull, from the University of Tasmania). The usefulness of the work that the people at the IFOAM do is immensurable for organic growers. Not only through certification and policies, which help to build consumer trust in an ‘organic’ brand that is at risk of being coopted and stripped of its meaning, but through creating knowledge hubs in Africa to promote education in organic practices, aiding organic smallholders in developing value chains for their products, and helping people in mountainous regions exchange techniques and expertise on growing diverse food to improve their nutritional intake. Its work is substantial and ongoing, and increasing awareness of it (with the consequent stream of new members joining the organization) can in turn increase the strength of its voice globally and the impact of its actions, all the way to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), where the IFOAM represents all organic farmers worldwide. The International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements forms, in this way, the institutional backbone for the global organic movement, and for the creation of an Organic Agriculture 3.0 that is inclusive, impactful, and meaningful to big and small producers around the world.

By 2012, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nation reported impacting figures on an alarming matter: only thirty species of plants are nowadays covering 95% of all the vegetable-based, daily caloric and protein intake for the average person in the world. Shortly put, our food comes mainly from those thirty-two species, and 60% of it comes from actually just three: corn, rice and wheat. What results more alarming is that this loss of agricultural biodiversity is also coupled with a loss of genetic diversity within those thirty species. Already in the year 2000 (that’s over twenty years ago!), the FAO reported as well that around 75% of all plant genetic diversity had been lost “as farmers worldwide have left their multiple local varieties and landraces for genetically uniform, high-yielding varieties”. In that report, however, the FAO mentioned that over 7000 (known) species have been cultivated as edible throughout history, with several thousand still being on cultivation. Orphan or underutilized crops are precisely that; the many species which are often tied to very specific ethnic communities or who are, for some reason or another, not used to the full extent of their potential. If we take the figures of the FAO as a reference, that would mean that 99.5% of all cultivated plant species are underutilized or ‘orphan’, with the remaining 0.5% being made up by those main thirty species. Quinoa, for example, though increasingly popular, is has by no means been used to its full potential as a very nutritious and genetically varied crop. This is not an innocuous number, however. What that percentage means is that if those thirty species are wiped out (heck, even if three of those thirty species are wiped out!) by disease, climate change or an unknown pest, we would be facing hunger and economic catastrophe at alarming levels. In order to fight this, an international organization was established in Malaysia in 2009: Crops for the Future (CFF), a team of experts that works to fight genetic impoverishment of crops and build a net of food safety around our current eating habits. They are even suggesting the building of a database, which could provide access to specific suggestions of a certain species or variety for determinate climatic and economic conditions. The issue of agricultural biodiversity is by no means reduced to these few facts, though: it is one that we’ll keep exploring in future articles in this blog. In the meantime, happy growing!

According to a recent study, we live a world that is seeing an ever-growing concentration of farmland into fewer hands: around 70% of the currently cultivated land is being owned by the top 1% of all farms, while, in contrast, 80% of all individual farms have land of two hectares or less, and operate only around 12% of the currently cultivated land. Here's a general graph of that, taken directly from the study: It may seem like this is a natural economic process by which larger farms tend to swallow the competition by offering better prices to the consumers, which they can allow themselves because the reduced costs of a more efficient production structure. But think again: that small 12% of all cultivated land produces 35% of all the world’s food. The other 88% of land, meanwhile, produces a much less impressive 65% of all the food we eat. This actually correlates to a well observed inverse correlation between farm size and farm efficiency, though experts can’t quite place their fingers on the direct causes behind that. Given all of this data, it’s evident that keeping small farms in business is key to preserve food safety and reach the Second Sustainable Development Goal of the United Nations: zero hunger by 2030. And here’s where conservation agriculture comes into play, by directly giving many major advantages to small farms, of which we can outline three as good examples: 1) Lessening costs and reducing labor input in the long run by aiming to increasingly develop the fertility of the soil instead of simply pumping it away through the traditional methods of exploitative agriculture. Conservation agriculture aims to reduce the recurrent costs of fertilization, and thus increase the medium and long-term profitability of agricultural operations while also doing away with the labor costs of tilling the soil and intensive weeding by replacing both of these operations with the smart usage of cover crops, among other novel techniques. 2) Making them more resilient to climate change by improving the capability of the soil to absorb and store water (thus helping to prevent and even reverse desertification), avoiding the salinization of the soil that comes from the intensive usage of inorganic fertilizers and preventing the erosion of the soil by wind and water through a constant maintenance of a vegetable cover. Farms that operate according to the principles of conservation agriculture and also use organic fertilizers have the added benefit of developing a soil ecosystem of bacterial probiotics and mycorrhizal fungi, which adds an extra layer of protection against drought, disease, erosion and nutrient depletion. This study from 2020, which also explores the benefits of conservation agriculture for preventing soil erosion, presents these two possible worldwide projections of water-caused soil erosion for the next few decades, to a good extent aided by climate change: 3) Increasing availability of loans and credit, a benefit unknown to many, is actually present in major countries such as the United States, where the Department of Agriculture offers loans of up to 1.75 million dollars to farms who need funding to undertake a conservation project in their land (see here for a quick explanation of how that works!). Meanwhile, in the European Union, and in some cases to an international extent, similar initiatives are managed by the European Agricultural Fund For Rural Development (EAFRD) and the Agricultural Financing Initiative of the European Development Finance Institutions (EDFI AgriFI). These benefits are just the tip of the iceberg that help balance the sometimes higher, or relatively high costs that the adoption of conservation agriculture in smaller farms implies. In the end, who wouldn’t have a more resilient, profitable farm and better credit to attain that? One thing is sure: even though this article ends here, the benefits of transitioning to conservation agriculture surely don’t.