Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Environmental, Energetic,
and Economic Comparisons
of Organic and Conventional
Farming Systems
Various organic technologies have been utilized for about 6000 years to make agriculture sustainable while conserving soil, water, energy, and
biological resources. Among the benefits of organic technologies are higher soil organic matter and nitrogen, lower fossil energy inputs, yields similar
to those of conventional systems, and conservation of soil moisture and water resources (especially advantageous under drought conditions). Conventional
agriculture can be made more sustainable and ecologically sound by adopting some traditional organic farming technologies.
National Organic Standards Program prohibits the use of exposed soil than in either the organic animal-based or the
synthetic chemicals, genetically modified organisms, and organic legume-based systems. However, it did not have cover
sewage sludge in organically certified production. crops during the nongrowing season.
Organic agriculture is a fast-growing agricultural section
in the United States. Dimitri and Greene (2002) report a Organic animal-based cropping. This system represented a typ-
doubling of area in organic production from 1992 to 1997, ical livestock operation in which grain crops were grown for
currently more than 500,000 hectares (ha). Organic food animal feed, not cash sale. This rotation was more complex
sales total more than $7 billion per year and are growing at than the rotation used in the conventional system. The grain-
double-digit rates (Greene 2000, 2004, ERS 2003). With con- rotation system included corn, soybeans, corn silage, wheat,
tinuing consumer concerns about the environment and the and red clover–alfalfa hay, as well as a rye cover crop before
chemicals used in food production, and with the growing corn silage and soybeans.
ters. Water could not escape from the lysimeter system, and the organic legume (421 kg per ha) or the conventional
leachate samples were collected throughout the year. system (1100 kg per ha). Crop yields in the organic legume
Levels of nitrogen as nitrate in leachate samples were de- system were much lower in 1999 because the high biomass of
termined by the Soil and Plant Nutrient Laboratory at Michi- the hairy vetch winter cover crop used up a large amount of
gan State University in East Lansing. Herbicides in leachate the soil water (Lotter et al. 2003).
samples were analyzed by M. J. Reider Associates, Reading, Soybean yields responded differently than the corn during
Pennsylvania. Total soil carbon and nitrogen were deter- the 1999 drought. Specifically, soybean yields were about
mined by the Agricultural Analytical Services Laboratory at 1800, 1400, and 900 kg per ha for the organic legume, the
Pennsylvania State University in University Park. Soil water organic animal, and the conventional systems, respectively.
content was determined gravimetrically on sieved soil (par- These treatments were significantly different (p = 0.05) from
ticles 2 mm in diameter). Statistical analyses were carried each other (Pimentel et al. 2005).
Soil nitrogen. Soil nitrogen levels were measured in 1981 Figure 3. Percentage of soil carbon (above) and nitrogen
and 2002 in the organic animal, organic legume, and con- (below) for the three systems of the Rodale Institute
ventional systems (figure 3). Initially the three systems had Farming Systems Trial in 1981 and 2002 (organic animal-
similar percentages of soil nitrogen, or approximately 0.31%. based cropping, organic legume-based cropping, and con-
By 2002, the conventional system remained unchanged at ventional cropping). Different letters indicate statistically
0.31%, while nitrogen levels in the organic animal and organic significant differences according to Duncan’s multiple
legume systems significantly increased to 0.35% and 0.33%, range test; p < 0.05. NSD = not significantly different.
respectively. Harris and colleagues (1994) used 15N (nitrogen-
15) to demonstrate that 47%, 38%, and 17% of the nitrogen
from the organic animal, organic legume, and conventional the results from other experiments with similar nitrogen in-
systems, respectively, was retained in the soil a year after puts, in which leaching of nitrogen as nitrate ranged from 30
application. to 146 kg per ha per year (Fox et al. 2001, Power et al. 2001).
