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The farm energy savings for organic are often 20 per cent or more.

“We concluded that the evidence strongly favors organic farming with respect to whole-farm energy use and energy efficiency both on a per hectare and per farm product basis,” states the study. Possible exceptions are the poultry, hog and fruit sectors.

The findings validate the opinions of many organic farmers, says Derek Lynch of the Nova Scotia Agricultural College (NSAC) in Truro, lead author of the “The Carbon and Global Warming Potential Impacts of Organic Farming: Does It Have a Significant Role in an Energy Constrained World?” study, published in Sustainability.

“Many organic farmers are convinced their farming system  is just as important as the product in terms of promotion of organic,” said Lynch in a phone interview.

“And this is just another bit of evidence that our environmentally conscientious farmer manages a farm with a much lower footprint in terms of energy, and global warming to a lesser degree.”

One of the differences in this study was that rather than considering only the energy use of farm fuel and electricity, a much broader approach was taken. The study authors, who included Rod MacRae of York University and Ralph Martin of NSAC, looked at all energy used within the life cycle of the whole farm system. “This means you have to include the embedded energy of any farm input,” says Lynch.

Comparisons of farm-level energy use and global warming potential (GWP) were made of organic and conventional production.