[Homestead] Green Revolution was: Reduction Emissions Project
Don Bowen
don.bowen at earthlink.net
Mon Jun 18 20:20:46 EDT 2007
At 6/18/2007, you wrote:
>The main reason, you've heard this spiel before, is that since the "green
>revolution" we've been merely converting oil into food, which is the same
>thing
>as saying we've been converting oil into people.
The so called "Green Revolution" was about developing hybrids that put most
of their energy into seeds then planting those hybrids in monoculture
fields. Those monocultures needed massive amounts of nitrogen fertilizer,
made from Natural Gas, and water, pumped by fossil fuels. They also needed
herbicides and pesticides, both made from more Natural Gas. And finally
they need massive inputs of capital to purchase the seeds, fertilizers,
herbicides, insecticides, and machinery to plant and harvest.
There are many unintended (or unintended as the case may be) side affects,
more farmers were forced off marginal plots into towns to become the raw
labor for industrialization. Shorter stem crops left little for animal
bedding and forage making keeping animals more expensive and reducing
animal manures as a fertilizer source. Dependence on a much smaller choice
of foods as machinery does best with a single purpose use. Herbicides are
killing the weeds along side the fields which were a significant portion of
a summer diet which in turn leads to vitamin deficiencies. The proposed
cure? GMO "Yellow Rice", another expensive seed requiring even more inputs.
It has been suggested by Richard Heildberg that in an oil less future the
earth's population will have to settle to around 1 billion. Burland (sp?)
is called the father of the Green Revolution in the early 50s. He said at
the time that unless we control world population his efforts would be wasted.
Don Bowen Awl Knotted Up KI6DIU
http://www.braingarage.com
My travel journal
http://www.braingarage.com/Dons/Travels/journal/Journal.html
I am omnivagant.
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