The Ruminant: Audio Candy for Farmers, Gardeners and Food Lovers - e75: Organic Agriculture in the 21st Century

Episode Date: March 11, 2016

Can organic agriculture feed the world? Well, no, probably not entirely. But a recent paper in Nature: Plants suggests that as a farming system, it scores better than conventional farming systems on many key indicators of sustainability. This, say the paper's authors, suggests organic systems should be playing a larger role in world food production than it currently is. In this episode, I talk to Jonathan Wachtel, co-author of the study. We talk about sustainability metrics, current barriers to the expansion of organic systems, and why we shouldn't assume that organic farming alone can feed the world.   The graphic we discuss in the episode is available at theruminant.ca. Graphic credit: John P. Reganold and Jonathan M. Wachter and Nature Plants.  

This is the Ruminant Podcast. I'm Jordan Marr. You know, there's not a lot of nuance in a lot of people's ideas about organic. So to some people, you know, organic equals sustainable. And, you know, that's something we tried to get across in this paper, is that that's, you know, that's not the case. In fact, there are a few, if any, farming systems that we have right now that are actually what we would call truly sustainable. Hi folks, it's Jordan. On February 3rd, 2016, the journal Nature Plants published a review article

entitled Organic Agriculture in the 21st Century. It's by John P. Regenold and Jonathan M. Wachter. The paper was a meta-analysis of previous studies that compared organic farming systems with conventional ones on key indicators of sustainability. It concluded that organic systems incorporate a better balance of the various indicators, which probably won't come as a shock to very many people. But the paper did contain some surprises and interesting insights. That organic systems fare as bad or worse on certain environmental indicators like greenhouse gas emissions, for example. The authors also cite and discuss a number of barriers to the expansion of organic farming. What interested me most, though, was that the authors argue that organic systems can't alone be relied upon to feed the planet, and that's something that a lot of

organic farming advocates insist can be done. I really wanted to talk to these guys about their paper. So I contacted them and one of the paper's authors, Jonathan Wachter, agreed to talk to me. I really enjoyed our conversation and I think you will too. So here it is. But hey, one more thing. We talk about a graphic in the paper that is kind of hard to describe over audio. I do an all right job, but you may want to go to theruminant.ca, find the show notes for this episode and check out the graphic before you listen or don't. It shouldn't make too much of a difference,

but now you know. Okay, talk to you later. Jonathan Wachter, thanks a lot for joining me on the Ruminant Podcast. Yeah, you're welcome. Thanks for having me. So I guess if it's, I think this is fair enough to say that you've co-written a paper that reviews the literature on the relative performance of organic versus conventional agriculture.

And so if I'm right about that, perhaps you could explain what you and John set out to do and what your methodology was with this paper. set out to do and what your methodology was with this paper? Well, we've gotten to the point where there's been a lot of research on organic farming systems. And we thought it was about time that we try to pull everything together into one place. And specifically, our goal was to examine the performance of organic agriculture in the context of what we call the four areas of sustainability. And so those four areas that we talk about are productivity,

so a farm has to be productive to be sustainable. Environmental performance, so it's got to be good for the environment. Economics, so it's got to be profitable to be sustainable. And then finally, socially sustainable. And so we essentially set out to look at as much research as we could from the past 40 years, really, and interpret that research taken together in those four areas. We better just clarify how you defined organic for this study. Could you talk about that? Could you talk about that? You know, in general, the studies that we examined were dealing with,

they tended to be certified organic farms. And so that, you know, but on the other hand, organic, you know, is not limited to certified organic systems. And so for the sake of this paper, we were looking at studies that specifically looked at what they called organic systems. So if it was defined as organic in those studies, then we were able to look at them. There are plenty of studies that are done on systems that might resemble organic very closely, but are not technically called organic, and those were not included in the study. Okay, so you've looked at a bunch of meta-analyses, and as you've just said, you've considered all of them in terms of productivity, environmental impact, economic viability, and social well-being. I'd like to at least briefly delve into each one of those four topics.

