SIR, – We are told that organic farming is growing world wide (The SF March 11), yet as the saying goes 111% of nothing is still nothing.
The "whopping" 23 million hectares in Australia is still less than 3% of their total land area. In any case, large cattle stations, such as Anna Creek, in South Australia, can only stock at a rate of one per 50 hectares in a 'good year', which is determined by rainfall, or the lack of it, so spreading artificial fertilisers (the organic movement's main beef) seldom makes sense.
These stations may well find it easy and lucrative to be awarded organic status. The world's growing problems of increasing population and the need to shift away from fossil sources of carbon cannot, and will not, be met by organic farming which uses too much land area for the produce it delivers and only survives because of higher prices paid by gullable consumers and subsidies from technically naive governments.
Sandy Henderson,
Faulds Farm,
Dunblane
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