It has been highlighted that organic agriculture can't contribute to global food supply because of following two factors.
- Low yield from organic farming
- Insufficient quantity of organic category fertilizers.
Several researchers showed their interest in evaluating the universality of above claims.
Badgley et al (2007) conducted research by developing the model for comparing the organic yields versus conventional for a global dataset of 293 examples. Estimation of average yield ratio(Organic:Non-Organic) for different food categories for both, developed and developing world. Ratio was less than one for developed world and greater than one for developing world.
The estimates showed that organic methods can produce enough food on the global per capita basis in order to feed the existing population and potentially even larger populations, without an increase in agricultural land base. It is also evident that amount of nitrogen potentially available from fixation through use of additional leguminous cover crops used as fertilizers is sufficient or even more than the use of synthetic fertilizers. In 2001 globally used synthetic fertilizer was 82 Million Mg(Metric ton). Estimates shows that with additional use of leguminous crop as fertilizer is 140 Million Mg, which is 58 Million Mg more than the amount of synthetic N use.
Hence results suggests that organic method of food production can feed the existing and future generations on existing agricultural land base while maintaining soil fertility as well.
Reference
Badgley, C., Moghtader, J., Quintero, E., Zakem, E., Chappell, M. J., Aviles-Vazquez, K., ... & Perfecto, I. (2007). Organic agriculture and the global food supply. Renewable agriculture and food systems, 22(2), 86-108.
