Organic farming yields more crops in extreme weather due to 100% higher water capture
“Five drought years occurred between 1984 and 1998 and in four of them the organic maize out yielded the CNV [conventional maize] by significant margins...The primary mechanism of the higher yield of the MNR and LEG is proposed to be the higher water-holding capacity of the soils in those treatments...Soils in the organic plots captured more water and retained more of it in the crop root zone than in the CNV treatment. Water capture in the organic plots was approximately 100% higher than in CNV plots during September’s torrential rains”
Lotter, R. Seidel, and W. Liebhardt, “The performance of organic and conventional cropping systems in an extreme climate year,” American Journal of Alternative Agriculture 18, no. 2 (2003): 1, accessed May 7, 2014, http://donlotter.net/lotter_ajaa_article.pdf