Organic Farming: Key Methods, Types and Advantages and Disadvantages

Table of Contents

Concept of Organic Farming

Organic farming can be well-defined as an agricultural process that uses biological fertilizers and pest control produced from biodegradable waste. Organic farming was introduced as an answer to the environmental issues caused by the use of synthetic and chemical pesticides. In other words, it is a new system of agriculture or farming that repairs, maintains, and improves the ecological balance.

Need for Organic Farming

With the increase in population, the pressure would be not only to normalize agricultural production but to increase it further in a sustainable manner. Scientists have understood that the Green Revolution with high contribution has reached a plateau and is now sustained with lessening returns of falling extras. Thus, a natural balance needs to be sustained at all costs for the existence of life and property.

The apparent choice for that would be more applicable in the present era when these agrochemicals which are made from fossil fuel and are not renewable, are diminishing in accessibility. Some more aspects of why organic farming is needed are;

Excessive use of chemical fertilizers led to soil, air, and water pollution and also reduced soil fertility
It is necessary for the conservation of the ecosystem
To promote sustainable development
Organic farming is inexpensive
Increased demand for organic products due to the safety of food.

The Key Characteristics

Keeping the long-term fertility of soils by preserving organic matter levels, encouraging soil biological activity, and careful mechanical interference.
Using soil micro-organisms, crop nutrients are derived from relatively insoluble sources accessible to plants.
Nitrogen independence through the use of legumes and biological nitrogen fixation, as well as actual recycling of organic materials including crop remains and livestock manures.
Weed, pest control, and disease depend primarily on crop rotations, diversity, natural predators, resistant varieties, organic manuring, and limited biological, thermal, and chemical intervention.
The widespread management of livestock, paying full regard to their evolutionary adaptations, behavioral needs, and animal welfare issues concerning nutrition, health, housing, breeding and rearing.
Careful attention to the impact Meticulous consideration of farming’s environmental impact and wildlife conservation.

Advantages and Disadvantages of Organic Farming

Advantages

Economical: No pesticides, no expensive fertilizers, or High Yielding Variety (HYV) seeds are essential for the plantation of crops. Therefore, it is less expensive.

Good return on investment: With the cheaper and local inputs practice, a farmer can make a good profit on investment.

High demand: There is a huge demand for organic products across the globe, which creates more income through exports.

Nutritional: As compared to fertilizer-utilized and chemical products, organic products are more nutritional, good for health, and tasty.

Disadvantages

Incompetent: The major issue of organic farming is the lack of sufficient infrastructure and marketing of the products.

Less production: The products acquired through organic farming are less in the initial years as compared to chemical products. So, farmers find it problematic to accommodate large-scale production.

Shorter shelf life: Organic products have more faults and shorter shelf life than that of chemical products.

Limited production: Off-season crops are inadequate and have fewer options in organic farming.

Differences between Organic and Conventional Farming Methods

In conventional farming methods, the farmers have to treat or fumigate their farm using harsh chemicals to kill any naturally existing fungicides before seeds are sown. They have to fertilize the soil using petroleum-based fertilizers.

Organic farmers amend their land with natural fertilizers like bone meal, manure, or shellfish before planting.

Before planting, conventional farmers have to immerse the seeds in pesticides and fungicides to keep insects and pests at bay. Chemicals are also combined in the irrigation water to prevent insects from stealing the seeds planted.

On the other hand, Organic farmers avoid using chemicals like fertilizers and pesticides on seeds. In fact, they do not even irrigate with drinking water, which is normally chlorinated to kill any bacteria. They just depend on natural rain or harvest and stored rainwater to use during dry months.

When the seeds have germinated, to get free of weeds, the conventional farmers use weedicide to destroy weeds. The organic farmers do not use such chemicals to get rid of the weed problem. Instead, they physically weed out the farm, although it’s a very labor-intensive task. Better still, the organic farmer use a flame weeder to destroy weeds or use animals to eat the weeds.

When it comes to consumption, it’s so simple that anyone consuming products from a conventional farmer will get the pesticide and weedicide residues into the body, which could cause in developing dangerous diseases like cancer. People recognize the importance of health that’s why they are going organic in record numbers today.

Types

Organic farming is divided into two types:

Pure Organic Farming

As the name suggests for this farming process, it uses natural ways for cultivation. Pure organic farming completely ignores inorganic chemicals that may harm the crop, soil, and people who utilize it. Pure organic farming means sidestepping all unnatural chemicals. All the fertilizers and pesticides are acquired from natural sources such as bone meal or blood meal in organic farming.

Integrated Organic Farming

Integrated organic farming comprises the incorporation of pest management and nutrient management to achieve ecological demands and requirements. In this type, an integrated method is adopted for pest and nutrient maintenance. The objective is to encounter economic demands as well as ecological standards.

Methods

Fertilizers

Since no synthetic fertilizers are used, keeping a rich, living soil through organic matter is a priority for organic farmers. Organic matter can be applied through the application of compost, manure, and animal by-products.

