Presenter: Josephine Kinney
Faculty Mentor: Galen Martin
Presentation Type: Poster 18
Primary Research Area: Social Science
Major: Environmental Studies, Spanish
Large-scale industrial mono-cropping is currently the primary form of agriculture to feed our growing global population of 7.4 billion people. Nonetheless, over 25% of the world population is undernourished and 48.1 million Americans live in food-insecure households. My research began with the goal of creating a more sustainable agricultural system that can reduce global hunger and improve environmental and human health by switching from synthetic fertilizer
to organic fertilizer application. Synthetic fertilizers are more commonly used but are petroleum-based and are associated with a variety of long-term problems such as soil erosion, acidification, and animal and human health effects. Furthermore, there is a 93.6% correlation between oil and food prices, signifying that rising oil prices drive food prices higher and will increase food insecurity. In this study I found that organic fertilizer can actually produce higher crop yields than synthetic fertilizer, both immediately and long-term, and are not affiliated with oil prices. The primary challenge to implementing organic fertilizer on an industrial scale is simply the lack of infrastructure, planning, and demand, not level of productivity. Although I did not conduct field research myself, I looked at a case study by Edwards et. al conducted in 2010 which compared crop yields from harvests treated with compost, synthetic fertilizer, and a control group treated with nothing. My research shows how transforming our agricultural system into an organic farming operation would actually be cheaper for farmers and consumers, be more efficient, and improve human, animal, and environmental health.