Strategies for feeding the world more sustainably with organic agriculture (Nature communications)

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Link to paper: http://nature.com/articles/doi:10.1038/s41467-017-01410-w Stratégies pour nourrir durablement le monde Organic agriculture is proposed as a promising approach to achieving sustainable food systems, but its feasibility is also contested. In this video, FiBL researcher Adrian Müller presents a food systems model that addresses agronomic characteristics of organic agriculture to analyse the role that organic agriculture could play in sustainable food systems. The results show, that a 100% conversion to organic agriculture needs more land than conventional agriculture but reduces Nitrogen-surplus and pesticide use. However, in combination with reductions of food wastage and food-competing feed from arable land, with correspondingly reduced production and consumption of animal products, land use under organic agriculture remains below the reference scenario. Other indicators such as greenhouse gas emissions also improve. Besides focusing on production, sustainable food systems need to address waste, crop-grass-livestock interdependencies and human consumption. None of the corresponding strategies needs full implementation and their combined partial implementation delivers a more sustainable food future.