What's riskier? Organic or conventional farming?

That's the question the Butte-based National Center for Appropriate Technology will study with $750,000 from the Department of Agriculture.

Besides exploring organic farming's risk, the four-year grant will address whether the general lack of "whole farm" crop insurance acts as a barrier to expansion of diversified farming.

Jeff Schahczenski, NCAT's agricultural policy and funding research director, said that the money stems in part from his research into why farmers growing commodity crops like corn, soybeans and wheat, have access to crop insurance that would cover a crop loss. Meanwhile, organic farmers, who typically sell their crops for a higher price, must accept crop insurance payments based on the lower conventional farming prices.

From this research he helped develop a whole farm revenue insurance method, which insures a farm based on its past revenue instead of insuring a single crop at a time.

Schahczenski noticed that organic farms tend to be more diverse than their conventional counterparts, growing a multitude of crops and often raising livestock.

He also began to question the mentality that organic farming is inherently riskier because organic farmers don't use pesticides, transgenic crops or synthetic fertilizers.

"There's a tendency to believe that organic farming is more risky," he said Tuesday. "I wanted to study more carefully whether that's true. Organic farms tend to be more diverse and follow the old adage: 'Don't put all your eggs in one basket.'"

Schahczenski said it's likely organic farms are in fact less risky than conventional farms because they have protected themselves from losing an entire year's profits in one fell swoop.

Along with Eric Belasco, an agricultural economist at Montana State University-Bozeman, and Mike Morris, the NCAT southwest regional director, Schahczenski will study organic farmers across the nation for three years. They will determine if buying whole farm revenue insurance makes a difference for them by calculating compensation whether or not they purchased the insurance.

About half of the grant money will go to compensating the participating farms.

"Is it the very way you farm that matters?" Schahczenski asked. "Perhaps organic farms are more resilient systems. People say organic farms can't feed the world, that they're niche. I don't think that's true. You can't have sustainable production systems without diversity. We can build more sustainable agriculture if we have crop insurance that encourages diversity."

The grant is among several totaling more than $23 million partially funded by the Organic Research and Extension Initiative, which was authorized by the 2014 Agricultural Act, more commonly known as the Farm Bill.

Source - http://insurancenewsnet.com/