But first, I want to jump to something in your paper, just a chart or an image that I thought was really interesting. I mean, you're evaluating or comparing conventional ag with organic ag on these four indicators of sustainability, you kind of represent the comparative sustainability of conventional versus organic sort of as looking straight down at the petals of a flower head. Hi folks, Jordan cutting in in post-production editing. I want to try and describe

a graphic that is contained in the paper that we're going to be talking about. It's a really cool graphic. You can actually see it if you go to the ruminant.ca and find the show notes for this episode. But here goes. You're looking at two different flowers, each with 12 petals. One flower represents conventional agriculture and one flower represents organic. Each petal on each flower represents a different indicator of sustainability. So for example, one petal represents yield, another nutritional quality, another employment of workers, another profitability, and so on. The length of the petal represents, in a comparative sense, how well the organic or the conventional system does for that indicator. The longer the petal, the better it does for that indicator. So therefore, the ideal flower is one that has long petals that are all of a similar size. But of course, in our graph, we see some

petals are short and some petals are long, depending on how they do for each indicator. Okay, that's probably all you need so that you understand the following conversation. So it's a great way to look graphically at the results of your findings just because the organic flower tends to be a lot more symmetrical. Most of the petals are longer and of a similar size, whereas the flower for conventional, the petals are very uneven. I'm just wondering, though, how it makes me wonder how you gave weight to the different studies and ultimately how you decided how long those petals should be in this graphic.

Absolutely. So I guess you touched on something that we were trying to reflect with this, and I think you said it nicely. I guess the metaphor or the idea that we really focus on in this paper is the idea of balancing these areas of sustainability. And so if I could just take a sec to say that, you know, If I could just take a sec to say that, you know, clearly conventional farming has yielded, you know, tremendous amounts of food over the years. You know, and there's no doubt that it's been really great in areas of, you know, sometimes in profitability and yield. sometimes in profitability and yield. But then that often has come at a cost of, you know, soil quality, you know, energy use,

you know, exposure to pesticides and things like that. And so that's exactly the idea we've been trying to get across is this idea of balance and how important balance. The biggest challenge with making this figure, because it is qualitative and conceptual in nature, the biggest challenge wasn't so much the length of the petals relative to one another, but rather what we struggled with was how do we reflect the performance of agriculture relative to its maximum potential. So, for example, the maximum length of a flower petal, in theory, that's sort of its maximum potential. So for conventional yield, we decided conventional is yielding really well,

but it's not yielding as much as it possibly could. And so we couldn't have that petal be 100% because there is still to grow. And so that was actually, that was the biggest challenge is, you know, in a more absolute sense, how do we, how do these things perform? Not relative to one another, but in general. sense how do we how do these things perform not relative to one another but in general you know how how much more do we think conventional you know ag has has potential to yield and yeah okay so so jonathan i've been belaboring our discussion about this graph which is in in some ways a fool's errand to do over audio and i hope one way or the other listeners can get a look at this graphic. But the reason I am is because when you look at it, it's striking because of the fullness of the flower that represents organic, which reflects that it's got a much better balance

of all the various sustainability indicators, which overall suggests just a more sustainable system. But you and John acknowledge in your paper that at least you briefly address the fact that for a lot of people, it doesn't matter that yield is king. And so I'm just wondering, I guess, how would I put this? But I guess I'll just keep it simple. Does it matter when for practical purposes and a lot of policy purposes, it just seems like yield is the thing that people are so much more obsessed with? Yeah, well, it certainly is what most people focus on. people focus on. But, you know, we're getting to a point where we can no longer ignore the broader impacts of agriculture, whether that's through the loss, you know, the erosion of soil,

the loss of soil organic matter, the use of energy, you know, the use of other non-renewable resources, loss of nutrients into waterways and into the dead zones of, you know, of the ocean. And we've got to start accounting for these other impacts. And, you know, someday, hopefully soon, that will be, these other factors will be given more weight. Well, Jonathan, I'd like to return to some of the broader implications of your paper in just a minute or a few minutes, I guess. But I would like to briefly spend some time on some of these specific categories that you've analyzed. You know, I don't think there's much to say about yield i think most people are aware that that most studies indicate that um under normal conditions conventional agriculture tends to outperform organics with regard to yield one thing i'm i'm really interested in knowing

though is i imagine some studies when they compare yields are comparing yield per square foot but not like like yield of a crop in a bed in a conventional system versus a crop in a bed in an organic system without factoring in that once you consider that a lot of organic systems fallow a lot, like maybe even up to double the space, that that brings the overall yields in organics down. Were you able to address it in your comparisons? I mean, when you provide numbers, and I'm only kind of being very general, but you were talking about numbers of 5% to 25% better in conventional systems across different crops. Is that taking into account fallowed land in the organic system, or were you just relying on what the studies that you were studying considered?

