A Sustainable Food Supply, Pt 1

by Natasha Chart · 2009-04-22 09:37:00 UTC
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Fields of gold; by twobluedayWhat does that mean, to have a sustainable food supply? It simply means that our production of food today should feed people today, but not restrict the production of food by future generations. And expert after expert insists that this is the way policymakers should prepare to do it, whether alone or with other prescriptions of varying merit:

... taking full advantage of the opportunities for sustainable agriculture created by biotechnology ...

They might make wild claims like these:

... A generation ago, the Green Revolution delivered a jolt to farm productivity through the improved use of irrigation, fertilizer, and crop breeding. Today, we must rely on biotechnology to deliver many of the same benefits in what might usefully be called the Gene Revolution. The genetic enhancement of crops already has brought us large increases in yield. More is on the way, especially if we allow biotechnology to take advantage of all it can offer, from drought tolerance in wheat and maize to biofortification in rice. ...

Yeah, and what'd we get from that Green Revolution just a few decades later? Dying waterways and depleting aquifers. It has trapped farmers in debt, water shortage, and cycles of ever increasing pesticide and fertilizer use as the pests develop resistance and the soil becomes depleted.

Then about those biotech benefits, they have yet to materialize. They don't increase yield. The products' spread can't be controlled, making ever more of the plant genome the private property of companies like Monsanto and Syngenta. Major nutrition gains and drought tolerance would be nice but aren't in evidence.

Meanwhile, high yields, higher nutrition and greater drought tolerance can be realized right now through organic agriculture. Though someone like Joel Salatin isn't going to grow a filthy rich multinational from it, so it has few big league promoters.

As Vandana Shiva explains so well, the real point of genetically modified seed is to make a profit and monopolize food sources, not to make farming sustainable.

(Photo credit: twoblueday on Flickr.)

Natasha Chart
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