SynthesisProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2015
Financial competitiveness of organic agriculture on a global scale.
Synthesis in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2015. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 35 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
35 citing papers in PubMed.
- Participatory Scenario Design to Support Ex-ante Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services Assessments in Four European Agricultural Case Studies.Environmental management · 2026Article
- Organic Pig Farming in Europe: Pathways, Performance, and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) Agenda.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2026Review
- Crop yield responses to seaweed extract-based biostimulants depend on application strategy, formulation, and extraction methods: a meta-analysis.Frontiers in plant science · 2026Article
- Nutrient release and yield comparison between customized organic and conventional fertilizers in hydroponic lettuce production.Frontiers in plant science · 2026Article
- Article
- Rice farming for climate change adaptation in the Northeastern United States.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Organic farming significantly improves microbial community structure, network complexity, and functional diversity in the Gannan navel orange orchard.BMC microbiology · 2025Article
- Recent advances in organic agriculture: innovations, challenges, and opportunities.Frontiers in plant science · 2025Review
- Green production of apples delivers environmental and economic benefits in China.Plant communications · 2024Article
- The emergence of pesticide-free crop production systems in Europe.Nature plants · 2024Review
- Article
- How Much Food Can We Grow in Urban Areas? Food Production and Crop Yields of Urban Agriculture: A Meta-Analysis.Earth's future · 2022Article
- Participatory Causal Loop Mapping of the Adoption of Organic Farming in Nigeria.Environmental management · 2022Article
- A Comparison of the Prevalence of the Parasites of the Digestive Tract in Goats from Organic and Conventional Farms.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2021Article
- Considering Fraud Vulnerability Associated with Credence-Based Products Such as Organic Food.Foods (Basel, Switzerland) · 2021Article
- Global option space for organic agriculture is delimited by nitrogen availability.Nature food · 2021Article
- Allelopathic Potential and Active Substances fromFoods (Basel, Switzerland) · 2020Article
- Potential for large-scale CONature · 2020Article
- The Analysis of Marketing Factors Influencing Consumers' Preferences and Acceptance of Organic Food Products-Recommendations for the Optimization of the Offer in a Developing Market.Foods (Basel, Switzerland) · 2020Article
- Landscape context affects the sustainability of organic farming systems.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2020Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
To promote global food and ecosystem security, several innovative farming systems have been identified that better balance multiple sustainability goals. The most rapidly growing and contentious of these systems is organic agriculture. Whether organic agriculture can continue to expand will likely be determined by whether it is economically competitive with conventional agriculture. Here, we examined the financial performance of organic and conventional agriculture by conducting a meta-analysis of a global dataset spanning 55 crops grown on five continents. When organic premiums were not applied, benefit/cost ratios (-8 to -7%) and net present values (-27 to -23%) of organic agriculture were significantly lower than conventional agriculture. However, when actual premiums were applied, organic agriculture was significantly more profitable (22-35%) and had higher benefit/cost ratios (20-24%) than conventional agriculture. Although premiums were 29-32%, breakeven premiums necessary for organic profits to match conventional profits were only 5-7%, even with organic yields being 10-18% lower. Total costs were not significantly different, but labor costs were significantly higher (7-13%) with organic farming practices. Studies in our meta-analysis accounted for neither environmental costs (negative externalities) nor ecosystem services from good farming practices, which likely favor organic agriculture. With only 1% of the global agricultural land in organic production, our findings suggest that organic agriculture can continue to expand even if premiums decline. Furthermore, with their multiple sustainability benefits, organic farming systems can contribute a larger share in feeding the world.
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