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How 4H Is Helping Big Ag Take Over Africa
Lasrick writes 4H is in Africa, helping to distribute Big Ag products like DuPont's Pioneer seeds through ostensibly good works aimed at youth. In Africa, where the need to produce more food is especially urgent, DuPont Pioneer and other huge corporations have made major investments. But there are drawbacks: "DuPont's nutritious, high-yielding, and drought-tolerant hybrid seed costs 10 times as much. While Ghanaians typically save their own seeds to plant the next year, hybrid seeds get weaker by the generation; each planting requires another round of purchasing. What's more, says Devlin Kuyek, a researcher with the sustainable-farming nonprofit Genetic Resources Action International, because hybrid seeds are bred for intensive agriculture, they typically need chemicals to thrive."
What are the possible choices for farmers?
1. grow crappy crops with free seeds and lots of expensive water,
2. grow good groups with seeds that you need to pay for but use less water?
#2 will make you more money, so the cost of the seeds is a non-factor. #1 will make you poor, because when it doesn't rain your crops die.
So, what exactly is the issue?
Perhaps the alternative is seeds for fragile crops that will die in a drought and never yield much despite access to cheap chemical fertilizers? Look, I get that it's fun to hate on "Big Ag", but I also get that hippies are fond of biting the hand that feeds them. And Big Ag doesn't just feed hippies, it feeds the world, and there currently isn't any good substitute for it.
Instead of disparaging charitable works in Africa that a rational person will perceive to be doing good to feed hungry people, why don't you focus on donating money to promote "open source" crop lines somewhere in the States so there are good alternatives to give to Africa and the rest of the world? Put your money where your mouth is (in a couple of senses).
because hybrid seeds are bred for intensive agriculture, they typically need chemicals to thrive
...unlike natural, free-range grains that are invulnerable to pests and thrive under the gentle light of the waxing crescent moon. Sorry, but you lost me at "chemicals". Yes. They're matter-based lifeforms, and need a whole slew of chemicals to exist.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Sure, hybrid corn gets weaker by the generation, but it's also far higher yielding.
American farmers buy it because they make more money buying seeds every year than they would saving seeds. Thinking that farmers from Ghana will not be able to make a rational decision between buying industrial seed every year or saving whatever strain they have already from year to year is a not so subtle form of racism.
Won't this contaminate and F up the natural seeds people rely on when they can't purchase these? Is the fact that they get weaker purposely engineered? (can't rtfa just now)
Corporatuions are evil because they destroy the middle man. Therefor we must destroy the coporations to free the rest of the world. They matter. Those "little brown people" MATTER. What is wrong with you people?
Chemicals are *everywhere*, in all of our food, and many will kill you! I only eat chemical-free food, mainly neutrons and assorted leptons.
My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
"Big Agriculture", and not "Big Silver". I thought this was about mining silver in Africa.
Well, consider that the 'better' crops can essentially be held hostage. When you don't have natural seeds commonly sold anymore, guess who suddenly has a monopoly on agriculture?
'This year's a seeds are going to cost double because of manufacturing problems.. You DO want a crop this year, right?'
Proprietary seeds are an obvious trap. Perhaps it lets produce more, but they are expensive, and if farmer have to take debt for it, they become dependent on international market price for the goods the produce. If it drops, they are toasted. It will drop at some time.
Sad thing is they'll starve either way. Whatever does actually manage to grow will be confiscated by kleptocrat warlords who will use it to secure power and wealth while the NGOs spectate.
I've never owned a farm.
I've never planted or harvested a crop.
I've never used fertilizer.
I've never seen GMO seeds.
I've never gone a day without food.
I've never been to Africa.
But I know this is really bad.
Sent from my iPhone
"While Ghanaians typically save their own seeds to plant the next year, hybrid seeds get weaker by the generation; each planting requires another round of purchasing. What's more, says Devlin Kuyek, a researcher with the sustainable-farming nonprofit Genetic Resources Action International, because hybrid seeds are bred for intensive agriculture, they typically need chemicals to thrive."
