CropLife Canada disputes the findings of a York University study that organic farms are more energy efficient than conventional operations.
York researchers analyzed 130 studies comparing the energy use and global warming potential of the two farming systems. They concluded that organic farms were more energy efficient on both a per acre and per product basis.
“These findings shake up the concept that bigger is always better,” said lead researcher Rod MacRae.
“Higher crop yields, bigger equipment, less genetic diversity and more fertilizer and pesticides do not equal a more energy efficient operation.”
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Peter MacLeod, vice-president of chemistry with CropLife Canada, hasn’t had time to vet the York study but he is skeptical of the findings.
“We’re going to look into it fully, but the results are certainly surprising to me and against the conventional wisdom of (the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations) and scientists around the world,” he said.
MacRae was also surprised by the results.
“We didn’t quite know what we were going to get when we started to look at this. The results were more favourable than anticipated.”
He said the absence of nitrogen fertilizer is the main reason organic farms are more environmentally friendly than their conventional counterparts.
A lot of energy is consumed in the production, collection and transportation of the natural gas used to make nitrogen fertilizer and in the on-farm application of the input.
“When you’re not using it, you avoid all those,” he said.
The York study determined that Canadian farmers would consume 39 percent less energy and produce 23 percent fewer global warming emissions if they completely converted to organic canola, wheat, soybeans and corn.
Those estimates take into account the increased tillage associated with organic farming, which Mac-Rae said isn’t a big environmental issue compared to spraying herbicides.
The energy benefit dips when the calculation is done on a per product basis rather than a per acre basis because yields on organic farms are lower than conventional farms, although MacRae said they are within 10 percent of one another in North America.
MacLeod disagreed.
He said the summary findings of a yet-to-be-released CropLife report on the socio-economic impacts of pesticides and genetically modified crops shows that conventional wheat and canola yields are 24 and 53 percent higher than organic wheat and canola yields, respectively.
The CropLife study also found that the conservation tillage practices and summerfallow reduction made possible by the use of pesticides and GM crops saves 170 million litres of diesel fuel each year.
Other studies also contradict the York findings.
PG Economics released one last week showing GM crops reduced global pesticide spray by 393 kilograms between 1996 and 2009.
It determined that 9.4 million more acres of soybeans, 13.8 million of corn, 6.4 million of cotton and 0.74 million of canola would have been needed to maintain global production at 2009 levels if GM crops had not been available.
Monsanto Canada spokesperson Trish Jordan said it’s time to put an end to the coexistence debate because it’s not an all-or-nothing scenario.
“It’s not constructive. It’s not realistic.”
She said organic activists contradict themselves when they claim coexistence is impossible.
“The statistics show the opposite,” she said.
Organic acres, production and sales have steadily risen during the same time period that GM crops have rapidly expanded.
