Y is for yield

Y is for yield

Date: 13 October 2014

People generally understand and like the idea of sustainable agriculture – producing food without expensive and unsustainable inputs like chemical fertilisers and pesticides. But many people argue that sustainable agriculture can’t produce as much food as conventional agriculture, and with our increasing global population, we need to increase food production as much as possible. The problem with this reasoning is that sustainable or agroecological methods can increase crop yields.

The largest study to date of food production using sustainable farming techniques (using data from 57 developing counties) showed that farmers switching to sustainable methods on average increased their yields by 73%. In Africa the increase was even higher.UK Government Office of Science Foresight project commissioned an analysis of 40 agroecological projects that had been carried out in 20 Africa countries to determine the impact they had had. Over almost 13 million hectares of land, the 40 projects had benefited more than 10 million farmers, with overall crop yields doubling as a result of these projects. In other words there is plenty of evidence that sustainable farming can compete with farming with chemical inputs in terms of yields – let alone all the other benefits it provides. So why aren’t governments, policy makers, and organisations embracing agroecology? It is likely that the reasons are more political and ideological than evidence based.

Photo: A Sudan farmer harvesting sorghum. Credit: Africa Renewal