There's just so much wrong with that statement, I don't know where to begin. 'bred for intensive agriculture' is a meaningless statement. What's preventing farmers from saving their own seeds is threats of litigation from the GM corporations not that the seeds get any weaker. Hybrid seeds don't need chemicals to thrive, the seeds are bred to be immune to chemicals such as glyphosate. Through over use, weeds are developing resistance to these chemicals, meaning that more of it has to be used.
The masses are starving and warlords rule in Ghana?
Not for all colleges, but there are plenty of colleges that are less likely to admit students who've taken part in 4H.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
I love a good conspiracy theory, but any journal that publishes a decent article showing a reproducible harm from GMO crops will be hansomly rewarded.
Seriously? Get lost you corporate shill.
Yes, I'm a paid shill for corporate interests. I've been paid 50 million dollars to piss you off.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
I've never owned a farm.
I've never planted or harvested a crop.
I've never used fertilizer.
I've never seen GMO seeds.
I've never gone a day without food.
I've never been to Africa.
But I know this is really bad.
Sent from my iPhone
You don't know anything about the topic, and aren't involved or affected, but you're going to pass judgement on other people's choices.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
If he is, he has the weight of evidence supports him.
http://www.plosone.org/article...
In short, after factoring in the higher costs of using GM seed, GMO crops help developing farms substantially. Even more so than the farmers in developed markets.
Amen brother. Coming from the Black Man amen brother.
Technology can be used for good and feed the world. DuPont wants to focus their efforts in assuring that they monetize their tweaks to nature's developments, even at the cost of others' lives or prosperity. When you put more effort into sterile plants that require chemicals than towards nutrition and human survival than you should not be permitted to enter the world food market. Its criminal extortion plain and simple. I guess DuPont's Napalm sales are down so this is another bad use of science.
A few years ago, this was started: http://www.opensourceseediniti...
For some reason they haven't spread into Africa - but are all over North America/Europe in a large way, someone needs to start providing higher quality seed options for the poorest farmers of the world rather than leave the door wide open for obvious pillagers like most of the shameless extortionists in the Big Ag industry. Once they convince people of the higher yields and lock them in, ah.. one of the saddest things in the world - and seeing it happen in the poorest nations just compounds that feeling. These people need food. Technology can help make that happen. The technology that will make that happen - must not be patented and created with self-degradation causing forced-repurchase as a 'feature'.
I hope so. I'd hate to think you were being such a jerk for free.
I've been paid 50 million dollars to piss you off.
You were robbed...
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Amen brother
I don't know why he thought you were paid. The Internet has made it clear that people are willing to be ignorant, racist douche bags for free.
It's a classic addiction scam like a drug dealer or pharmaceutical company would use. Get the mark (in this case farmers) hooked on seeds that only produce high yields when given large amounts of fertilizer that they sell, then as the yields decline they need more fertilizer, helping them reap higher profits and farmers are stuck with low yield crops
As for their farming methods. Humans on all continents have for decades, even before the green revolution, planted enough food and known how to grow more than enough food to feed everyone. The problem has been the distribution of it.
Actually, just beware people
...GMO crops help developing farms substantially.
What, are they bullet proof? Africa is a victim of corrupt resource management. Nothing can be done until that is addressed. GMO won't do it.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
The true alternative is to not live in places where food won't grow. Evolution is a lie when it comes to humans. These dumb fuckers would have been dead eons ago if this wasn't true.
This post is spot on, because many of the people impacted by the influx of GMO seeds are sustenance farmers, not profit based farms. Attempting to convert them to a money making agriculture system does not work very well because the people have little to no income sources to go buy food that people are selling. The few jobs these companies create do not support the economy, and the pay is so low that it can't support the economy.
The current reality is that these small governments must subsidize what used to be sustenance based economies. Until manufacturing, repair facilities, etc.. are functional in the country there is no choice, because there are no income sources. And lets face it, there are no plans to bolster anything else in these economies
In other words, the only people currently gaining from these programs are the people pushing the programs. There is plenty of information out there on the subject, you can start with this one, or this one, or this one (get the point? There is plenty of information). Sure, Dupont is not the same company but a new face on a same exact problem.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
It's a good thing you're here to help those incompetent, ignorant, helpless, uneducated, clumsy, idiot African farmers who need your help to decide what seeds to plant.
