Is organic food climate-friendly?

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One of the difficult parts of sustainability (and health!) is that there are so many proposals to make our lives more sustainable. This often causes truly impactful solutions to get lost in a sea of possibly, somewhat impactful proposals. As with food and nutrition, people latch on to instructions to live more sustainably, and this can mean substantial effort spent on strategies like gluten-free diets, or an obsession with plastic straws. While there might be small elements of science behind these proposed solutions, they also represent a huge opportunity cost to, say, eating more veggies or wasting less food. I think one of the most important and undervalued skillsets of dietitians is to parse what’s based on scientific evidence in nutrition from what’s not.

Organic food is one of these commonly proposed sustainability solutions, and it gets a ton of attention from both health and sustainability circles. So is organic food helpful, or a distraction? 

Organic growing methods are, in theory, supposed to be lower in chemicals like pesticides, use no growth hormones or antibiotics, protect soil quality with low or no tillage, and involve no genetic modification. Organic food standards differ by country, and in Canada, by province. The entry on organic food in Practice-based Evidence in Nutrition notes that organic food is usually more expensive than conventional food, and that consumers who choose organic foods tend to be women, higher income, and higher education. Overall, there is a lack of evidence to recommend organic foods for health reasons, and most studies that do find an effect are observational, with a high risk of bias. Like “local food,” the term “organic” is defined variably across studies, which also makes it difficult to establish cause and effect. I think most dietitians are aware that for most people, organic food is not worth the higher cost of food, but it’s worth repeating here because so many people assume that organic food does have health benefits. 

What about sustainability? The main reason that organic food is not reliably more sustainable is that it tends to require more land for lower yields. If we had an infinite amount of arable land, this wouldn’t be a problem–unfortunately, we don’t. Deforestation for farming (“land conversion”) is still a huge problem, not only because we lose trees that sequester carbon dioxide, but also because we lose wild spaces that preserve biodiversity. If we all transition to more organic foods, the likely outcomes are an increase in food prices (because yields are lower) and an increase in farmed land, with a net increase in greenhouse gas emissions. 

Although conventional farming appears worse aesthetically, it usually allows us to produce more food on less land. This may not seem like a big deal, but it is! Underneath this crucial factor is the “land sparing versus land sharing” debate. Conventional farming that requires less land allows for more wild space and less deforestation (“sparing” land for nature conservation). Proponents of organic agriculture might argue that organic farms support more biodiversity on the farm (“sharing” the land with many other species). In reality, most farms do a bit of both sparing and sharing, but most environmentalists agree that we need to ensure some wild space is fully left alone from agriculture.

To give an example of this underlying problem, let’s look at a study. Nature recently published an analysis of the impact of everyone in England and Wales shifting their consumption to 100% organic food. The researchers conclude that “Reduced farm inputs and more soil carbon sequestration may alter local GHG budgets favourably. But this must be set against the need for increased production and associated land conversion elsewhere as a result of lower crop and livestock yields under organic methods.” In other words, there are lower emissions early in the life-cycle of organic food, such as reduced agrochemicals, but the resulting lower yields simply drives up more land conversion elsewhere, increasing greenhouse gas emissions in the process.

As with local food, organic food might sometimes have a small benefit on sustainability or health. The problem is that these recommendations are inconsistently effective at best, they have significant downsides, and they end up detracting from food efforts that really will make a difference: eating less meat, especially from ruminant animals, wasting less food, and composting. If we redirect our sustainability efforts to more evidence-based solutions, we’ll get much closer, much faster, to a livable future for all.

Here’s to focusing on effective climate solutions together,

Anneke

References and readings

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