advantages and disadvantages of organic farming.write only revelant answer
Answers
ORGANIC FARMING DISADVANTAGES
Productivity
Proponents of industrialized agriculture point to its superior productivity. In the short term, this yield is possible by expending massive inputs of chemicals and machinery, working over bland fields of a single crop (monoculture).
However, over the longer time frame, productivity advantages dwindle. In my years working with broadacre farmers in the wheatbelt of WA, it was common for them to remark on how much richer pastures and crops were in their youth.
Industrialized agriculture thrashes the land, and diminishes its soil life to the point where it can no longer function to convert available organic matter into soil fertility. Productivity begins to wane, and attempts to bolster it with increasing chemical inputs (common advice from farm consultants) has a similar effect to flogging a dead horse.
Because it relies on living soil to build fertility, the benefits of organic farming for soil life is fundamental to its methods.
Organic farming benefits food production without destroying our environmental resources, ensuring sustainability for not only the current but also future generations.
Cultivation
While their conventional counterparts may sow by direct drilling of seed into herbicide treated soils, organic farmers are usually at least partly dependent on cultivation to remove weeds prior to sowing. In contrast to cultivation, direct drilling does not mechanically disrupt soil structure and removes the risk of exposed soil being lost to wind or water erosion.
This is a valid argument where farmers are working marginal quality soils. However, the structure of agrichemically-deadened soils is weakened by the corresponding loss of soil life and thus unable to maintain its integrity under occasional cultivation. So it’s a circular argument!
Structurally sound (life-rich) soils may be cultivated regularly without significant damage, particularly if protected appropriately by windbreaks and Keyline soil conservation measures.
Even the need to cultivate may be questioned… After noticing rice thriving wild amongst weeds on roadsides, Japanese alternative agriculturalist Masanobu Fukuoka succeeded in establishing crops by broadcasting seed coated in clay onto untilled land.
Advantages of organic farming
Organic food is a big growth area for consumer demand. Once thought to be the preserve of the wealthy or eco-eccentrics, organic food is going mainstream with many people from across the spectrum wishing to purchase organic food.
Organic farming avoids the use of artificial fertilisers and pesticides but relies on more traditional methods of fertilisation and pest control, such as crop rotation, barrier nets and natural pest control.
Despite the demand for organic food growing strongly, In the US only 0.7% of farms are organic (2012 census). It means that for organic food, the US (and UK) are reliant on food imports.