Organic farming is regarded as the traditional alternative to the highly mechanized conventional agricultural industry. However, the future lies in the combination of technological innovations and traditional ecological farming. Organic farmers who have already introduced a lot of technology to their operations show how this can succeed and what advantages it brings.
Given that the organic farming segment also needs to adapt to the consequences of climate change, a fundamental rejection of technological innovations can be counterproductive. Because this adaptation process calls for new strategies and an openness to new technologies. In the future, there will need to be enough food to feed the around ten billion people that the UN predicts will live on Earth by 2050. Urs Niggli, Swiss agricultural scientist and pioneer of organic farming, is convinced that this can only succeed if the entire agricultural industry becomes sustainable. New technologies help us to use fewer resources, make better use of our waste, and cultivate existing land more efficiently1.
Scepticism about technological progress?
Organic farming relies heavily on knowledge that has been passed down through the generations. And organic farmers are the important carriers of this traditional knowledge. In recent years, public discourse has voiced the criticism that there is too much scepticism about technological progress within the organic farming community and that this is preventing the segment from making the best use of scientific and technical advances.
Rapid structural change in agriculture
The agricultural sector is undergoing a fast-paced structural shift: The number of farms has fallen sharply over the years. Of the 1.5 million farms that existed in 1960 in what was at that time the territory of West Germany, there were only around 258,700 remaining in what is now the entire Federal Republic in 2022. At an average of around 62 hectares, farms now are much larger than they were 60 years ago, when they covered around 8.7 hectares on average2. More and more farms are opting to switch to organic farming. In this segment, the number of farms has more than tripled in the last 20 years.
Structural change is also occurring in the field of technology: New genetic engineering technology such as genetic scissors, digitalization, AI-supported agriculture, renewable energies and mechanical engineering innovations are all important concepts in this context.