posted 09-05-2000 03:14 PM PT (US)            

Organic Farming Will Feed the World

Astonishingly, it's more productive than high-tech
agriculture.

By George Monbiot. Published in the Guardian 24th August 2000

The advice could scarcely have come from a more surprising
source. "If anyone tells you that GM is going to feed the
world," Steve Smith, a director of the world's biggest
biotechnology company, Novartis, insisted, "tell them that it
is not. ... To feed the world takes political and financial
will - it's not about production and distribution."

Mr Smith was voicing a truth which most of his colleagues in
the biotechnology companies have gone to great lengths to
deny. On a planet wallowing in surfeit, people starve because
they have neither the land on which to grow food for
themselves nor the money with which to buy it. There is no
question that, as population increases, the world will have to
grow more, but if this task is left to the rich and powerful -
big farmers and big business - then, irrespective of how much
is grown, people will become progressively hungrier. Only a
redistribution of both land and wealth can save the world from
mass starvation.

But in one respect Mr Smith is wrong. It is - in part - about
production. A series of remarkable experimental results has
shown that the growing techniques which his company and many
others have sought to impose upon the world are, in
contradiction to everything we have been brought up to
believe, actually less productive than some of the methods
developed by traditional farmers over the past 10,000 years.

Last week, Nature magazine reported the results of one of the
biggest agricultural experiments ever conducted. A team of
Chinese scientists had tested the key principle of modern
rice-growing - planting a single, high-tech variety across
hundreds of hectares - against a much older technique:
planting several breeds in one field. They found, to the
astonishment of the farmers who had been drilled for years in
the benefits of "monoculture", that reverting to the old
method resulted in spectacular increases in yield. Rice blast
- a devastating fungus which normally requires repeated
applications of poison to control - decreased by 94 per cent.
The farmers planting a mixture of strains were able to stop
applying their poisons altogether, while producing 18 per cent
more rice per acre than they were growing before.

Two years ago, another paper published in Nature showed that
yields of organic maize are identical to yields of maize grown
with fertilisers and pesticides, while soil quality in the
organic fields dramatically improves. In trials in
Hertfordshire, wheat grown with manure has produced
consistently higher yields for the past 150 years than wheat
grown with artificial nutrients.

Professor Jules Pretty of Essex University has shown how
farmers in India, Kenya, Brazil, Guatemala and Honduras have
doubled or tripled their yields by switching to organic or
semi-organic techniques. A study in the United States reveals
that small farmers growing a wide range of plants can produce
ten times as much money per acre as big farmers growing single
crops. Cuba, forced into organic farming by the economic
blockade, has now adopted it as policy, having discovered that
it improves both the productivity and the quality of the crops
its farmers grow.

High-tech farming, by contrast, is sowing ever graver
problems. This year, food production in Punjab and Haryana,
the Indian states long celebrated as the great success stories
of modern, intensive cultivation has all but collapsed. The
new crops the farmers there have been encouraged to grow
demand far more water and nutrients than the old ones, with
the result that, in many places, both the ground water and the
soil have been exhausted.

We have, in other words, been deceived. Traditional farming
has been stamped out all over the world not because it is less
productive than monoculture, but because it is, in some
respects, more productive. Organic cultivation has been
characterised as an enemy of progress for the simple reason
that it cannot be monopolised: it can be adopted by any farmer
anywhere on earth, without the help of multinational
companies. Though it is more productive to grow several
species or several varieties of crops in one field, the
biotech companies must reduce diversity in order to make
money, leaving farmers with no choice but to purchase their
most profitable seeds. This is why they have spent the last
ten years buying up seed breeding institutes and lobbying
governments to do what ours has done: banning the sale of any
seed which has not been officially - and expensively -
registered and approved.

All this requires an unrelenting propaganda war against the
tried and tested techniques of traditional farming, as the big
companies and their biddable scientists dismiss them as
unproductive, unsophisticated and unsafe. The truth, so
effectively suppressed that it is now almost impossible to
believe, is that organic farming is the key to feeding the
world.

posted 09-05-2000 03:41 PM PT (US)            

Don't get me wrong, we are on the same side here - but please don't be one of those who generally discredits scientists as being "naive self-serving blind nerds" (not your exact words, but close to the sentiment expressed above I think?). As a scientist, I feel personally compelled to point out that this is a stereotype that is not only wrong but highly destructive to your own goals, as it is largely scientists who have let you know and made BIG noises about some of the things that are hurting you.

