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Organic farming has become a popular industry within the
agriculture industry of many countries as a result of a driving push for
societies to become more sustainable.
At the surface, the image and science of organic farming is a sustainable
practice, but when taken at a broader scale, the claim of sustainability starts
to lose its strength. We have observed organic farming in Jamaica and assessed and investigated its sustainability here. We interviewed several farmers over the past few weeks at different farms where they are pursuing organic certification. They answered questions about farming methods and how “organic” they
are. For many people, organic and
sustainable go hand-in-hand.
Ideally, this should be the case, but this is not always true. This short entry will not define organic
farming in Jamaica, but rather, the relationship of organic farming and
sustainability in Jamaica.
In an earlier reading in this course, David Orr in his
chapter “Two Meanings of Sustainability” from his book Hope is an Imperative: The Essential David Orr, presented two types
of sustainability: "sustainable development," the economic and technological
solutions to our current problems with humanity and the environment, and "ecological sustainability," an approach focused on the social and natural
solutions to the problems created by technology and money. The argument about organic farming and its sustainability falls within the
ideas of these two meanings of sustainability. On one side of the sustainability question, organic
farming achieves ecological sustainability better than any other form of
farming. The importance placed on
farming without any herbicides, pesticides, or fertilizers, farming multiple
crops to manage the amount of nutrients being pulled from the soil, and farming
in areas that have the least impact on soil degradation and erosion meet most
people’s ideas of what sustainable farming should look like. This organic
farming also solves the problems of past farming methods that were damaging to
the earth and is seen as a better social avenue for farming.
The other side of sustainability looks at the economics
and technical solutions of sustainability, and this is an area that organic
farming falls short. Many of the
questions that have been asked in Jamaica so far deal with the capacity of
organic farming to sustain Jamaicans with all the food that they need. Some farmers say yes while others are
not as optimistic. Despite growing crops in a much more sustainable way,
organic farming does not currently serve the majority of Jamaica’s agricultural
consumption and many Jamaicans chose against organic products. Even though people may think that
organic is better, they cannot afford foods sold as organic. The matter of economics is one of the
biggest hurdles to organic farming being sustainable. The current organic agriculture market has created a social
barrier to the majority of Jamaicans, pricing them out of the organic
choice. Instead, most Jamaicans
will choose imported food that is cheaper. Another great barrier to organic being sustainable in my
eyes is the economic burden that the farmers themselves are placed in. For a farmer to become a certified
organic producer, they must meet a list of principles set forward to ensure the quality
of organic foods. This process is
not only very expensive, but can take a minimum of three to five years. [You can read the standards for the Jamaican Organic Agriculture Movement here.]
In the current agricultural industry in Jamaica, organic
farming is not sustainable. The
majority of organic farmers are not producing a sustainable economic yield
while the foods they put to market are out the reach of the Jamaican
population. In order to become
sustainable, organic farming would have to become the only method of
agriculture in Jamaica to ensure that prices are lowered for the Jamaican
public. Organic farming would also
have to become much more regulated in order to ensure that the market does not
become flooded with one specific crop.
By regulating organic farming, the government could ensure that
competition does not commercialize the organic industry recreating the current
issues within Jamaica.
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A lot of people who write on energy demand (sometimes calling it "need") talk about natural gas as the bridge fuel between oil and coal to renewable sources. Do you think we need to bridge between chemically-intensive agriculture and fully organic agriculture? What pitfalls and opportunities do you see?
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