You report that the campaign team RePlanet has termed for the European Union to ditch its organic and natural targets “in favour of common and intense farming techniques for higher productivity” (Halt use of biofuels to ease food items disaster, suggests inexperienced team, 13 July).
On the other hand, its call is based mostly on a myth: even with receiving less than 1% of world agricultural research funding and just 5% of the $700bn in yearly agricultural subsidies, agroecology practices these kinds of as organic farming are linked with as fantastic and typically better productiveness as very well as increased biodiversity, resilience to local climate shocks these kinds of as drought, minimized running greenhouse gas emissions (a 3rd of which are now generated by the foods process) and higher amounts of atmospheric carbon absorbed again into soils.
With chemical fertiliser price ranges doubling or trebling, condemning European food items units to dependency on hyper-expensive chemical inputs – much of them imported from important worldwide chemical fertiliser exporters these kinds of as Russia and Belarus – makes about as considerably feeling as tying our electrical power method to hyper-high-priced fossil fuels from the exact same nations when renewables have never ever been more cost-effective and photo voltaic power is now, according to the Worldwide Strength Company, “the most economical source of electrical power in record”.
Richard Ewbank
London