Speak the truth and be modded a troll by a group of people who've probably never gone hungry for more that a few hours at a time their entire lives.
most farmers in Africa are subsistence farmers. It is a good year if they have enough for themselves and a little extra to sell. Free seeds that improve yields by 9-25% in developed countries, and an additional 14% points in developing countries is a chance to get ahead instead of just scraping by (planned to post a link to the article on the economist websites here I pulled those numbers, but can't paste for some reason on my phone).
it's easy to look down on GE seeds with a life time of full bellies in your past, your future, and your children's futures as far as you can see. Try going hungry despite spending all you can spare on food and then rail against seeds that have never made a single person sick and have fed billions.
Bureaucracy expands to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy.-Oscar Wilde
"the sustainable-farming nonprofit Genetic Resources Action International"
Yea, that's an unbiased and science based organization right there.
Yes, you can't fix hunger without fixing the underlying social issues. Everyone knows that, stop stating the obvious like it is an actual argument. You want to end world hunger, fix corruption, poverty, income inequality, infrastructure, education, healthcare, social welfare, sexual inequality, and all those other ills. But that is easier said than done. Do you have a solution to all those social, economic, and political problems? Because you're smarter by far than me if you do. Ticktock, people are hungry, and every second counts. In the meantime, I don't know how anyone could say that improving the lot of impoverished farmers is a bad thing. It isn't a panacea, but look at the benefits Bt cotton has brought to India (the ignorant but oft repeated claims them causing suisides notwithstanding), or the promise of Bt eggplant in Bangladesh, and tell me you think its a bad thing.
It's such a strange claim, you know. I doubt any anti-GMO activist would reject improvements in, say, automobile safety and say that instead of a technological solution people should all just drive safer. But suddenly when you talk about agriculture, that sort of reasoning is valid, the only way forward is wait for someone to fix that myriad of human centric problems and hope that too many people don't go hungry in the meantime, but don't you dare touch the technological side of things. How utterly absurd it is.
In short, after factoring in the higher costs of using GM seed, GMO crops help developing farms substantially.
TFA isn't about GMO seeds. It is about good old fashioned hybrid seeds.
Lets see if we can hold a rational discussion without the bullshit. Since the sock puppets are out censoring everything not proGMO and bolstering everything proGMO I'm not confident, but lets give it a try.
Problem with your statement: Invalid generalization. Centuries of study show us that many homeopathic cures do work. As an example, I have a medical doctor who suggested drinking camomile tea to help me sleep, and it works. He could have prescribed a man made chemical to do the same thing with much worse side effects, but he's a great doctor. As another example, Willow bark is a known pain reliever and anti inflammation herb. It's so good in fact that we created a mimic called Aspirin. Scientists look to nature all the time and try to mimic properties we find naturally, and try to synthesize those natural things. So yeah, homeopathic cures are very well proven in the general sense. Natural remedies and poisons are so good that we try very hard to synthesize them for mass consumption and use as well as monetize them.
At the same time, your generalization attempts to claim that GMO foods are proven to be perfectly safe, and we have no equivalent studies compared to homeopathic remedies. Hybridization is not the same thing as Genetically modified where foreign genes are spliced into seeds and foods. People constantly try to claim that because we have hybridized for thousands of years, we know and understand the impact of splicing fungus genes into corn, or insect genes into tomatoes. Which is wrong, the latter techniques are very new and we don't have long term studies. We do know that sometimes things go terribly wrong (and if you don't like that one there are plenty).
People want to know where GMO in terms of these odd gene splices happen, and quite frankly if there is no proven harm there should be no harm in a label. At the same time, since society has become the lab experiment with many of these modifications it should be made easy to track where things go wrong.
Lets not forget that a large reason for GMO seeds is to increase yields by protecting plants from pests. We are already seeing super pests that can bypass the built in GMO protection and creating a much larger threat to agriculture than existed previously.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
Africa is a victim of corrupt resource management. Nothing can be done until that is addressed.
