Can Organic Farming Feed the Growing World Population?

Yuvraj Singh
4 days ago
3 min read

Updated: 2 days ago

Rising World Population and Food Demand

The World population has been increasing drastically over the last century. From the year 1970 to the year 2025, the world population has doubled from 4 billion to 8 billion. In between all this, agricultural researchers and scientists have shown the concerns towards the excess use of fertilisers, herbicides and pesticides to increase crop yield to sustain this growing demand for food.

An elderly farmer smiling while tending to a vibrant organic vegetable garden with tomatoes, carrots, and leafy greens, showcasing sustainable agricultural farming practices.

Harmful Effects of Chemical Farming

Today, 97% of the food grown all over the world is grown inorganically, which means the food you’re going to eat tonight is grown by using harmful pesticides and herbicides. These aren’t only harmful for the environment but also for your own health.

A person washing a fresh red apple under a kitchen tap to remove chemical pesticide residues, with potatoes and other vegetables blurred in the background.

Research shows that the pesticides sprayed on the crops is often absorbed into the tissue of the crops or stays on the surface as residue. If the fruits & vegetables are not washed properly, these pesticides can enter in your own gut and this can have some devastating results on your health in the long run.

As this can disrupt the Endocrine gland function, disrupt the gut microbial activities and in the worst cases, it can also become a reason for certain types of cancer.

Why Stopping Fertilisers is Difficult

After hearing all this you might wonder that why don’t we stop the use of pesticides, herbicides and fertilisers all at once, but then the real challenge arises. The population is about which I talked in the starting.

People facing severe drought and famine conditions in a makeshift camp, highlighting global chronic hunger and the world food crisis.

To give an idea, today, approximately 673 million people face chronic hunger out of which 266 million people are under the threat of acute crisis. In the year 2025, two countries declared famine, and estimates data shows us that in the coming years, the world will face more famine like conditions due to increasing population and climate change. So the question is what may we do? If we today stop using the fertilisers and pesticides, the number of people facing chronic hunger can sky rocket, leaving the large majority of people on the verge of death, as without fertilisers, the crop yield will decrease by 25%, which means 1/4 population will come under acute crisis. which equals 2 billion people.

Conclusion

So the question is what should we do? grow organically grown food which currently cannot yield enough to feed 8 billion people, or keep growing food using chemicals... Actually, this is a million-dollar question for the agricultural sector. To solve this, we need a complete biological revolution. But while scientists work on that, there is one very simple thing, that we can all do right now

It is to never waste food, because despite listening this one very important thing everywhere, we all ignore, the reality is, every year we waste 1/3 of the food which is grown. If we all take a resolution to never take extra food and finish what is there on our plate, we can save enough food to feed a massive portion of the population facing hunger today.

However,some of you might be thinking - that what about about the people who eat food with pesticides because if we get back to the numbers, approximately 7.3 billion people eat that food with pesticides today, and this can lead to some of the devastating results on the global health around the planet

To know how we can overcome this issue read my next blog (Comming soon!)....