permaculture

["Michael Murphy" <MMurphy@ctsl.com>]

It is unbelievable to me that this kind of crap is still published by
intelligent people not on the payroll of agribiz.  I think the yield
question has to be fought head-on for both quality AND quantity, with
quantity being calculated over 10 to 20 years versus the one-year
shot-in-the-arm crowd that doesn't tell you 10 years from now the soil
will be dead and the bugs mutated.  Arguing chemicals and GMOs are
actually green is extremely seductive to the press.

    From the Institute for Policy Innovation (IPI)
    Number 2.9
    March 10, 2005

   A Few Greens Make Sense--No, Really
 

   Science magazine reports that world food demand is expected to more

   than double by 2050.  This is a job for technology; Luddites need not

   apply.

 

   The most obvious solution would be high-yield farming, which means
the   
   use of chemical agents as well as genetically modified crops.  Both,
of  
   course, are the bane of the backward-looking, anti-science crowd that

   tends to place bugs above man.

 

   But influential thinkers are making the intellectual case for

   high-yield farming, one them being Dr. Patrick Moore, a co-founder of

   Greenpeace.

   "There's a misconception that it would be better to go back to more

   primitive methods of agriculture because chemicals are bad or
genetics   
   is bad. This is not true," says Moore, who supports the Center for

   Global Food Issues which understands that "Growing More Per Acre
Leaves  
   More Land For Nature."

 

   "We need to use the science and technology we have developed in order

   to feed the world's population, a growing population," Moore
believes.   
   "And the more yield we get per acre of land the less nature has to be

   destroyed to do that ... It's simple arithmetic. The more people
there     
   are, the more forest has to be cleared to feed them, and the only way

   to offset that is to have more yield per acre."

 

   The late Dr. Norman Borlaug, father of the Green Revolution and
another  
   supporter of the Center for Global Food Issues, has pointed out that

   organic farming won't provide the additional food necessary to meet

   demand because it requires more acreage than conventional farming to

   produce the same amount of crops.

 

   "We aren't going to feed 6 billion people with organic fertilizer,"
he   
   said.  "If we tried to do it, we would level most of our forests and

   many of those lands would be productive only for a short period of

   time."

 

   Feeding a swelling global population will also require continued

   technological development in irrigation and gene-splicing that
produces  
   crops that can grow in Third World nations where droughts are often

   devastating and irrigation impractical.

 

   Eco-activists will fight both just as they will oppose high-yield

   farming. But they offer no solutions, only exaggeration and fear.

   Technology, however, offers something they never will: regular meals

   for a hungry world.