Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
Research Foundation (OFRF) in the United States of America (USA) defines organic farming
as 'a modern, sustainable farming system which maintains the long-term fertility of the soil
and uses less of the Earth's finite resources to produce high quality, nutritious food' (OFRF
2004). The International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements (IFOAM) goes further
in defining organic agriculture (IFOAM 2004) as an:
agricultural production system that promotes environmentally, socially and
economically sound production of food and fibres, and excludes the use of
synthetically compounded fertilisers, pesticides, growth regulators, livestock feed
and additives and genetically modified organisms.
Unfortunately, in establishing national and international standards for organic produc-
tion, the emphasis has shifted from the purpose and principles of organic farming to the
specific inputs, practices, and methods that tend to characterise organic farms.
The historic purpose of organic farming was to ensure the permanence of agriculture, and
through agriculture, the permanence of human society. IFOAM (2004) states:
The purpose of organic agriculture is to optimize the health and productivity of
interdependent communities of soil life, plants, animals, and people.
Permanent ersus productie agriculture
Healthy, productive, living communities are essential means of ensuring permanence. Living
organisms and living organisations are both distinguished by their capacity for permanence.
Non-living systems inevitably tend toward entropy. Living systems, however, are capable of
capturing, transforming and storing solar energy to offset this inevitable degradation of matter
and energy. Thus, permanence is inherently dependent on healthy, living, organic systems of
production. Only organic systems are capable of restoring the form, pattern, hierarchy and dif-
ferentiation inevitably lost in the natural tendency toward entropy. The historic principles of
organic farming were the principles of living systems.
The purpose of an industrial agriculture is productivity, not permanence. The principles
driving productivity in today's capitalistic market economies are profits and growth. Under
neoclassical capitalism, all surpluses or profits must be reinvested in means of production to
achieve ever-greater productivity and growth, and profits must be maximised to achieve effi-
cient resource allocation and use. Capitalism allocates nothing to the regeneration or restora-
tion of the ecological or social resources from which it extracts its productivity. Industrial
agriculture allocates nothing to restoring organic life to the soils or social life to the communi-
ties upon which its long-run productivity ultimately depends.
The processes of specialisation, standardisation and consolidation of control characterise
all industrial organisations (Ikerd 2001). Adam Smith, the father of contemporary economics,
expounded on the potential gains in productivity that could be achieved through specialisa-
tion, which he called 'division of labour'. Division of labour, put simply, meant that each
labourer specialised in performing a single task or a limited number of tasks in the production
process. By performing fewer tasks, each labourer could perform their specific tasks much
more efficiently, and thus, could be much more productive.
Industrial systems also required standardisation to facilitate the division of responsibili-
ties, to ensure that each stage of production could be fitted effectively with previous and fol-
lowing stages. Standardisation allowed specialised processes to be scheduled and mechanised,
and allowed producers to obtain and use input materials from several different suppliers. Sim-
plification and scheduling of production allowed each decision maker to manage or control
