Sorting out the environmental benefits of alternative agriculture

PROPONENTS of alternative agriculture contend that it has significant environmental advantages over the conventional system now followed by most crop and animal producers in the United States. Farmers do not adequately reflect these advantages in their economic calculations because most of the advantages, such as reduced off-farm damages to soil and water quality, accrue to others. If the environmental advantages of alternative agriculture are real, the market system that fundamentally drives American agriculture will undervalue alternative agriculture relative to the conventional system. For this reason, policies designed to stimulate alternative agriculture should be considered. We use alternative agriculture here to mean the wide range of practices indicated by terms such as “low-input,” “organic,” and “regenerative” agriculture. The U. S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) definition of organic farming describes the system we have in mind: “…a production system which avoids or largely excludes the use of synthetically compounded fertilizers, pesticides, growth regulators and livestock feed additives. To the maximum extent feasible organic farming systems rely upon crop rotations, crop residues, animal manures, legumes, green manures, off-farm organic wastes, mechanical cultivation, mineral bearing rocks and aspects of biological pest control to …