The only people who think organic farming can feed the world are delusional hippies, hysterical moms, and self-righteous organic farmers. Right?
有機種植能填飽全世界人民的肚子？這個想法太瘋狂，太異想天開了對不對？
Actually, no. A fair number of agribusiness executives, agricultural and ecological scientists, and international agriculture experts believe that a large-scale shift to organic farming would not only increase the world's food supply, but might be the only way to eradicate hunger.
實際上，這並不是一個離譜的想法。農業經濟學家，環境學家，農業學家相信大規模有機種植不僅能夠提高作物產量，而且可能是唯一解決未來糧食不足的方法。
This probably comes as a surprise. After all, organic farmers scorn the pesticides, synthetic fertilizers, and other tools that have become synonymous with high-yield agriculture. Instead, organic farmers depend on raising animals for manure, growing beans, clover, or other nitrogen-fixing legumes, or making compost and other sources of fertilizer that cannot be manufactured in a chemical plant but are instead grown-which consumes land, water, and other resources. (In contrast, producing synthetic fertilizers consumes massive amounts of petroleum.) Since organic farmers can't use synthetic pesticides, one can imagine that their fields suffer from a scourge of crop-munching bugs, fruit-rotting blights, and plant-choking weeds. And because organic farmers depend on rotating crops to help control pest problems, the same field won't grow corn or wheat or some other staple as often.
大家可能對這個結論很吃驚。畢竟，有機農民不使用農藥，化肥，和其他所謂“有效工具”提高產量。相反，有機農民使用於動物糞便，種植豆類，三葉草 等固固氮堆肥，這些肥料不能在化學工廠大量生產，會消耗土地，水和其他資源。 （相比之下，生產合成肥料消耗大量的石油）。由於有機農民不能使用化學合成的農藥，可以想想，他們的田地裏，長滿各種害蟲，植物被各種真菌感染，根部腐爛；由於有機農民依靠輪作作物，以幫助控製蟲害問題，不能長期種植玉米或小麥或其他一些主食。
As a result, the argument goes, a world dependent on organic farming would have to farm more land than it does today-even if it meant less pollution, fewer abused farm animals, and fewer carcinogenic residues on our vegetables. "We aren't going to feed 6 billion people with organic fertilizer," said Nobel Prize-winning plant breeder Norman Borlaug at a 2002 conference. "If we tried to do it, we would level most of our forest and many of those lands would be productive only for a short period of time." Cambridge chemist John Emsley put it more bluntly: "The greatest catastrophe that the human race could face this century is not global warming but a global conversion to ‘organic farming'-an estimated 2 billion people would perish."
由於上述原因，有人得出如果推廣有機種植，我們將需要開辟更多的森林，持這種論調的人包括諾貝爾獎得主Norman Borlaug和劍橋化學家John Emsley.
In recent years, organic farming has attracted new scrutiny, not just from critics who fear that a large-scale shift in its direction would cause billions to starve, but also from farmers and development agencies who actually suspect that such a shift could better satisfy hungry populations. Unfortunately, no one had ever systematically analyzed whether in fact a widespread shift to organic farming would run up against a shortage of nutrients and a lack of yields-until recently. The results are striking.
近年來，新的研究得出有機農業不僅可以解決糧食不足問題，而且可能是唯一的解決方式，這些研究的結果非常驚人。
