Organic agriculture consists of practices that increase resource efficiency by optimizing nutrient and energy flow
while minimizing human health risks and environmental impact includes:
•
Crop rotations
•
Crop diversity
•
Integrated livestock production
•
Organic fertilizer
•
Biological pest control.
Organic and biodynamic farming systems possess soils of higher biological, physical and, in many cases, chemi-
cal quality than that of conventional practices. When social and environmental costs are accounted for, the
organic alternative can also be economically competitive. The market for global organic food and beverage is
currently estimated at around US$51 billion and expected to reach US$104.5 billion by 2015.
12
Governments can
support organic and sustainable agriculture by consolidating organic standards and setting up certification and
regulatory mechanisms, technology packages and market networks.
Table 2: Environmental benefits and adaptation potential of organic agriculture
Source: Nadia El-Hage Scialabba and Maria Müller-Lindenlauf, “Organic agriculture and climate change”,
Renewable Agriculture and
Food Systems
(2010), vol. 25, No. 2, pp. 158-169. Available from www.redagres.org/Organic-agric.pdf (accessed 06 March 2012).
Box 4: Climate-smart agriculture
FAO and the COP16 in 2010 have both recognized the future dilemma of feeding a climate-change ridden
world whose population is ever-increasing. Thus, they emphasized the need to transform the agricultural sector
from being part of the problem to being part of the solution, by making it ‘climate smart’. Climate smart means
agriculture that sustainably increases productivity and resilience against environmental pressures while at the
same time reducing greenhouse gas emissions or removing them from the atmosphere. The FAO stresses that
climate smart practices do not need to be newly invented in many cases, but that a variety of them already
exists that could be widely instilled in developing countries, where food production is bound to change due to
changing economic, environmental and social circumstances.
13
Source: United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific,
The Role of Trade and Investment in the Context of Track
4 (Turning Green into a Business Opportunity) and Track 5 (Low Carbon Economics) of the LC GG Roadmap for the Asia-Pacific Region
(Bangkok, Trade and Investment Division, 2011).
