permaculture

["Lawrence F. London, Jr." <venaurafarm@bellsouth.net>]

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: [SANET-MG] Fw: [Livingontheland] Climate Change And Agriculture 
By Dr. VandanaShiva
Date: Thu, 24 Feb 2011 18:47:42 -0000
From: John D'hondt <dhondt@EIRCOM.NET>
To: SANET-MG@LISTS.IFAS.UFL.EDU

I did not ask permission from the moderator of Livingonthjeland to pass 
this
on but I hope I can be forgiven. It is a most timely article it seems.
John

Climate Change And Agriculture
By Dr. Vandana Shiva 23 February, 2011
http://www.countercurrents.org/shiva230211.htm
Biodiverse Ecological Farming is the Answer, not Genetic Engineering

Industrial globalised agriculture is heavily implicated in climate change.
It contributes to the three major greenhouse gases: carbon dioxide (CO2)
from the use of fossil fuels, nitrogen oxide (N2O) from the use of chemical
fertilizers and methane (CH4) from factory farming. According to the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate change (IPCC), atmospheric concentration
of CO2 has increased from a pre-industrial concentration of about 280 parts
per million to 379 parts per million in 2005. The global atmospheric
concentration of CH4 has increased from pre-industrial concentration of 715
parts per billion to 1774 parts per billion in 2005. The global atmospheric
concentration of N2O, largely due to use of chemical fertilizers in
agriculture, increased from about 270 parts per billion to 319 parts per
billion in 2005.

Industrial agriculture is also more vulnerable to climate change which is
intensifying droughts and floods. Monocultures lead to more frequent crop
failure when rainfall does not come in time, or is too much or too little.
Chemically fertilized soils have no capacity to withstand a drought. And
cyclones and hurricanes make a food system dependent on long distance
transport highly vulnerable to disruption.

Genetic engineering is embedded in an industrial model of agriculture based
on fossil fuels. It is falsely being offered as a magic bullet for dealing
with climate change.

Monsanto claims that Genetically Modified Organisms are a cure for both 
food
insecurity and climate change and has been putting the following
advertisement across the world in recent months.

       9 billion people to feed.
       A changing climate
       Now what?
       Producing more
       Conserving more
       Improving farmers lives
       That's sustainable agriculture
       And that's what Monsanto is all about.

All the claims this advertisement makes are false.

GM crops do not produce more. While Monsanto claims its GMO Bt cotton gives
1500 Kg/acre, the average is 300-400 Kg/acre.

The claim to increased yield is false because yield, like climate 
resilience
is a multi-genetic trait. Introducing toxins into a plant through herbicide
resistance or Bt. Toxin increases the "yield" of toxins, not of food or
nutrition.

Even the nutrition argument is manipulated. Golden rice genetically
engineered to increase Vitamin A produces 70 times less Vitamin A than
available alternatives such as coriander leaves and curry leaves.

The false claim of higher food production has been dislodged by a recent
study titled, Failure to Yield by Dr. Doug Gurian Sherman of the Union of
Concerned Scientists, who was former biotech specialist for the U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency and former adviser on GM to the U.S Food 
and
Drug Administration. Sherman states, "Let us be clear. There are no
commercialized GM crops that inherently increase yield. Similarly there are
no GM crops on the market that were engineered to resist drought, reduce
fertilizer pollution or save soil. Not one."

There are currently two predominant applications of genetic engineering: 
one
is herbicide resistance, the other is crops with Bt. toxin. Herbicides kill
plants. Therefore they reduce return of organic matter to the soil.
Herbicide resistant crops, like Round Up Ready Soya and Corn reduce soil
carbon, they do not conserve it. This is why Monsanto's attempt to use the
climate negotiations to introduce Round Up and Round Up resistant crops 
as a
climate solution is scientifically and ecologically wrong.

Monsanto's GMOs, which are either Round Up Ready crops or Bt toxin crops do
not conserve resources. They demand more water, they destroy biodiversity
and they increase toxics in farming. Pesticide use has increased 13 
times as
a result of the use Bt cotton seeds in the region of Vidharbha, India.

Monsanto's GMOs do not improve farmers' lives. They have pushed farmers to
suicide. 200,000 Indian farmers have committed suicide in the last decade.
84% of the suicides in Vidharbha, the region with highest suicides are
linked to debt created by Bt-cotton. GMOs are non-renewable, while the open
pollinated varieties that farmers have bred are renewable and can be saved
year to year. The price of cotton seed was Rs 7/kg. Bt cotton seed price
jumped to Rs 1,700/kg.

This is neither ecological nor economic or social sustainability. It is
eco-cide and genocide.

