Two recent reports have reignited debates for or against particular farming systems, when in fact the enormous challenges of feeding a growing world population, coping with climate change and protecting vital oil and water resources will require a collaborative effort, bringing together the best of all approaches to deliver sustainable and secure food production.

A study published by researchers at the University of Leeds has incurred the wrath of the organic lobby for suggesting that more intensive conventional farming systems - rather than organic methods - offer the most effective use of productive farmland to meet future food needs, while protecting wildlife and biodiversity.

In the most detailed like-for-like comparison of conventional and organic farms to date, researchers at the University’s Faculty of Biological Science found that the benefits of organic production to biodiversity were more limited than previously thought, while yields were much lower.

Published in the journal Ecology Letters, the study showed that the biodiversity benefits of organic farming averaged around 12 per cent more than conventional, but organic yields were 55 per cent lower, leading researchers to conclude that organic farms would need at least twice as much land to produce the same amount of food.

In days gone by, when ‘yield’ was a dirty word and Europe was awash with a surplus of food, it is doubtless that the conclusions of such a study would have focused on the agri-environmental benefits of organic farming, rather than the production penalties.

But that is not the case today. Global demand for food has outstripped production in seven of the past nine years, and with an extra 10 mouths to feed every four seconds, demand is set to increase by 50 per cent over the next 20 years just to keep pace with population growth.

In a break with convention, the University of Leeds team opted to evaluate resource use and environmental impact according to unit of food produced, rather than the area farmed. When ranked by this critical measure of productivity, the study concluded that organic farming offered a relatively inefficient way to produce food and protect wildlife.

Meanwhile, the Soil Association’s April 2010 report Telling Porkies appeared to downplay the food security challenge, by calling into question the true extent of the predicted increase in global food demand. The report said commentators were wrong to suggest a doubling in food demand by 2050, because the FAO’s original 2006 report had forecast a 70 per cent increase.

A subsequent analysis of the Soil Association’s report by Séan Rickard of the Cranfield School of Management has concluded that there are strong grounds to support a projected doubling in food demand by 2050, and that the impact of a number of more recent factors - including revised forecasts of population growth, urbanisation, per capita income and rising biofuel demand - may in fact have been underestimated.

But whether we need a 70 per cent or 100 per cent increase in food supplies by 2050 misses the point - it cannot be met without access to the most advanced developments in agricultural science and technology, most of which are excluded from organic systems.

In truth, the challenges ahead are far greater than can be met by any single technology or farming system. Global crop production will need all available tools and technologies, and cannot afford to rule out particular approaches on the basis of dogmatic opposition.

Biotechnology and crop protection don’t hold all the answers, but nor does organic farming - and the sooner we can adopt a more inclusive and collaborative approach towards common goals, the better.

Dominic Dyer is chief executive of the Crop Protection Association.