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I lost the household battle over organic foods years ago. I had argued that organic foods were outrageously expensive, that some of the fertilizers used on them--animal poop, to be precise--might be risky to our health, and that organic standards were flexible enough that I was never sure I was buying the real thing. The fact that a lot of organic food is delivered from afar by carbon-spewing trucks only bolstered my case. Or so I thought.

My wife, a science-and-health writer and editor at the time, had a far more optimistic view. Think of the children, she said. Herbicides used on conventional and genetically modified crops, like Monsanto Co.'s Roundup, are, almost by definition, poisonous. She didn't want our fruit, vegetables and cereals soaked in them. Intensive farming was harmful to soils and beasts alike. And organic food tasted better. So pay up, she said, as she cracked open another $4 carton of polished, organic free-range eggs laid by hens nestled in velvet cushions.

I'm building up the courage to reopen the family food file. I believe the benefits of organic farming to health, animals and soil are more or less real--only organic milk for us--but I've now concluded that it's a land-gobbling luxury, at least in the Western world. Generally speaking, organic harvests per hectare fall short of conventional ones. Growing a tonne of organic wheat--depending on where you do it--might require one-third more land than raising a tonne of conventional wheat, which has its yield pumped up by fertilizers, herbicides and insecticides.

Six or seven years ago, land productivity didn't really matter. Ports were clogged with shipments of cheap corn, rice, wheat and soybeans. Farmers complained of low pork and beef prices and demanded subsidies. Headlines talked of "wine lakes" and "butter mountains." Today, food prices are soaring because of drought, climate change, more protein-rich diets in developing countries, and a planet that's adding more than 70 million people a year. Food riots have erupted in Africa and Haiti. The United Nations held a food crisis summit this past June.

Yet organic farming is spreading fast, despite its lower crop yields. Among the 30 countries in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, on average, organic farmland accounted for slightly less than 2% of the land under cultivation during the years 2002 to 2004. But in some of the smaller OECD countries, the growth has been spectacular. Switzerland and Austria now devote about 10% of their farmland to organic production, up from 5% or less in the mid-1990s. Finland, Italy, Denmark and Sweden have grown to 6% or higher.

Organic food wholesalers and retailers are also booming. The Whole Foods Market chain, with more than 270 stores in the U.S., Canada and Britain, is the supermarket for moms with enough wealth to bypass stores packed with sprayed foods. Last year, Whole Foods' sales climbed by 15% to $6.6 billion (U.S.). Prince Charles uses his organic food and beer company, Duchy Originals, to bolster his green-crusader image. And shame on you if you serve anything other than organic, shade-grown fair-trade coffee.

The organic food industry knows it's becoming a player because many food giants are dissing it more. Recently Nestlé chairman Peter Brabeck-Lemathe said, "We cannot feed the world on organic products." Syngenta's head of business development, Robert Berendes, told me that organic farming is "a waste of agricultural land in times when the world needs more crop output," and actually predicted its death.

That prediction may be premature. But if the food crisis continues, a backlash against organic foods may not be too far off. A 2006 study by Niels Halberg, a researcher in the agro-ecology department of Denmark's University of Aarhus, concluded that in "some areas with intensive, high-input agriculture, conversion to organic farming will most often lead to a reduction in crop yields per hectare by 20% to 45%."

Yes, introducing organic farming methods--crop rotation, natural fertilizers and the like--to farms in developing countries, which live and die on rainfall, has boosted yields. But more modern fertilizers and pesticides might have boosted the yields even more.

Remember that turning food into biofuels, like corn-based ethanol, to fill your SUV tank went from being politically correct to morally suspect virtually overnight, largely because of soaring food prices and images of hungry people. How long before loading up at Whole Foods will deliver the same message about your ethics?

Eric Reguly is an award-winning columnist with The Globe and Mail. He is now based in Rome, and can be reached at ereguly@globeandmail.com