Yes, organic farming will kill us all
The thing with conventional farming is that a lot of the costs (in terms of environmental damage which needs to be repaired) are currently externalized, i.e. payed for by the society, which indeed makes industrial farming more cost-effective than organic farming, at least for the farmer (though in many countries you can charge a good premium for organic food, which will often outweigh your additional cost). The same is true for the current industrialized way of raising livestock.<p>The real problem is properly accounting for all costs incurred by a given farming technique, which is difficult as the farming lobby seems to be one of the most effective ones in the world (at least judging from a European perspective).<p>In addition, the argument that industrial farming consistently produces higher yields than any organic farming technique seems at least a bit dubious to me, as there is a plethora of techniques that have been investigated over the years, and again the outcome of any study depends heavily on the timescale that you look at: Sure, heavy use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides will increase yield in the short run, it might actually decrease yields in the long term by degrading soil quality and triggering a biological arms race that makes it impossible to do farming without the use of heavy pesticides in the long run. Also, the external cost in terms of health effects on the population is still poorly researched and not accounted for in most cost calculations.