Due to the potential for sheltering human pathogens, it is required that raw manure must be applied no later than 90 or 100 days before harvest, that depends on whether the collected part of the crop is in contact with the ground. Composted manure, turned 5 times in 15 days, can be applied anytime, having reached temperatures between 55- 77.2 °C

Compost enhances organic matter, providing a wide range of nutrients for plants, and adds valuable microbes to the soil. These nutrients are mostly in an unmineralized form that cannot be taken up by plants, soil microbes are required to break down organic matter and transform nutrients into an available mineralized state. In contrast, synthetic fertilizers are already in mineralized form and can be taken up by plants directly.

Planting cover crops protects soil from erosion and adds organic matter for maintenance. The cultivation of nitrogen-fixing cover crops, such as alfalfa or clover, also adds nitrogen to the soil. Cover crops are frequently planted before or after the cash crop season or in combination with crop rotation and can also be planted between the rows of some crops, such as tree fruits. Researchers are working to develop organic farming no-till and reduced-tillage practices to further reduce erosion.

Pest Control

Organic pesticides/ insecticides are derived from naturally occurring sources. Living organisms like Bacillus thuringiensis and plant products such as pyrethrins are used in pest control. Mineral-based inorganic pesticides such as sulfur and copper are also acceptable.

In the accumulation of pesticides, organic pest control assimilates biological, genetic controls, and cultural control to minimize pest damage. Biological control utilizes the natural opponents of pests, i.e. predatory and parasitic insects e.g., ladybugs, wasps to attack insect pests. Pest cycles can be disturbed with cultural controls, of which crop rotation is the most extensively used. Finally, traditional plant breeding has created numerous crop variabilities that are resistant to specific pests. The use of such varieties and the planting of genetically varied crops provide genetic control against pests and diseases.

Help the Environment

Organic farms use production techniques with environmental benefits such as water management practices, maintenance of habitat for beneficial insects and vertebrates, no-till or minimum digging, and biological pest control. These ecologically protective practices add to enhanced ecosystem services and benefit soil health, water quality, and biodiversity.

Conventional farming characteristically uses minimal crop rotations, growing the same single crop each year on the same land. This practice is known as mono-cropping which causes the nutrients and minerals depletion. To revive depleted soil for crop growth, essential nutrients like phosphate and hydrocarbon-based fertilizers must be added.

Monoculture crops and the resulting poor health open the way for the invasion of insects, diseases, and weeds. Healthy bio-diverse soil keeps these invasions in check. The lack of biodiversity requires synthetic herbicides and pesticides to be used, further destroying the soil biology.

Monoculture in agriculture: advantages and disadvantages: https://geopard.tech/blog/monoculture-in-agriculture-advantages-and-disadvantages/

Improve Soil and Water Quality

Using organic forms of fertilizer such as animal manures, compost, and legume cover crops, enhances soil organic matter, even when routine digging is used for weed control. Enhanced soil organic matter increases soil water holding capacity and nurtures more active soil microbial communities that hold nitrogen in the soil longer and convert it into non-leachable gaseous forms.

There is research that suggests that improved soil quality impacts the ability of crops to survive or repel insect attacks and plant disease. Organic fertilizer sources discharge their nutrients slowly over time, providing more chances for the nitrogen to be digested by soil organisms and taken up by crops before leaching below the root zone.

Increased soil organic matter leads to tighter nutrient cycling and greater water-holding capacity in organically managed soils, as a result, nitrate leaching from groundwater is about half that of conventionally farmed soils.

Help Mitigate Climate Change

There is also wide research signifying the potential of organic systems to reduce agriculture’s contribution to climate change i.e., mitigate climate change. Organic methods do this by capturing and storing more carbon dioxide (CO₂) in the soil called carbon sequestration.

While organic systems require some level of physical disruption to control weeds, they remove synthetic inputs and can significantly reduce digging. Reduced tillage, cover cropping, crop diversification, sound nutrient management, and organic amendments can enhance carbon sequestration and build climate resiliency in organic agricultural systems. Organic agricultural systems also release fewer greenhouse gases.

To counterbalance the much larger land requirements of organic agriculture, we have to combine it with less food waste and increasing vegetarianism, globally. Only with this three-branched approach will organic farming be a sustainable method for feeding the population. Organic farming has long been challenged as a solution to agriculture’s environmental harms. While it supports sustainable farming methods, like the elimination of synthetic pesticides and fertilizers, it also requires significantly more land than conventional agriculture, to excuse for lower yields.

Scenarios

So the researchers wanted to discover the scenarios in which organic farming could encounter global food demand, with a reduced impact.

First, they demonstrated how the conversion of consistent agricultural land to organic farming would impact a host of environmental and food production indicators. Then, they distinctly factored in two more theoretical changes to the global food system: less food waste, and decreased production of animal feed crops such as soybeans and corn.

The second change would reduce the amount of land required to grow animal feed, decrease livestock numbers, and therefore, demand a less meaty diet globally. However, if it was harmonized with decreasing levels of food waste and reduced animal feed production, organic farming’s disastrous land loss could be offset by greater food production efficiency.

If we take a more all-inclusive view of our food systems, factoring in elements like food waste and meat consumption, organic farming could gain the influence it needs to feed the world, without chewing up vast areas of land.

It is concluded, that future food production should take up these tasks on the consumption side, and not only focus on sustainable production.