Africa is not monolithic. There are certainly corrupt countries in Africa. But Ghana, the subject of TFA, is one of the least corrupt, and most prosperous countries on the continent. The are a democracy, with well functioning institutions, a free press, near universal literacy, and a per capita GDP of about $4k, which makes them a middle income country.
Kosher labeling is required by the Jewish community, and a Kosher Jew can't purchase anything not stamped and certified Kosher. People pay for the Kosher labeling and won't purchase anything else. The Jewish inspectors that stamp approval take pride in their ability and don't try and hide the Kosher label. They stand by the label and it's prominently displayed on _every_ package. Culturally speaking "Kosher" means "up front", "on the up and up", "open and honest"
You are really trying to compare that to a group that is so afraid of stamping their label on a product that they spend billions of dollars lobbying and advertising to hide what they are doing? If there is no harm, and no fear of harm, Monsanto and Dupont should be proud to stamp the box with their logo and "GMO MADE FOOD!" for all the world to see.
The Government does not have to force Jewish Rabbi's to stamp things Kosher, BECAUSE THEY ALREADY STAMP THE PACKAGE! When companies try to hide ingredients you are damn right people should be concerned and yes the Government should force them to label the package.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
Famine, plague, war, or birth control. Choose. I guess you have.
Malthus.
Better to not give technology to those who turn food into more mouths, soldiers, and infected.
Ebola is the cure for overpopulation.
At least it's a good thing they have the decency to test their GMO products on Africans before trying to feed them to humans. If you couldn't use them as beta-testers, they'd be entirely useless.
Hybrids have been around officially for over 200 years, unofficially 5000.
It's called selective breeding. It's been going on since man discovered agriculture.
Hybrids loosing effectiveness in subsequent generations, is a well known problem. It's not something engineered in by man. Mother nature is a bitch,
This isn't Monsanto enforcing a patent for their GMO seeds, that do spread that gene.
These are hybrid seeds, with no GMO genes. They've just been carefully selected.
Many hybrids are mules. Look at seedless grapes. The desired hybrid can't reproduce.
The post is a bit skewed, the text for the link to the story tells the story. The author has an agenda.
JROTC is one thing but the Boy Scouts have pretty much become the Hitler Youth. Anyone who strongly rejects those who agree to be part of that organization has my support.
Bullshit. Your statement seems ignorant and ill-informed.
I was in the scouts for several years. The troop was sponsored by a local catholic church, their involvement: they provide meeting and storage space. The kids involved were Protestant, Catholic, Jewish and Hindu; White, Brown and Black. Given that it is a quasi-religious organization (technically religious in the "there is a God" and "being reverent is good" sense but not promoting any particular religion or denomination or belief system) and given the age of the kids involved saying that sexual preference is not a topic for discussion is reasonable. And if a kid was being bullied for any reason, including any suggestions of being gay, the adult leaders would be pretty quick to put a stop to that. And most of our leaders were of the former military variety not hippy variety.
Even with the quasi-religious and quasi-military overtones it was a far more tolerant and safer environment than our public high school run by a bunch of former hippies with a politically correct public facade regarding homosexuality. Going the "don't ask, don't tell" route is hardly the hitler youth; and again given the ages of the kids involved and quasi-religious nature of the organization sexual discussions being out of bounds was not unreasonable.
Look, if it upsets you that much, post your address and I'll be glad to mail you a hankie. A nice pink one to go with your politics.
If genetically engineered seeds "get weaker by the generation" then why are GMO plants going to tear themselves out of the ground as the flat-earth lobby insists they will any day now, grow to giant size and stomp through Tokyo, tossing subway trains around like toys and flattening tall buildings?
This line of argument rings with the same consistency as the one we hear from the ultraviolet end of the spectrum: government employees are all stupid, which is why government is infinitely powerful and will destroy us all.
to starve children. They hate us and want us to die. Creating these scheme to kill us is the way of the kind. Just as they love to rape women with barb wire, they love to watch children starve to death.