Yeah, so we had to rely on the assumptions that all of these review and meta-analysis papers made. A few of them did try to correct for those overall rotational yields, but not all of them. Okay, so I'd like to move over to environmental impact and the series of indicators you studied under that category. And I just, again, I think most people who have thought a little bit about agriculture and are familiar with it wouldn't be surprised to see in your study that organic tended to perform a lot better on issues of soil quality and soil carbon and minimalization of erosion and the production of a lot less pesticide residues and herbicide residues and things like that. the production of a lot less pesticide residues and herbicide residues and things like that.

What surprised me was that organic doesn't tend to do, and please tell me if I'm wrong, but doesn't tend to do much better or in some cases does worse when you consider like greenhouse gas emissions and water use and a few indicators like that. Do I have that right? Let's see. The greenhouse gas question is absolutely, there doesn't seem to be a really definitive difference. And that, you know, partially is due to just how incredibly diverse these farming systems are. So some studies have found, for example, with greenhouse gas emissions, if you reflect greenhouse gas emissions per unit of land area

per hectare, then organic systems tend to look better. Whereas if you reflect greenhouse gas emissions per unit of yield, then because of the lower yielding organic systems, then organic actually does worse than the average conventional farm. And the same goes for leaching of nitrates. So a few studies have found if you look at the numbers per hectare, then organic looks better. But if it's per unit of production, then conventional looks better. And I was going to bring that one up too, Jonathan, because that's pretty fascinating. And I think that's one where organic farmers tend, I think, to be a little blind to the leaching that

happens in organic systems. I think we like to think that we perform way better, that leaching is much reduced because we're not using, you know, soluble fertilizers. But even with the organic amendments and fertilizers that we're using, we still can produce, and compost and manures and things like that, we can still be very guilty of that kind of leaching. Yeah, oh, absolutely. And I, you know, I think this kind of more broadly speaking, a lot of people, you know, there's not a lot of nuance in a lot of people's ideas about organic so so to some people you know organic equals sustainable and you know that's something we tried to get across in this paper is that that's you know that's not the case in fact

there are a few if any farming systems that we have right now that are actually what we would call truly sustainable. And so absolutely, it's easy for people to forget that there are significant environmental impacts from organic farms too. I think on that last point, the same can be said going over to another one of the categories you looked at, which is social sustainability. Organic still has some ways to go on some indicators within that category, does it not? Yeah, absolutely. That's an area, again, that I think the research field really needs to look at a little bit more closely. You know, we've, all across the world, we're seeing, you know, we're seeing the erosion of rural communities. And a lot of that goes, you know, goes hand in hand with changing technology,

changing farming systems. And, you know, we have to really think hard about what our farming systems mean for the farmer, but also for those communities around those farms. That's really important, and we need to get a little more clarity on that. Jonathan, I want to spend, I want to jump over to economics now, and specifically, you spend some time talking about externalities in farming. So if I could try and provide a definition of externalities for those who don't know it, these are costs associated in this case with agriculture that are not borne by the farmer that ultimately have to be paid by the collective, all of us.

So for example, the cost of cleaning up leached nitrates and phosphates that end up in our waterways tend to be regarded as an externality. would i would love for you to talk a little bit about what you found about externalities and then how that affects the overall equation of comparing organic to conventional so i i guess i would add to that definition of externalities that that often the cost the usually the cost is not realized. Or I guess the whole reason it's called an externality is that the value is external to what the market value for whatever goods we're talking about. And so it can be a positive externality in the sense that, you know, let's say, well, the production of certain types of food, you know, it brings those goods to people.

And so that's a positive externality as far as the quality of that food. But it also provides things like ecosystem services. You know, growing that crop may have put carbon into the ground, and so it pulled carbon out of the atmosphere. And so those sorts of externalities might be positive. But then, like you said, there's the issue of maybe if growing that crop polluted and then downstream, you know, having high levels of nitrogen or phosphorus, then that would be a negative externality. So the challenge here is that externalities are not valued. And so it's and in fact, that's a that's a huge, huge field of debate right now is, you know, how do you value externalities fairly? And,

