Forces of Counter-Revolution

The anti-Green Revolution is on:

Indian farmer Amarjit Sharma grows wheat and other crops on five acres in the heart of the region known as "the breadbasket of India," the fertile fields of Punjab.

Until four years ago, he was the kind of farmer whom government leaders and agricultural scientists hailed as a model in the developing world.

But now, he has gone organic and is part of a quiet but growing rebellion, which could affect the world's food crisis. ...

The article notes that Sharma initially profited from Green Revolution methods. Until the pesticides stopped working and the soil was stripped so badly that without ever-increasing quantities of fertilizer, he couldn't grow a good crop.

Wash, rinse, repeat.

Yet though the article portrays Sharma's story in some detail, including the diversified cropping, nutrient and pest management steps he's taken, I have some quibbles. Such as uncritical inclusion of the statement by "Monsanto's India spokesman, Christopher Samuel, [who] says the company's advances will double the yields of major crops over the next 20 years, while reducing the amount of land, water, fertilizer and pesticides needed."

Because the question that needs to be asked when they make assertions like that is, 'Will they, really?' How do they know that? I'm sure they'd like to, but it isn't clear that they can. Yield gains often come at the price of other essential features of plant chemistry and physiology.

Can they actually produce nutritionally sound crops with doubled yields, from plants that need less water, less nutrients, less pest protection?

No one knows the answer to this question. It's a goal, not a certainty.

The Green Revolution methods of industrial farming worked brilliantly. Until they fell into a spiral of diminishing returns. Farmers somewhere must surely be seeing some benefits from GMO crops, but there's every chance that they'll take the Green Revolution trajectory, rather than achieve the heights of Monsanto's best case hopes.

And I say this as someone who isn't naturally a technology pessimist. I believe we can come up with clean, efficient energy use and distribution technologies, learn how to make use of all that wasted solar energy falling on the Earth, etc. I think genetic research holds great promise for solving health problems in the human population and, so long as it's not used in a creepy eugenics sort of way, could maybe help ensure that future generations got the best of their parents' genes.

Yet industry has consistently underestimated the damage to humans, soil and ecosystem health of industrial farming. It's to their benefit. Though humans have accumulated enough shared knowledge at present to get equivalent yields through farming systems that are a net benefit to the health of humans and their habitat, methods that are safer and aren't reliant on mining the soil or fossil fuels, and we could be using those methods instead.

It'd be the sensible thing.