It's just food and they're just companies. Genetic engineering isn't the tool of the devil and mutinational food companies are no more evil than multinational sprocket companies. If you're ok with globalization in general then you're ok with big food companies. Get over yourself.
There is no confusion regarding homeopathic treatment on my part, you are stuck on the historical description of homeopathy instead of looking at the current definition and use of the term. Current actually goes back to when I was a kid, which could easily be before you were born.
http://homeopathyusa.org/homeo...
http://www.drweil.com/drw/u/AR...
http://abchomeopathy.com/r.php...
http://www.wholefoodsmarket.co...
And I even have a link to Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L...
I won't argue the next points because instead of addressing my points you make a false dichotomy and a fairy tale about people not caring what milk they buy, which is absolutely detached from reality.
In fact, let me change that and address the portion about milk. People read the labels on milk all the time, and in fact if people started selling "Milk" without specifying whether it was from a Cow, Pig, Goat, or Cat people would have an absolute fit. If the grocery store is out of someone's brand of milk, you will see them read label after label until they are comfortable with what they are purchasing. Milk _is_ labelled for all kinds of information, as is just about everything else I can find in a store.
In fact we have seen companies intentionally over label in order to trick people into purchasing their products. People wanting to avoid HFCS have had to learn all of the various names used for HFCS just to avoid unwanted sugar in their diet. There are numerous ways for salt to be labelled, and MSGs are another tricky one. Yet with GMO, people are not given the information. Since Monsanto can spend a few billion dollars over a few years lobbying, this can't be an issue of just money. That should make you suspicious at a minimum.
I'm extremely skeptical that we are worse off, but I'm willing to hear more
Well you seem to be a skeptic about a lot of things that concern most people, but I'll bite. Are the super pests only after the GMO foods or do they attack the non-GMO foods as well? GMO foods produce more so are not impacted as much as their natural counterparts who can't survive super pests. Super pests are a byproduct of the GMO foods, not a natural occurrence. Similarly super viruses are a byproduct of overuse of antibiotics. Science backs both of those stances.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
"hybrid seeds get weaker by the generation" -- False, there is a level of heterzygosity that the population with stablize at. The second generation takes the biggest hit and after you can get up to 2/3 of the yeild for most hybrids of corn. " hybrid seeds are bred for intensive agriculture, they typically need chemicals to thrive." Hybrid seeds can be bred for whatever purpose you want, including low-input agriculture. Even said selecting artificial populations would be most benificial to many of the farmers as you can effectively replant
Its the maket, you have a choice, let the people decide what they want to do. We are not going to feed the world without making some changes to how we grow it. You don't want GMO? Almost every single species that we eat has been genetically modified by a process we call natural selection. Most of the GMO stuff done today lets you get that process done faster. GMO people need to educate themselves and be able differentiate inserting genes for roundup in corn versus making corn bigger\faster\stronger via inserting natural genes. Why on earth would you want to wait a few generations when you could get the same result in one? You shouldn't be allowed to even talk about GMO unless you've tried to grow plants on a regular basis yourself.
it's easy to look down on GE seeds with a life time of full bellies in your past, your future, and your children's futures as far as you can see. Try going hungry despite spending all you can spare on food and then rail against seeds that have never made a single person sick and have fed billions.
The same argument was used for the green revolution. But it's led to starvation as cropland has become nonviable due to use of its inherently destructive methods. Some sources suggest that the green revolution did not actually save a single life, but we know beyond any shadow of a doubt that it has had massive costs. You can in fact get more crops per acre with zero-tilth intensive planting of guilds, but it requires a lot more human labor so we went another direction and now our ability to produce food by traditional means is at risk.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Actually, just beware people
Damn, where are those mod points when I need 'em.
racist
upvote x100
Join the modern economy Africa
Im sorry, I have to disagree. Sure, many of them will starve to death, but at least they won't have their precious bodily fluids polluted with whatever bad thing GM seeds supposedly might produce, or not.
I base this opinion on solid scientific information gleaned from extensive late-night conspiracy radio shows. Besides, Monsanto!
See http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2012/10/18/163034053/top-five-myths-of-genetically-modified-seeds-busted for a 2 year old rebuttal to this article...