you know, should we even be trying to value these externalities? And so in that sense, it becomes, you know, a little bit hard to really quantify differences because there's no established method for valuing these things. There was especially one pretty well-known study that attempted to do this in the UK. They were attaching values to these externalities of agriculture, and they found that if in the UK a switch to organic production would basically reduce external costs of agriculture by 75%. And, you know, of course, you have to make a lot of assumptions for those sorts of numbers. But it's an interesting, you know, interesting way to frame the question. but it's an interesting way to frame the question. And when you start trying to answer that question,

it appears that organic starts to perform even better in these comparisons to conventional agriculture. Do I have that right? Yeah. So if you were to give a monetary value to these externalities, so let's say if you gave value to environmental externalities, then because the overall performance of organic farms in an environmental context tends to be greater than conventional, then if those were given values, then organic would start to look even better.

Yeah. Okay. All right. So I'd like to broaden out the conversation again, Jonathan, but I want to make sure that, that I want to, I want to just one more time, summarize your, your paper and make sure that, that I don't misrepresent that. But essentially your paper has demonstrated that if you, if you that if you broaden out beyond just yield and you consider other factors of sustainability, so not just productivity, but environmental impacts and economic viability and social well-being, organic tends to, based on the meta-analyses that you've analyzed, tends to outperform conventional agriculture. So is that a fair description of your conclusion? Yeah, or I guess rather than the word outperform, I would say tends to balance these areas. Okay, so what does that say about the future of organic farming's role in the overall food system?

Yeah, well, that's a good question. So we begin the paper by showing the tremendous growth in organic sales and organic land area over the last 15 years or so. And it really has expanded quite a bit. But we're still looking globally at roughly 1% of farmland is organic. And, you know, through all these comparisons, Through all these comparisons, we essentially conclude that there is plenty of room to expand organic production and hopefully make an impact in increasing the performance of some of these sustainability areas in doing so. But a key, I'd say, a key conclusion that we make, you know, is that while there is plenty of room for the expansion of organic agriculture, and based on our findings, I think there would be some benefits of that, absolutely.

I think there would be some benefits of that, absolutely. While that's the case, organic agriculture is not a silver bullet, and just like conventional agriculture isn't a silver bullet, what's needed is really a diversity of farming practices to address these huge challenges that we have. Right. And I'd like to pick up on that point in a couple of minutes. But given that you and John are essentially cautiously recommending that certainly an argument can be made for some expansion and encouragement of organic agriculture. Part of your paper near the end turns towards some of the barriers that exist to doing so. So I wouldn't mind talking a little bit about that.

And you mentioned a number of issues, powerful vested interests in the food system, market power, subsidies, existing policies, lack of research. There's so much we could talk about. I thought maybe we could start by touching on subsidies. I think as just a regular organic farmer, but someone who likes to participate in conversations about food security and the food system, subsidies are kind of like this abstract thing, Jonathan. You often hear them cited as reasons why better forms of farming aren't succeeding with expansion. But it remains very abstract, and I actually myself don't have a strong grasp of just what effect those subsidies have. Do you feel like you have a good sense of the effect of subsidies having done this study? Yeah, well, I'm glad you brought that up,

because absolutely this vague idea of subsidies is often villainized, and people talk about it abstractly as being the cause of all of these problems. And so in this paper, unfortunately, because the focus was on the science, we couldn't delve in depth into, you know, policies. But I will say, you know, the overall effect, let's say, in the United States, in the latest foreign bill, we stopped the direct payment form of subsidies in favor of more of a subsidized insurance program. But still, what these sorts of policies have tended to favor is, in a way, the status quo, if I can say that. sort of what has been done for the last 30 years tend to be favored as far as insurance. And for a long time, it was really hard for an organic farmer to be insured, let's say. Right now, in the past year or two, the form of the subsidy would be a subsidized insurance program by which it's much easier if you are growing a very standard rotation of corn and soy

that it's much easier to get into that program of a subsidized insurance. Whereas if you're doing anything, you know, let's say you've got a long, diverse rotation as an organic farmer, it's quite a bit harder to, you know, to get into those programs. I see. That's a good example. Again, you mentioned it earlier with the insurance companies. I mean, insurance companies trade in predictability and certainty, and anything out of the norm is just going to make them a little more, they're risk-averse, I guess. Yeah, exactly. And if it's not, you know, let's say it's not, if it hasn't been done,

then of course there will be a lot of red flags on the part of the insurance companies, you know, whether they want to deal with that at all. So that's, you know, I'm not saying it's impossible to be insured, but it's a major barrier, and it's much more difficult if you can't just point to all your neighbors and say, you know, they're doing it too, or we've done this for, you know, for 30 years. Yeah. So another barrier that you mentioned in the paper is the lack of research specifically for organic production or lack of variety and breed programs for organic varieties and breeds of livestock that thrive in organic systems.

