New Studies from the US and Europe confirmed that organic farming can help mitigate global warming.
According to ecologists, the study gave three major reasons why and how organic agriculture can help battle climate change.
Firstly, organic farming does not pollute air, water and land with chemical fertilizers and pesticides.
Secondly, its methods use animal manure and cover crops like clovers and legumes to enrich the soil which helps sequester carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Lastly, it uses less energy than conventional farming.
The technique used in organic agriculture to enhance soil fertility, in turn encourage crops to develop deeper roots, which increase the amount of organic matter in the soil, locking up carbon underground and keeping it out of the atmosphere.
The opposite happens in conventional farming. High quantities of artificially supplied nutrients encourage quick growth and shallow roots.
In addition, conventional agriculture pesticides are used to control weeds, insect infestations and fungi. These chemical inputs destroy the microbes in soil and consequently the mineral and vitamin content of food grown from it.
In organic agriculture, however, synthetic fertilizers and pesticides are not allowed in organic growing.
Ecologists urged farmers to go into organic agriculture because it would help then enriching the soil they are cultivating, assure food security and mitigate the effects of climate change.
The looming rice and water crisis can also be abated by going organic. Organic agriculture helps control global warming by capturing atmospheric carbon dioxide and incorporating it into the soil.
Conventional farming on the other hand, exacerbates the greenhouse effect by producing a net release of carbon into the atmosphere.
