Organic farming uses traditional methods like crop rotation and manure instead of artificial pesticides and fertilizers. This reduces pollution but also decreases productivity and efficiency compared to conventional farming. Organic farms control pests with natural predators instead of pesticides, and use selective breeding over antibiotics or GMOs for livestock. While better for the environment, organic techniques typically require more labor and cannot always control outcomes.

1. Organic Farming
LESSON OBJECTIVE
To be aware of the ethics and principles of organic farming and explain why organic products are
more expensive than non-organic produce.
Organic farming is a method of farming that doesn’t involve the use of artificial pesticides or fertilisers
which means pollution of local soil and rivers is reduced. Instead, organic farmers use traditional methods.
Theses include using manure instead of fertilisers to improve the soil structure. A disadvantage of this is
that manure is difficult to apply and cannot control the mineral content.
To reduce disease and damage to the soil composition organic farmers use crop rotation method which
means they change where the crops are planted. The problem with this is that it decreases the productivity
and is less efficient to grow different crops.
Conventional farmers use herbicides which can damage the environment and be a health risk to consumers.
Organic farmers choose to weed manually to reduce the risks and damage, but this requires a lot of hard
labour. They also refrain from using machinery to collect their crop which means they have to do it manually
which takes longer.
Organic farmers do not use nitrogen fertilisers which are expensive, they use nitrogen fixing plants such as
legumes (peas and beans) which add nitrogen to the soil which is good for the crop. By using pea plants the
nitrogen that is added to the soil is long lasting.
Organic farmers control pests by using natural predators. For example using ladybirds to eat the greenflies
which are eating the crops. This is called biological control.
Conventional farmers may use battery farms to reduce the animals movement to get the best out of them
so they grow bigger. Organic farms have animals that are free, this is known as free range. Conventional
farmers may also given cows antibiotics to improve the quality of milk and genetically modify organism to
make them bigger, more tasty of to give them a special feature such as resistance to pesticides. Organic
farmers will not use these methods. They choose to use traditional methods of selective breeding to get
desirable characteristics in their livestock.
Organic farming techniques
Technique Replaces Advantage Disadvantage
Manure Fertiliser Recycles waste, improves Difficult to apply and cannot control mineral
soil structure content
Crop rotation Single crop Reduces disease and Less productivity. Less efficient to grow different
damage to soil composition crops.
Weeding Herbicides Less environmental damage, Labour intensive
or health risk
Nitrogen-fixing Nitrogen Cheaper, longer lasting Reduces area available for growing crops if part of
plants fertilisers a crop rotation
Biological Pesticides Cheaper, longer lasting Will not completely exterminate the pest, often
control unpredictable, slow results, can disrupt food
chains