I'm just curious, is that the kind of thing when you were looking into that? Is it striking the difference between research dollars spent in the conventional ag context versus organic context? Yes, absolutely. To me, that's one of the most meaningful barriers that we talk about. Unfortunately, it would be very hard to give any dollar values to just how many resources have gone into conventional research compared to organic. But it's a huge disparity there. And you brought up breeding, and I think that's a really important example of this. So there have been some studies that have found that, well, one study in particular looking at wheat, the best performing wheat variety for a conventional farm, when it was used in an organic context, it was no longer

the best performing variety. And that, you know, that suggests that just how important it is to breed for the specific conditions of an organic system. And that sort of breeding has, you know, of an organic system. And that sort of breeding has, you know, there's been just a minuscule amount of resources put towards that compared to what's put towards conventional breeding programs. Something that, you know, some people point to is just how kind of amazing it is that organic just how kind of amazing it is that organic farms are performing as well as they are, given that disparity in research and development funding. I guess sticking with the major conclusions of your paper, a point you make that I think is really important is that, is that, you know, we're, we perhaps, and I'm using my words, but it seems like we limit ourselves when we, when we talk about this topic in binary terms, conventional versus organic. And you do make reference in your paper to the need

to consider hybrid systems. You know, since there are aspects of conventional that tend to be a little more towards unequivocally negative, like pesticide residues, you know, if we're going to, we're going to throw out the bath, some of the bathwater, but where's the baby in conventional? What would we be keeping in trying to create hybrid models? This, I think, has to be taken with a grain of salt. But the strategic use of herbicides to limit how much tillage has to happen. So a lot of organic systems rely very heavily on tillage for weed control, which in some cases is probably not the best idea. And if certain herbicides were available in that toolkit, I think they could be used effectively to maximize soil quality, for example.

So that's one minor example of how we might use tools from organic and from conventional to really focus on outcome rather than labels. So what about, I wanted to ask specifically though, if you have a sense in your research about synthetic fertilizers, like I think it is, it's easy to identify,

you know, the need to try to reduce the harmful effects of things like herbicides and pesticides. But, you know, I don't have the exact statistic, but I do have a sense that like research has shown that roughly a third of the food we eat can be attributable to the Haber-Bosch process, to synthetic fertilizers, essentially. And I'm just, I'm wondering if you

were looking at, I don't know, if you've given thought or some of the studies you looked at were making any kind of argument for many of the approaches of organic while still making room for the use of synthetics to go along with all of the soil conservation practices of organic. Yeah, synthetic fertilizer production, there's no doubt that has been responsible for this huge increase in food production worldwide. And there are lots of people who say, you know, if you scale up organic farming, you know, to too large a scale, then suddenly you are going to be limited by nitrogen, and that we can't fix, you know, biologically fix enough nitrogen using legumes to be able to maintain this sort of productivity. And so that, you know, it becomes this sort of abstract question of scale. But I think the key question here is not whether you're strictly using synthetic fertilizer

or non-synthetic fertilizer, but the key is really that we have a lot of losses. Our farm and food systems are very leaky as far as nitrogen. And there are lots of ways that we can work on tightening that system and preventing those leaks, if you will. And that's an area that I completely agree. I completely agree. Rather than maybe focusing entirely on whether you use synthetic fertilizer or not, what counts is what's happening to it and how efficiently our crops are taking them up. Well, Jonathan, I would like to finish the conversation by getting a little bit meta and talk to you more about the experience of publishing a paper like this in terms of its effects on the cultural conversation, I guess. I'm sure you would agree with me that this topic is a very contentious one. It's fairly politicized, organic versus conventional agriculture. And I just, I have to imagine that you probably anticipated at least a little bit of,

and I guess this is a problem for all scientists and researchers with their work, but once you release it into the public, your own measured conclusions can quickly get twisted, I guess. your own measured conclusions can quickly get twisted, I guess. I know that's common, and I'm just wondering if you've thought about that in terms of how you released your paper and how you worded it and whether you are seeing examples of that now that this is out in the public. I guess I'd like to just start by saying this whole conversation tends to sort of devolve into a very black and white organic versus conventional conversation. And, you know, that was never our intention with this paper. And, you know, I think it's not a very productive way of thinking about it.

