Madison, WI and Lexington, KY, (AgPR) -- When I was in Kentucky a few weeks ago, I took a side trip to visit with a hog producer in southwest Indiana. Armed with the farm’s address, I had online directions, my car’s GPS system and a navigation application on my cell phone all at my disposal.

Needless to say, I easily got to the farm. But as I was leaving, the producer asked me if I knew the shortcut back out to the highway so I could avoid the longer drive through town. He routed me along three country roads where my navigational technology would never have taken me and when I emerged onto the highway, I’d cut several miles and minutes off my trip.

In global food security, like my trip to rural Indiana, I’m often reminded that we have a lot of options to get from point A to point B. And like my trip, those options often involve choices that are as varied as relying on a GPS system versus the advice of an experienced local.

In the previous issue of Feeding the Globe, I relayed some comments from Paul Collier, professor of economics at Oxford University, who has stated quite firmly that Africa needs genetically modified (GM) crops more than any other region and blames the European ban on GMOs for causing countries in Africa to follow suit, closing the door on what he sees as a necessary component for solving global food security issues.

When I quoted Collier, I did so knowing that there would be a segment of the Feeding the Globe audience that agreed whole-heartedly with much of what he had to say and another segment that would be adamantly opposed. I also knew that a fair number of you would land somewhere in the middle.

Probably one of the most ardent—and certainly the quickest—in offering an opposing viewpoint was Tim LaSalle, Ph.D., who serves as CEO for the Rodale Institute. The Institute is located on a 333-acre certified organic farm in Pennsylvania and has been around for about 60 years. Through its extensive research, it's built a solid reputation as the go-to source on organic farming for policy makers, farmers and consumers. Perhaps most well-known is its Farming Systems Trial (FST), the longest-running scientific experiment in the US comparing organic and conventional farming practices.

A plant physiologist inspects drought-stunted corn planted in bare soil, while corn plants in the background tower above their protective organic mulch in a cornfield in Beltsville, Maryland. Photo: USDA.

So it was no surprise to me that my report on Collier’s viewpoints grabbed the attention of the folks at Rodale. Not only does LaSalle disagree with Collier, but he told me he finds it deeply unethical to talk about the use of patented seed to fight conditions like drought when, in his words, “science has already provided a drought buffer for all crops.”

That buffer, he says, comes in the form of building soil organic matter, something he notes is non-patentable, available to the poorest of farmers, and ensures water-holding capacity as well as aquifer recharge. “GMO has failed the yield advantage, continues to demand unsustainable outside inputs, and is priced out of the market when peasant farmers need the ability to grow their own seed and farm inputs,” he told Feeding the Globe in a manner every bit as candid as Collier’s.

But can organic farming really be a valid answer to global food security needs? I’ve heard countless times that organic equates to low yields and does not lend itself to the kind of large-scale production necessary to feed the world's growing appetite.

Not so, says LaSalle. He points to an October 2008 report by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) that states organic agriculture can not only feed the world, but it may be the only way to solve the growing problem of hunger in developing countries. As the “voice for the environment” within the United Nations system since 1972, the UNEP partners with a number of entities, both within and outside the UN.

UNEP says its extensive study challenges the “popular myth” that organic agriculture cannot increase agricultural productivity. Their analysis included 114 farming projects in 24 African countries. The UNEP’s report, “Organic Agriculture and Food Security in Africa (2008),” concludes that organic or near-organic practices resulted in a yield increase of more than 100 percent.

But conclusions drawn by the UN on agricultural issues in the past have not been without controversy. It was another report, this time by the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization a few years ago, for instance, that identified livestock agriculture as the biggest culprit in greenhouse gas emissions, a conclusion challenged most recently by University of California-Davis air quality specialist Frank Mitloehner. (More on Mitloehner’s work in a future issue of Feeding the Globe.)

Still, LaSalle stands by the UNEP report. He is also willing to show additional evidence that in the developing world, organic yields vastly surpass yields from conventional agriculture by ratios of nearly 1.6 to 4.0. Additional research studies and reports at LaSalle’s disposal include a large-scale examination of yield data from 286 farms in 57 countries showing crop yields increased by an average of 79 percent with environmentally sustainable techniques, including organic farming and crop rotation. He has also reported on another study in the developing world that showed organic methods were two to three times more productive than conventional methods. All mounting evidence, says LaSalle, that organic farming can produce enough food to feed the growing world population without increasing the agricultural land base to do so.

At the same time, genetic engineering of crops certainly isn't falling by the wayside and proponents of GMOs--who also claim to deliver higher yields, better resistance to pests and greater adaptability to harsh climates--have some statistics to show of their own. The non-profit GMO proponent International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-Biotech Applications points out that 13.3 million farmers used GMO crops worldwide in 2008, an increase of 1.3 over the previous year, and a large percentage of those would be considered resource poor. Their statistics show that GMO use continues to grow and that the acres dedicated to the cultivation of such crops showed about a 9.4 percent climb again last year with about 12.5 million hectares devoted to the growing of genetically engineered crops worldwide. South Africa maintains its place among the top 10 GMO-producing countries.

Proponents have also argued that the use of GMO crops has reduced pesticide use by 290,000 tons and note that over 3 billion people on all continents consume GMO foods without ill health effects.

As for Africa’s difficult climate—a point at which this discussion began—LaSalle stands firm in his belief that it is organic methods and not biotechnology that hold the answer. Water capture in organic fields can be 100 percent higher than in conventional fields during torrential rains, he says, and the resilience of organic fields in both extremely wet and extremely dry weather conditions speaks to its capability to create more food security under current erratic and extreme weather conditions.

“… in a growing hot planet, this strategy (organic farming) also sequesters more carbon than conventional GMO-based agriculture could ever hope to accomplish with the fossil fuel and biologically destructive approaches," says LaSalle. "This remains core science, but it works from a biological understanding, a holistic approach where nutrients begin to cycle in a living organic matter rich environment. A real solution.”

If it is a real solution, as LaSalle and others assert, it would provide an alternative route to Collier’s in getting from point A to point B in global food security. But given the strong opinions on both sides, which road is the surest route seems still open to debate, and like my road trip, the battle seems to include choices of technology and experience from both sides.

Maybe the solution means we don’t necessarily choose one way at the exclusion of all others. I welcome your viewpoints and will share some of them in future issues of Feeding the Globe.

As always, let me know your views on this week's issue and other impacts on global food security. I will use some of your responses in future Feeding the Globe e-newsletters and the upcoming Feeding the Globe website.

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The last word: "All this noise about GMOs...is politics (and) politics is more dangerous than science." -- Professor Ayiecho Olweny, Kenya's Assistant Minister for Basic Education, in AllAfrica Global Media's allAfrica.com.

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