Organic Farming or Organic Chemistry?

Kip Cullers of Purdy, Missouri (pictured) harvests a world record soybean yield of 154 bushels per acre in 2007 with Pioneer® brand variety 94M80(RR), which tops the world record yield he set in 2006 of 139 bushels per acre in the Missouri Soybean Association Yield Contest Photo: Pioneer Hi-Bred

Organic farming is bad for poor people and bad for the environment.

A recent conference paper from two respected academics at Nottingham University, Dr Debbie Sparkes and Professor Paul Wilson, looked at the carbon footprint of weed control. The results of the investigation are startling. First, the yield per hectare of winter wheat produced by organic methods was only 54% that of wheat produced by conventional methods. Second, the amount of CO2 per tonne of wheat produced in organic wheat was over three times that produced by conventional methods. A similar result was found with conventional and organically farmed potatoes.

Recently, Dr Jacques Diouf, the director-general of the UN Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) the organisation that leads international efforts to defeat hunger, reiterated that the potential for organic farming is "far from large enough to feed the world." He was being diplomatic.

Because of the premium prices that are charged for organic food, farmers in poor countries are moving increasingly into the organic-farming sector. Organic crop yields, by their very nature, are lower. The more land that's being used for organic farming the less there is for producing conventional food. Thus organic food decreases yields and drives up food prices for local consumer in poor countries. It makes food scarcer and hungry people hungrier.

Organic food is for the privileged who can afford the extra costs that is a consequence of lower yields. It is a great marketing ploy to make rich westerners feel better about themselves. It is "ethical consumerism" without the ethics.

Organic food, by at least one measure, is worse for the environment and is no better for the consumer than food produced by conventional means. If you want to help the environment, choose good quality food that is produced locally.

Conventional pesticides, made by organic chemists, undergo rigorous safety and environmental tests, which are reviewed regularly. They are among the safest and most regulated products in the world. For more information about crop protection, go to www.agrow.com.

Frankly, I'd choose organic chemistry over organic farming any day.

Agrow's Patent Aggro

by Agrowmax

The top story on Agrow.com recently led with a dispute between Sumitomo/Valent and Syngenta over an alleged patent infringement over Sumitomo's clothianidin. In brief, Sumitomo and Valent have filed claims to the International Trade Commission and the US District Court for Western Wisconsin alleging that Syngenta has infringed US5034404 by selling combination products comprising clothianidin, and that a patent issued to Syngenta, US7105469, which claims the application of clothianidin onto a "transgenic useful plant" should be declared invalid.

These kinds of disputes are rarely good for the industry and it's the patent attorneys that end up winning as both sides spend huge amounts of money prosecuting or defending their cases.

By coincidence, I was chatting recently with a small group of patent examiners. I asked them if a patent office could be open to litigation if they allow a patent to be published because they had missed something during the examination process: they're not. However, one told me that the US patent office is in a mess and that there are powerful lobbying groups, especially patent attorneys, who would keep it that way. The logic follows that the more an overworked patent examiner misses, the more likely litigation will ensue and therefore the more business there will be for the patent lawyers.

Presciently, I also asked one examiner whether pesticides could be claimed for use against transgenic crops, and the examiner, who was a biotechnology expert, thought that such a claim would be doubtful. After all, if one claims a pesticide for use on a potato, then a transgenic potato is still a potato.

Crop protection is a difficult and costly business. While the USPTO cries out for reform, and in the meantime considers some interesting solutions, more and more money that should be going into research ends up as luxury cars sitting in the garages of the patent attorneys.

Agrowmax