Is organic farming more viable than we think?

Over the past few years fertiliser prices have revealed just how exposed modern farming is to global energy markets.

Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, ammonium nitrate prices in the UK surged to around £840–£870 per tonne. Prices later eased but remain volatile, and geopolitical tensions continue to affect both energy markets and fertiliser supply chains.^[4][5]

This raises a simple question: if cereal production depends so heavily on imported chemical inputs, why is the possibility of growing crops without those inputs discussed so rarely?

1. The Cost of Growing Conventional Spring Barley

Using simplified average figures for contractor operations and inputs, the variable costs of growing spring malting barley look roughly like this.

* Nitrogen fertiliser cost assumes ammonium nitrate around £500/t, roughly the average UK farmgate level during 2024–2025 after prices fell from the £840–£870/t peak reached during the 2022 fertiliser crisis. At this price a typical spring barley nitrogen programme of about 110 kg N/ha equates to roughly £160/ha.^[4]

Even allowing for the extra cultivation passes required for weed control, the organic system still spends less on purchased inputs. More importantly, those costs are far less exposed to fertiliser and chemical price spikes.

2. Organic Rotations and Whole-Farm Profitability

Organic systems rarely crop every field every year. Instead they include periods of fertility-building ley which restore nitrogen naturally and improve soil structure.

The example used here reflects the rotation at Rushmere Farm, where livestock are not a major enterprise. The rotation therefore isolates the cereal and arable part of the system rather than mixing in livestock income.

In this example, four years are cropped and two years are put into fertility-building ley. That means roughly one third of the farm is not producing a cash crop in any given year, which must be included in any whole-farm comparison.

Organic cereal yields are typically lower than conventional yields because synthetic fertilisers and pesticides are not used. A conservative assumption is that organic cereal yields are around 60% of conventional yields.^[3]

Using a recent England five-year average spring barley yield of 5.7 t/ha, that gives:^[2]

Whole-farm organic variable costs are lower because only four sixths of the land carries cropped-field costs in this example rotation; ley management is then added back separately.

Even after accounting for the non-cropping third of the farm, the organic system remains competitive while relying much less on purchased inputs.

3. How Much Grain Does Organic Actually Need to Grow?

Because organic grain prices are typically around double conventional prices, the yield required to match conventional profitability is surprisingly low.

That means an organic farmer achieving typical yields still has substantial margin headroom. That buffer can absorb mechanical weed control, undersowing, difficult weather years, or simply market volatility.

4. Are We Actually Short of Food?

One common objection to lower-yield systems is that the world must maximise production in order to feed a growing population. The global numbers are more complicated than that.

Global cereal production is now just over 3 billion tonnes per year. Cereals account for about 43–45% of global dietary energy, equivalent to roughly 1,300 kcal per person per day. That is around 60% of a basic 2,100 kcal daily requirement before counting vegetables, pulses, fruit, meat or dairy.^[7][8]

Total global food production already supplies roughly 2,900–3,000 kcal per person per day. With the current world population just over 8 billion people, that level of production is theoretically sufficient to feed around 10–11 billion people at basic dietary energy requirements. In other words, the world already produces enough food to feed everyone; hunger persists primarily because of poverty, distribution, waste and how food is used within the global food system.^[7][8][9]

Yet hunger persists because food access depends on distribution, affordability and political stability rather than production alone. Only around 40% of cereals are eaten directly by humans; much of the rest goes to animal feed, industrial uses and biofuels.^[7][8]

Global cereal production per person is already higher today than during the surplus periods of the 1970s and 1980s when Europe and North America accumulated so-called “grain mountains”. Over the past half century cereal production has grown significantly faster than population, meaning the world now produces more grain per person than during those earlier surplus decades. When supply repeatedly exceeds demand, the typical result is not the end of hunger but downward pressure on farm commodity prices.^[9][10]

Food security is therefore not purely a question of maximising yield per hectare. It is also a question of how the food system allocates the food it already produces.

5. Input Resilience and Supply Chains

The fertiliser spike following the invasion of Ukraine highlighted how dependent modern agriculture is on imported inputs.

Organic farming removes the fertiliser line entirely. Its primary inputs are seed, machinery and labour. From a national food security perspective, that creates a farming system whose costs are far less exposed to geopolitical shocks.^[6][11]

Despite the economic and environmental arguments often made for organic farming, only around 3% of UK agricultural land is currently managed organically. The figure has changed very little over the past decade.^[12]

This raises a further question: if organic farming can be economically competitive while reducing exposure to volatile input markets, why has adoption remained so limited?

The Question for Farmers — and for Policy

This is not an argument that every farm should switch to organic tomorrow. Transition takes time. Certification takes several years. Rotations and management systems must change.

But the numbers do raise a question. If a typical organic yield of around 3.4 t/ha can still outperform a conventional margin in this example, while being far less exposed to volatile fertiliser markets, why is the option discussed so rarely when input prices spike?

If the barriers are structural, the question extends beyond farmers. It becomes a question for policy. Should public investment focus on expanding domestic fertiliser production, or on helping farmers move towards systems that do not depend on fertiliser in the first place?

At a time when food security and geopolitical supply chains are both becoming more uncertain, that seems like a conversation worth having.