Genetic engineering does not "create" climate resilience. In a recent
article titled, "GM: Food for Thought" (Deccan Chronicle, August 26, 2009),
Dr. M.S. Swaminathan wrote "we can isolate a gene responsible for 
conferring
drought tolerance, introduce that gene into a plant, and make it drought
tolerant."

Drought tolerance is a polygenetic trait. It is therefore scientifically
flawed to talk of "isolating a gene for drought tolerance." Genetic
engineering tools are so far only able to transfer single gene traits. That
is why in twenty years only two single gene traits for herbicide resistance
and Bt. toxin have been commercialized through genetic engineering.

Navdanya's recent report titled, "Biopiracy of Climate Resilient Crops: 
Gene
Giants are Stealing farmers' innovation of drought resistant, flood
resistant and salt resistant varieties," shows that farmers have bred corps
that are resistant to climate extremes. And it is these traits which are 
the
result of millennia of farmers' breeding which are now being patented and
pirated by the genetic engineering industry. Using farmers' varieties as
"genetic material," the biotechnology industry is playing genetic roulette
to gamble on which gene complexes are responsible for which trait. This is
not done through genetic engineering; it is done through software programs
like athlete. As the report states, "Athlete uses vast amounts of available
genomic data (mostly public) to rapidly reach a reliable limited list of
candidate key genes with high relevance to a target trait of choice.
Allegorically, the Athlete platform could be viewed as a 'machine' that is
able to choose 50-100 lottery tickets from amongst hundreds of thousands of
tickets, with the high likelihood that the winning ticket will be included
among them."

Breeding is being replaced by gambling, innovation is giving way to
biopiracy, and science is being substituted by propaganda. This cannot be
the basis of food security in times of climate vulnerability.

Women for Diversity: One of the campaigns of Navdanya. Photo courtesy
Navdanya.

While genetic engineering is a false solution, over the past 20 years, we
have built Navdanya, India's biodiversity and organic farming movement. We
are increasingly realizing there is a convergence between objectives of
conservation of biodiversity, reduction of climate change impact and
alleviation of poverty. Biodiverse, local, organic systems produce more 
food
and higher farm incomes, while they also reduce water use and risks of crop
failure due to climate change.

Biodiversity offers resilience to recover from climate disasters. After the
Orissa Super Cyclone of 1998, and the Tsunami of 2004, Navdanya distributed
seeds of saline resistant rice varieties as "Seeds of Hope" to rejuvenate
agriculture in lands reentered saline by the sea. We are now creating seed
banks of drought resistant, flood resistant and saline resistant seed
varieties to respond to climate extremities.

Navdanya's work over the past twenty years has shown that we can grow more
food and provide higher incomes to farmers without destroying the
environment and killing our peasants. Our study on "Biodiversity based
organic farming: A new paradigm for Food Security and Food Safety" has
established that small biodiverse organic farms produce more food and
provide higher incomes to farmers.

Biodiverse organic and local food systems contribute both to mitigation of
and adaptation to climate change. Small, biodiverse, organic farms
especially in Third World countries are totally fossil fuel free. Energy 
for
farming operations comes from animal energy. Soil fertility is built by
feeding soil organisms by recycling organic matter. This reduces greenhouse
gas emissions. Biodiverse systems are also more resilient to draughts and
floods because they have higher water holding capacity and hence contribute
to adaption to climate change. Navdanya's study on climate change and
organic farming has indicated that organic farming increases carbon
absorption by upto 55% and water holding capacity by 10% thus contributing
to both mitigation and adaptation to climate change.

Biodiverse organic farms produce more food and higher incomes than
industrial monocultures. Mitigating climate change, conserving biodiversity
and increasing food security can thus go hand in hand.

Dr. Vandana Shiva is a philosopher, environmental activist and eco 
feminist.
She has fought for changes in the practice and paradigms of agriculture and
food, and assisted grassroots organizations of the Green movement in 
Africa,
Asia, Latin America, Ireland, Switzerland, and Austria with campaigns
against genetic engineering. In 1982, she founded the Research Foundation
for Science, Technology and Ecology, which led to the creation of Navdanya
in 1991, a national movement to protect the diversity and integrity of
living resources, especially native seed, the promotion of organic farming
and fair trade. She is author of numerous books including, Soil Not Oil:
Environmental Justice in an Age of Climate Crisis; Stolen Harvest: The
hijacking of the Global food supply; Earth Democracy: Justice,
Sustainability, and Peace; and Staying Alive: Women, Ecology, and
Development. Shiva has also served as an adviser to governments in India 
and
abroad as well as NGOs, including the International Forum on Globalization,
the Women's Environment and Development Organization and the Third World
Network. She has received numerous awards, including 1993 Right Livelihood
Award (Alternative Nobel Prize) and the 2010 Sydney Peace Prize.

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