Organic farming is a way of agricultural system that mainly relies on methods such as crop rotation, green manure, compost and biological pest control. It uses fertilizers and pesticides but strictly limits the usage of manufactured synthetic fertilizers, pesticides, plant growth regulators, livestock antibiotics, food additives, and other materials.
Organic farming has certain disadvantages. These can be divided into two different but related categories: consumers and producers. These are the main reasons why organic farming has not been adopted by majority of farmers, even it is good and worth knowing.
The following are some of the disadvantages of organic farming:
- The food produced through this type of farming is more expensive because farmer does not get as much profit as the conventional farmers get. Even the food products may cost up to 40% higher.
- Here in this farming system, more number of farmers are required to monitor. So, thus the production costs increases.
- It is a time consuming and energy taking process. To meet organic requirements very detailed methods and techniques should be used to really call it an organic farm.
- Even marketing and distribution is not possible and efficient because the food is produced in smaller amounts.
- It cannot produce enough amount of food as much crop as an industrialized farms for the world’s population. Then this could lead to starvation.
- Highly skilled manpower is required in order to farm this type of organic farming because they are not allowed to use chemical fixes that industrial farmers are allowed to use and everything has to be done by hand without synthetic help. Sometimes it can be very hard to find someone who is experienced in organic farming.