When measuring these nitrogen losses as a percentage of the
Nitrate leaching. Overall, the concentrations of nitrogen as nitrogen originally applied to the crops in each system, the or-
nitrate in leachates from the farming systems varied between ganic animal, organic legume, and conventional systems lost
0 and 28 parts per million (ppm) throughout the year (Pi- about 20%, 32%, and 20%, respectively, of the total nitrogen
mentel et al. 2005). Leachate concentrations were usually as nitrate.
highest in June and July, shortly after applying fertilizer in the The high nitrate leaching in the organic legume system was
conventional systems or plowing down the animal manure not steady over the entire period of the study; instead, it oc-
and legume cover crop. In all systems, increased soil micro- curred sporadically, especially during a few years of extreme
bial activity during the growing season appears to have con- weather. For example, in 1995 and 1999, the hairy vetch
tributed to increased nitrate leaching. green manure supplied approximately twice as much nitro-
Water leachate samples from the conventional system gen as needed for the corn crop that followed, contributing
sometimes exceeded the regulatory limit of 10 ppm for nitrate excess nitrogen to the soil and making it available for leach-
concentration in drinking water. A total of 20% of the con- ing. In 1999, the heavy nitrogen input from hairy vetch was
ventional system samples were above the 10-ppm limit, while followed by a severe drought that stunted corn growth and
10% and 16% of the samples from the organic animal and reduced the corn’s demand for nitrogen. In both years, these
organic legume systems, respectively, exceeded the nitrate nitrogen-rich soils were also subjected to unusually heavy fall
limit. and winter rains that leached the excess nitrogen into the lower
Over the 12-year period of monitoring (1991–2002), all soil layers. Monitoring of soil nitrogen and cover crop pro-
three systems leached between 16 and 18 kg of nitrogen as duction is needed to manage the potential for excessive nitrate
nitrate per ha per year. These rates were low compared with in all systems.
These data contrast with the results of experiments in tain the fungi’s viability during the interval from cash crop
Denmark, which indicated that nitrogen leaching from the senescence to next year’s planting. Though levels of AM fungi
conventional treatments was twice that in the organic agri- were greater in the organically farmed soils, indices of eco-
cultural systems (Hansen et al. 2001). Overall, nitrogen leach- logical species diversity were similar in the farming systems
ing levels were lower in the FST rotation study than in those (Franke-Snyder et al. 2001).
reported by Hansen and others. Wander and colleagues (1994) demonstrated that soil res-
piration was 50% higher in the organic animal system, com-
Herbicide leaching. Four herbicides were applied in the con- pared with the conventional system, 10 years after initiation
ventional system: atrazine (to corn), pendimethalin (to corn), of the Rodale Institute FST. Microbial activity in the organic
metolachlor (to corn and soybeans), and metribuzin (to soy- soils may be higher than in the conventional system’s soils and
beans). From 2001 to 2003, atrazine and metolachlor were only hence could explain the higher metabolism rates in the organic
holes in the soil that increase the percolation of water into the yields were considerably higher than those reported in South
soil and decrease runoff. Dakota. These results might be expected, given the shorter
Soil organic matter is an important source of nutrients and growing season (146 days) and lower precipitation (460 mm)
can help increase biodiversity, which provides vital ecologi- in South Dakota.
cal services, including crop protection (Pimentel et al. 2005). European field tests indicate that yields of organically
For example, adding compost and other organic matter re- grown wheat and other cereal grains average from 30% to 50%
duces crop diseases (Cook 1988, Hoitink et al. 1991) and in- lower than conventional cereal grain production (Mader et
creases the number of species of microbes in the al. 2002). The lower yields for the organic system in these ex-
agroecosystem (van Elsen 2000). In addition, in the organic periments, compared with the conventional system, appear
systems, not using synthetic pesticides and commercial fer- to be caused by lower nitrogen-nutrient inputs in the organic
tilizers minimizes the harmful effects of these chemicals on system. In New Zealand, wheat yields were reported to aver-
In contrast to these results for corn and soybeans, the eco- an increase in parasitoids; reports in organic tomato pro-
nomic returns (dollar return per unit) for organic sweet corn duction indicate nearly twice as many parasitoids in the or-
production in New Jersey were slightly higher (2%) than for ganic compared with the conventional system (Letourneau
conventional sweet corn production (Brumfield et al. 2000). and Goldstein 2001). However, increased plant diversity in
In the Netherlands, organic agricultural systems producing tomato production was found to increase the incidence of
cereal grains, legumes, and sugar beets reported a net return plant disease (Kotcon et al. 2001). With other crops, like
of EUR 953 per ha, compared with conventional agricul- potatoes and apples, dealing with pest insects and plant
tural systems producing the same crops that reported EUR 902 pathogens that adversely affect yields is a major problem in
per ha (Pacini et al. 2003). organic crop production.
In a California investigation of four crops (tomato, soybean,
safflower, and corn) grown organically and conventionally, Adoption of organic technologies. Several organic technolo-