Keeping it real: organics holds promise that GM crops don't to beat global warming

A post on the COMFOOD listserve alerted me to a Grist post by Meredith Niles titled "Organic Farming Beats Genetically Engineered Corn as Response to Rising Global Temperatures." She cites a new Science journal article "detailing the vast, global food-security implications of warming temperatures." After explaining why GM drought-resistant crops won't be a silver bullet to shoot down global warming, she holds up organic farming's potential to make a difference in our future through carbon sequestration.
Some of the comment writers seem to doubt the differences that organic farming can make. I talked to researchers here at the Institute, then posted the comments below, confirming that, yes, regenerative organic farming is a real, powerful and practical tool to fight global warming--as it also improves our agricultural resilience.
I wrote:
Thanks, Meredith, for linking terrestrial carbon sequestration to the fight to mitigate global warming. Here's some news...

1. Old news, corrected: Alex(Avery)280 knows that authors of the Bioscience article, in a letter published with his, laid out how the FST organic treatments profoundly changed soils in the trial: the practices of cover crops and complex crop rotation enhanced organic matter and soil aggregation which, in turn, improved water percolation (water goes into the soil rather than flowing off it, with the aggregation holding more particles in place). Rebuttal from Pimentel and colleagues. (Note: The Rodale FST was not set up to gather erosion data, per se, but anyone who comes here can see the results of long-term organic management.) Key points from the FST team, citing soil and water dynamics which continue to improve sustainability, said: “Data showed that in the organic systems, percolation was enhanced and water runoff decreased. In addition, organic matter increased in the organic systems, whereas no increase occurred in the conventional systems, further confirming reduced erosion in the former.”
2. And it’s not true, Inoculated Mind, that the Bioscience 2005 paper proper said there was no difference in runoff between the conventional and organic systems. It said, rather: “Over a 12-year period, water volumes percolating through each system (collected in lysimeters) were 15% and 20% higher in the organic legume and organic animal systems, respectively, than in the conventional system. This indicated an increased groundwater recharge and reduced runoff in the organic systems compared with the conventional system.”
3. Update for Alex280: Rodale Institute announced in June that we had added conventional no-till and genetically modified corn to the Farming Systems Trial. We did this to directly compare these technologies on the same basis as the other trial subplots. We also added organic no-till, which uses our typical organic regime (no synthetic chemical fertilizer, no insecticides, no herbicides) and no-till planting, with our no-till roller-crimper. Some Institute supporters objected, but we explained the addition of GM corn as a critical step in obtaining the strongest possible scientific comparison for our organic system with these heavily promoted non-organic technologies. Useful data comparisons take a while to develop, so it will be at least three years (through crop season 2010) before we an make initial interpretations.
4. Soil carbon is the best indicator of sustainable management, and farming practices matter—a lot. No-till carbon sequestration averaged 428 (±116) pounds of carbon per acre per year (lb/C/a/yr) in a study by West and Post (2002), from analysis of 67 long-term experiments including 267 paired treatments. That study’s highest results, 803 lb/C/a/yr, came from converting full-till corn and soybean land to no-till. By comparison, our FST organic plots with occasional tillage sequester 500 lb/C/a/yr (legume) and 875 lb/C/a/yr, while organic plots in a 10-year compost trial sequestered about 2,000 lb/C/a/yr. (Hepperly, et al, 2009, in press). Data from California fields showed more than 1,000 lb/C/a/yr (Veenstra 2006) in a long-term study using a cereal-legume winter cover-crop mix part of a non-organic. system . 

Finally: anti-organic crusaders: Chill out. Even in 2005 (Bioscience, again) we welcomed any farmer to edge toward greater sustainability in whatever increments were possible: “Conventional agriculture can be made more sustainable and ecologically sound by adopting some traditional organic farming technologies.” More practices result in more benefits to soil, carbon sequestration, biodiversity under- and above ground, improved water management and productive resilience—without buying N fertilizer and GM seeds with outrageous technology fees and legal encumbrances. It's not a battle. It's the way forward.
Greg Bowman - Rodale Institute