The Yield Gap For Organic Farming
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Detailed data from USDA surveys was used to compare crop yields in organic and conventional agriculture in 2014. Most organic yields are lower, many by a substantial margin
Transcript of The Yield Gap For Organic Farming
Organic Conventional Comparison, 2014 USDA Data
The Organic Yield GapAn independent analysis comparing the 2014 USDA Organic Survey data with USDA-NASS statistics for total crop production
Steven D. SavageSavage & Associates ConsultingApplied Mythology Blogwww.drstevesavage.comHigh Level Summary The productivity of organic agriculture tends to be lower than that of conventional. That is part of why there is a need for a price premium to the grower. Some have argued that this yield gap can be closed, but the data from the latest, detailed, 2014 USDA organic survey suggests that real-world organic yields are substantially lower. This analysis is based on 371 crop/geography comparisons representing 80% of all US cropland. In 84% of the crop/geography comparisons, organic yields were lower mostly in the 20-50% range. The rare instances where organic yields were higher than conventional (9% of total) were overwhelmingly for hay and silage crops not food crops. In order for the US crop production from 2014 to have been produced as organic would have required at least 109 million more farmed acres an area equivalent to the total parkland and wild lands in the lower 48 states. Organic remains a very small fraction of the US cropland base (~0.44%) and so it puts a limited strain on land-use. That said, the concept of only organic is untenable from an environmental perspective.Background and MethodologyPeriodically, the USDA conducts a detailed survey of the US organic industry including data on the acreage, yield, and price of organic crop production. Such surveys have been conducted in 2014, 2008. Organic data is available at the state level for a large number of crops in a summary on the USDA website. Similar data is collected each year by surveying a subset of all growers, and these numbers are available through the Quickstats2.0 website, also from USDA-NASS. The USDA does not publish a comparison of these two categories, so in 2009 and again this year I have undertaken to make such a comparison.
Not all crop/state combinations are available for the analysis. Sometimes the minor crops in a state are not even tracked in the overall USDA data. For both the general and organic survey, if the number of farms reporting is too small, the numbers are not disclosed so that information about specific entities are shielded. Some crops are only tracked at the nationwide level (usually when one or a few states dominate the production). Even with these limitations, it was possible to find 371 good comparisons (356 at the state level and 15 for small crops at the national level e.g. cotton, tangerines). These represented total cropland acres, 80% of the US total.
Many academic studies have been done comparing organic and conventional production methods, and several meta-analyses have been published collecting these studies. While this is a valuable approach, it will not always reflect the full range of innovation or limitation that are a part of real world commercial agriculture. This USDA data is a window on the practical range of farming operation and the best available measure of how the different production systems perform in a practical sense. There are potential artifacts in this data set. If there is a difference in the proportion of irrigated land used for organic vs conventional it will skew the data as will other intensity differences or geographic differences within a state. Some of the comparisons are unbalanced as in the case of spinach and lettuce which are more heavily represented by baby types for organic in California. Even so, the overall distribution of yield spread is sufficiently weighted to the conventional advantage to indicate the reality of the differential.
My email is [email protected] based on 370 state/crop comparisons with at least 25 acres of organic >Conv. Yield>Organic YieldIn 55 of 370 comparisons, yields were higher in organic. 89% of the higher yielding examples were with hay or silage crops, 10% with row crops and 800K acres, total 1983 farms, 179K acres, 0.5% of total, -21% yield gap, 6.6million less acres needed for only organic production)Other Hay(States with
