permaculture

["Lawrence F. London, Jr." <lflj@intrex.net>]

<http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?xml=/earth/2008/08/12/eacharles112.xml>
Prince Charles warns GM crops risk causing the biggest-ever environmental 
disaster
By Jeff Randall
Last Updated: 2:01pm BST 12/08/2008

The mass development of genetically modified crops risks causing the world's 
worst environmental disaster, The Prince of
Wales has warned.
        
Prince Charles warns GM crops risk causing the biggest-ever environmental 
disaster
Listen: The Prince of Wales speaks out

In his most outspoken intervention on the issue of GM food, the Prince said 
that multi-national companies were
conducting an experiment with nature which had gone "seriously wrong".

The Prince, in an exclusive interview with the Daily Telegraph, also 
expressed the fear that food would run out because
of the damage being wreaked on the earth's soil by scientists' research.

He accused firms of conducting a "gigantic experiment I think with nature and 
the whole of humanity which has gone
seriously wrong".

"Why else are we facing all these challenges, climate change and everything?".
# The Prince of Wales: 'If that is the future, count me out'

Relying on "gigantic corporations" for food, he said, would result in "absolute 
disaster".

"That would be the absolute destruction of everything... and the classic way 
of ensuring there is no food in the
future," he said.
advertisement

"What we should be talking about is food security not food production - that 
is what matters and that is what people
will not understand.

"And if they think its somehow going to work because they are going to have 
one form of clever genetic engineering after
another then again count me out, because that will be guaranteed to cause the 
biggest disaster environmentally of all time."

Small farmers, in particular, would be the victims of "gigantic corporations" 
taking over the mass production of food.

"I think it's heading for real disaster," he said.

"If they think this is the way to go....we [will] end up with millions of 
small farmers all over the world being driven
off their land into unsustainable, unmanageable, degraded and dysfunctional 
conurbations of unmentionable awfulness."

The Prince of Wales's forthright comments will reopen the whole debate about 
GM food.

They will put him on a collision course with the international scientific 
community and Downing Street - which has
allowed 54 GM crop trials in Britain since 2000.

His intervention comes at a critical time. There is intense pressure for more 
GM products, not fewer, because of soaring
food costs and widespread shortages.

Many scientists believe GM research is the only way to guarantee food for the 
world's growing population as the planet
is affected by climate change.

They will be dismayed by such a high profile and controversial contribution 
from the Prince of Wales at such a sensitive
time.

The Prince will be braced for the biggest outpouring of criticism from 
scientists since he accused genetic engineers of
taking us into "realms that belong to God and God alone" in an article in the 
Daily Telegraph in 1998.

In the interview the Prince, who has an organic farm on his Highgrove estate, 
held out the hope of the British
agricultural system encouraging more and more family run co-operative farms.

When challenged over whether he was trying to turn back the clock, he said: 
"I think not. I'm terribly sorry. It's not
going backwards. It is actually recognising that we are with nature, not 
against it. We have gone working against nature
for too long."

The Prince of Wales cited the widespread environmental damage in India caused 
by the rush to mass produce GM food.

"Look at India's Green Revolution. It worked for a short time but now the 
price is being paid.

"I have been to the Punjab where you have seen the disasters that have taken 
place as result of the over demand on
irrigation because of the hybrid seeds and grains that have been produced 
which demand huge amounts of water.

"[The] water table has disappeared. They have huge problems with water level, 
with pesticide problems, and complications
which are now coming home to roost.

"Look at western Australia. Huge salinisation problems. I have been there. 
Seen it. Some of the excessive approaches to
modern forms of agriculture."

He said that the scientists were putting too much pressure on nature.

"If you are not working with natural assistance you cause untold problems. 
which become very expensive and very
difficult to undo.

It places impossible burdens on nature and leads to accumulating problems which 
become more difficult to sort out."

In a keynote speech last year the Prince of Wales warned that the world faces 
a series of natural disasters within 18
months unless a £15 billion action plan is agreed to save the world's rain 
forests.

He has set up his own rain forest project with 15 of the world's largest 
companies, environmental and economic experts,
to try to find ways to stop their destruction.

Only two weeks ago British GM researchers lobbied ministers for their crops 
to be kept in high-security facilities or in
fields at secret locations across the country to prevent them from being 
attacked and destroyed.

They spoke out after protesters ripped up crops in one of only two GM trials 
to be approved in Britain this year.

Scientists claim the repeated attacks on their trials are stifling vital 
research to evaluate whether GM crops can
reduce the cost and environmental impact of farming and whether they will 
grow better in harsh environments where
droughts have devastated harvests.