And what we tried to get across is that rather than being opposed to one another, they offer tools that we need to use to achieve the outcomes we're trying to get at. And so as far as the sort of reception of this paper in the media, I mean, that, that tends to be the focus, you know, there are, there are those who say, you know, this study, you know, they say this study proves, proves that organic is better, you know, in a very generic way. And, and then there are those that say, you know, that this is better in a very generic way. And then there are those that say that this is demonizing conventional ag. And so unfortunately, I think maybe the subtlety is usually lost maybe when it gets interpreted by people

because there's a lot of... People are coming at it with a lot of either ideology or a lot of sort of interests. So we did... We expected that something like this would cause a reaction from all sides, and it definitely has. I'm looking at a... I'm on a listserv of organic farmers, and I pulled up, I, just before a conversation, I went to try and, I was sure your article would have been promoted in an email right

around when it was released, and sure enough, I found an email on the listserv with the subject heading, organic farming key to global food security and then just a link nothing else and i guess that's not even a really egregious example but it is already in an example like that getting away from from your conclusions which are a little bit more measured yeah absolutely and so yeah by that example you know we never we never claim claim that it is key to global food security. It's just, yeah, it's easy for those things to get spun, absolutely. Jonathan, last question. It's not really related to your paper.

It's just reflecting all the work that you, all the time you've spent studying these issues. As an organic farmer, I often get asked by people, why is organic food so much more expensive? And paradoxically to them, I think, I'm not the by people, why is organic food so much more expensive? And paradoxically to them, I think I'm not the greatest person to answer that question because I haven't seen the other side, the other type of agriculture. If someone asked you at a dinner party, you know, Jonathan, why is organic food so much more expensive? How would you answer that in about 30 to 40 seconds? Yeah, that's a good question. do things like build their soil health or, you know, try to maintain sort of higher standards as far as environment or well-being.

And so in that way, you know, people use that to justify organic premiums. But then there's also just the market reality of if food sellers see that they can charge a higher price because demand is there, then in a free market, they'll charge more. And so to me, it's this constant sort of battle between the two because there's no doubt that organic foods are probably in some cases priced much higher than they really have to be just because they can get those prices. I think that's great. Very succinct. And I think that's really key.

It's a little more uncomfortable for me to explain. I think it's easy for someone like me to really emphasize well extra labor on an organic farm um or you know and various other production factors but when it comes down to it there's there's your your study shows there's there's a premium and and really there's not so much that's wrong with that farmers are business and business people too, and they're going to seek often to maximize their profits, I guess. Yeah, and it's not always just the farmer either. When you get into broader food distribution, the price gets marked up by whatever distributor sees the opportunity to.

So it's typical economics. It'll match what demand is out there. But then, yeah, there is the important reality that higher labor requirements, more focus, more energy put into building soils. Uh, those things take time labor and, um, you know, maybe they should be compensated for. Jonathan Walker. Thanks so much for joining me on the podcast today. Well, thanks for having me. I had fun.

All right. So there you go, go folks i hope you enjoyed that and i just want to finish with another reminder that we're kind of into this new format for the show this week was a longer form conversation about a broader topic so that means that next week we're going to zoom in and focus on kind of practical skills and considerations for farming. So I've got some cool stuff lined up for you next week. And then the week after that, we'll be back to a broader topic in the form of a long-form conversation. Okay, that's all. Thanks for listening and talk to you soon. To make our final escape All we'll need is each other a hundred dollars And maybe a roll of duct tape And we'll run right outside of the city's reaches We'll live off chestnuts, spring water and

peaches We'll owe nothing to this world of thieves And live life like it was meant to be Because why would we live In a place that don't want us A place that is trying to bleed us dry We could be happy with life in the country With salt on our skin and the dirt on our hands I've been doing a lot of thinking Some real soul searching And here's my final resolve

I don't need a big old house or some fancy car To keep my love going strong. So we'll run right out into the wilds and braces. We'll keep close quarters with gentle faces and live next door to the birds and the bees and live life like it was meant to be. Ba, ba, ba, da, ba, ba, ba. Ba, ba, ba, da, da, da. meant to be