The increasing prevalence of ecologically sustainable products in consumer markets, such as organic
produce, are generally assumed to curtail anthropogenic
impacts on the environment. Here I intend to present an
alternative perspective on sustainable production by interpreting the relationship between recent rises in organic
agriculture and greenhouse gas emissions from agricultural
production. I construct two time series fixed-effects panel
regressions to estimate how increases in organic farmland
impact greenhouse gas emissions derived from agricultural
production. My analysis finds that the rise of certified
organic production in the United States is not correlated
with declines in greenhouse gas emissions derived specifically from agricultural production, and on the contrary is
associated positively overall agricultural greenhouse gas
emissions. To make sense of this finding, I embed my
research within the conventionalization thesis. As a result I
argue that the recent USDA certification of organic farming
has generated a bifurcated organic market, where one form
of organic farming works as a sustainable counterforce to
conventional agriculture and the other works to increase
the economic accessibility of organic farming through
weakening practice standards most conducive to reducing
agricultural greenhouse gas output. Additionally, I construct my own theoretical framework known as the displacement paradox to further interpret my findings