In my field, for instance, it is scientists who are studying ozone layer depletion, who are studying the effects of CO2 on our climate, who are documenting rising sea level, glacial recession. And for the most part, they care very much about our planet. I daresay on average that they care more than the average citizen. I suspect that one can say the same for chemists and medical scientists as well. Look at the reasearch being done on pesticides and the human (and animal) body for a quick example.

There are certainly a segment of scientists employed by corporate America that have an agenda, will sort the facts to fit that agenda, and will be advertised in the media heavily, but I don't think that describes most of us.

Sorry to all, I know this doesn't really relate to the thread, but it is a sore point with me and other really hard working, passionate, and dedicated people. We may or may not be "nerds" in your accouting books, but we are very often nerds that do you big service.

posted 09-05-2000 03:55 PM PT (US)            

Wasn't offended or even angry for that matter. I kind of knew it was one of those off-hand remarks,

Just pushes a button is all, and I couldn't let it slide.

:-)

I think I let all of today's bile (the whole range of todays postings on the forum, I mean) get me frustrated...

posted 09-14-2000 11:43 AM PT (US)            

You (and others too) get the impression that scientists are wholeheartedly *for* genetic engineering. I haven't actually gotten that impression at all. It is scientific studies that have pointed out some problems that are already happening. I am not really up on the issue, but difficulties with super-weeds, cross contamination of pollen, and killing beneficial insects have been pointed out by *scientists*.

Yes, there are those scientist who go on record with the "will feed the world" bit. A BIG question comes to mind. Who is footing the bill? Sometimes these scientists are employed by the very companies pushing the product. Which is indeed despicable and I hope there is a special place in hell for these "people". I think that these instances are rare even if they get a lot of spectacular (and paid for) press from the - you guessed it - *corporate owned media*... neat how this comes together, huh?

But there is another problem which is more insidious, and (to me) much more disturbing. It makes even good guys unwitting "bad guys".

Let me tell you some of what happens in the research world. Funding is scarce. It is expensive to fund large experiments, and the money is very hard to come by. Competition is fierce within public funding agencies. Now, in my field, this remains the primary source of funding anyway.

However, *by my understanding* (I am not an expert), many scientists (particularly in biologic/agriculture/chemical fields) find that in order to have the capital to run an experiment, they apply for grants from corporations. In itself this is grand. It has provided some incredible advancements. The problem comes in when they accept these funds, it turns out that the contract that they sign very often has fine print that says that the results of the study belong to the corporation, thus cannot be released without the corporations say-so.

You see what happens, right? The research finds that "xx" product is bad for you, you never get to publish it or talk about it. The research finds that "xx" product is good, it makes headlines. Thus, the public can be left with the impression that:

a: these XX's must all be good for me because the *scientists* say so, or

b: scientists must all be conservative crazies with an agenda.

None of the above need be true.

Yet another way that corporate America can hold our lives in the balance. GoNader.

posted 09-14-2000 01:27 PM PT (US)            

>no one that I could consider a genuine scientist would be on an ethical leash to the corporte killers.<

Easy to recognize a 'leash' for what it is in hindsight. Not always so in foresight. Thesse are largely standard contracts. You want the money, you sign. You don't, go wait tables somewhere. Never forget that scientists have kids to feed too.

posted 09-14-2000 01:42 PM PT (US)         

Private industry.

posted 09-16-2000 01:56 PM PT (US)            

those who call Greens, 'anti-capitalist'.

The people who want laissez-faire economics,

with absolutely no regulation, and are anti-Public Transport, and pro car-lobby.

First of all, the Greens are not left or right. They are for economic growth in so far as it does not harm the environment or people.

posted 09-16-2000 01:58 PM PT (US)            

The above site details the economics that the Greens are about.