Is organic farming better for the environment than conventional farming?

As someone who has studied the environmental impacts of agriculture for many years, there are a handful of questions that I get over and over. One of them is whether we are right to assume that organic farming is better for the environment than conventional farming.

I think this is a common assumption. When I eat with others, there is often an expectation that I will automatically choose the organic option. When I speak to friends, they are keen to tell me that they’ve started buying organic vegetables or beef. They are looking for a thumbs-up that this was the best choice.

While this choice might seem obvious and simple (organic is good, and conventional is bad), the research is far more mixed. In 2017, I wrote an article looking at the latest studies. I mainly drew on a meta-analysis by Michael Clark and David Tilman, which found little clear difference in some environmental impacts — such as carbon emissions and water use — between organic and conventional methods.1 But it did find some areas where organic performed worse: specifically, water pollution and land use. Organic farming tends to get lower yields and therefore uses more land.

That article has been a popular one since then. But it’s now old and worthy of a refresh. Nine years on, do we have better data on these comparative impacts? How should we think about these differences in farming practices?

In this article, I take a fresh look at these questions.