I love the hippy dippy people, but between the anti gmo and the anti vaxers people seem to be doing all they can to keep two of the horsemen in business... Unless people stop fucking at the rate they're currently fucking we can't feed the population of the earth without science.
And that's the real rub. The yield from hybrid offspring tends to stabilize after a few generations. But the poisons and fertilizers that those have been bred for kill off the soil. Weedkillers that the commercial grains don't mind affect the more traditional seeds. Insecticides and fungicides kill off the natural soil constituents. Deep plowing by machines leads to much higher evaporation and depletes ground water.
After a few decades, nothing but artificial irrigation (who owns water pipelines and desalination plants?) and artificial fertilizers will work any more.
And that's a much more permanent tie-in than the seeds are.
You know how the anti-piracy kill switch on Microsoft operating systems will let America turn off a country's computers? GMO foods are the same thing except America can stop your country from eating.
Zambia tried to negotiate an arrangement with Monsanto for situations where America imposed sanctions but couldn't come to an agreement so they banned GMO foods. Banning the import of GMO foods is only fair since the country can't grow GMO foods for national security reasons.
Aha! Finally someone who RTFA!
It's hard to tell beforehand if any change will be positive in Africa. Look at the french, who introduced cocoa in Africa years ago. That went very well, until a major price drop occurred and in some regions caused famine because farmers couldn't switch back to other food crops in time.
Besides, GMO has failed big time. Cross pollination has already carried the Roundup resistant genes, f.i. to at least 5 wild species. It's what's killing the cotton belt. These were harmless genes, AFAICT. But there's no telling if mutations in the wild will be harmless.
GMO is not necessarily evil. Look up "Golden Rice". That project had the best of intentions. But if people don't want to eat GMO's, it's end of story. The customer is always right.
All modern gains in agricultural production have been science-based. Period. Improving the sustainability of production systems also can only be accomplished by science. Do you even understand the crops you're discussing? Do you know what a hybrid is? Do you understand plant genetics? Are you familiar with the methods of plant breeding and all the steps you go through to sort out the genetics? Do you even know the basics of farming?
/.
And most importantly, do you know just how close most of the world is to starvation? Probably not--in the West, we're now a full generation away from having a cultural memory of hunger.
Please go and learn some facts about the basics of farming before you put this crap on
Things like adding charcoal to poor and/or depleted soil have been proved to improve yields considerably (of course, better results from crappier soil).. I haven't yet found the exact study, but some arican farmers saw a 70% increase.. no hybrid seeds, or inorganic ferts necessary.
Did find this:
http://www.hindawi.com/journal...
and this
http://www.avocadosource.com/c...
which talk up the possibilities.
He tried to kill me with a forklift!
How are you getting to that conclusion? The title of the study is "A Meta-Analysis of the Impacts of Genetically Modified Crops" The author's results are
"On average, GM technology adoption has reduced chemical pesticide use by 37%, increased crop yields by 22%, and increased farmer profits by 68%. Yield gains and pesticide reductions are larger for insect-resistant crops than for herbicide-tolerant crops. Yield and profit gains are higher in developing countries than in developed countries."
Crawl back under your rock you idiot.
Africa has plenty of food, as does the USA. The problem in both cases are societies that don't know how (aren't willing) to reach the poor. If the poor in Africa have access to land, they can grow food. Turning more land over to industrial agriculture just makes the problem worse; as farms get big their output goes more and more to export, with China happy to buy it to feed meat animals. So the problem, like many posed on Slashdot is social, and technological solutions, like those proposed on Slashdot for a huge range of issues, don't cut it -- the last thing that nerds can grasp.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/12/opinion/dont-ask-how-to-feed-the-9-billion.html
Simply saying something, whether you honestly believe it or not, does not make it true.
World hunger is at the lowest it has ever been. https://www.wfp.org/stories/10... How exactly to interpret that to mean that the green revolution has led to starvation?
Producing foods by traditional means was a large part of the reason hunger was worse in the past than it is now. There were fewer people, more of them were directly involved in food production (both in real terms and as a percent of the population) and yet there was MORE hunger than today. The modern techniques were developed because the worked better, not out of some perverse desire to make people less food secure. Large agriculture takes feeding the world as a mission statement. Every conference I've ever attended is peppered with references to the disconnect between population projections (going up FAST) and available land projections (trending downward in developed countries, and stagnant in developing ones).
We need to produce twice as much food in 2050 as in 2010, yet we need to do it with LESS land and finite resources than we did in 2020. Going backward with regard to efficiency and yields is not a viable solution unless you are willing to let a lot of people starve needlessly.
Bureaucracy expands to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy.-Oscar Wilde
Take look at the first pages of The Competitive Advantage of the Nations by Michael Porter. There is a comparison between Ghana and South Korea.
I don't remember the numbers, but you are probably right, they are now at around $4K GDP per capita. The point is both Sout Korea and Ghana had around $500 GDP per capita in the late fifties. Get the picture?
You're just spewing platitudes. In reality, Africa's economic status is due to a combination of history, geography, economics, education, disease, and other factors.
And while GMOs won't fix Africa's economic problems singlehandedly, opposition to them is symptomatic of what ails Africa: rich white foreigners imposing their preferences on an entire continent to its detriment. Your beliefs are the modern equivalent of "let them eat cake".
As far as agriculture is concerned, lack of industrial agriculture and lack of access to world markets is certainly part of Africa's economic problems, and Western environmental groups and development agencies are causing more harm than good.
How are you getting to that conclusion?
Because both the summary and TFA say so. The article you cite looks like interesting research, but I don't see how it is connected in any way to the summary, or to TFA. Neither mention it. The research that is referenced is by a different researcher, Devlin Kuyek, who specifically says "hybrid".
Charcoal is acting as a fertilizer in this scenario. Of course fertilizing the field will bring benefits if the soil is nutrient deficient. That doesn't change the fact that a plant that is intrinsically resistant to a common pest will yield even more than one that is susceptible to the pest if both are fertilized appropriately.
There are so many things that are less than optimal in traditional subsistence farming that lots of different interventions can potentially increase yields. Just because one works, does not mean that another would not also improve yields. In fact, combining both changes would likely improve yields in a largely additive way. That is why farmers in developed countries are so much more productive. They take advantage of a lot of different improvements that work together.
Bureaucracy expands to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy.-Oscar Wilde
Simply saying something, whether you honestly believe it or not, does not make it true.
And yet opening with this sentence added nothing whatsoever to your comment. Adding facts to your comment does not increase the veracity or accuracy of your other claims.
World hunger is at the lowest it has ever been. https://www.wfp.org/stories/10... How exactly to interpret that to mean that the green revolution has led to starvation?
Try looking at India sometime. It is the poster child for the failure of the green revolution. People are starving in India right now because the croplands will no longer sustain the crops. Green Revolution agriculture destroys topsoil, turning it into an inert dirt medium for hydroponically growing crops. But the Indian farmer cannot afford the ever-increasing amount of synthetics which must be dumped on the plants every year to grow crops without them being able to get their nutrients directly from healthy soil, as they would do in a natural system. At best the Green Revolution may have postponed massive starvation — and exacerbated it. We're seeing precisely the same inability to produce food, and for the same reasons, here in the United States.
Producing foods by traditional means was a large part of the reason hunger was worse in the past than it is now. There were fewer people, more of them were directly involved in food production (both in real terms and as a percent of the population) and yet there was MORE hunger than today.
The problems, then as now, were primarily related to distribution. And, of course, overpopulation. Guess what? We're still not distributing food to starving people, even in our own country, and we're still making more people.
Going backward with regard to efficiency and yields is not a viable solution unless you are willing to let a lot of people starve needlessly.
Well, I'm glad that you agree that the Green Revolution is harmful. You can get dramatically better yields planting guilds and farming without tilth, but it does require more labor. You trade human efficiency for space efficiency, and for viability. The biggest problem with the G.R. is the use of synthetics; the pesticides, herbicides, and the fertilizers all kill off the beneficials in soil upon which plants depend. In fact, destroying topsoil in order to grow crops is grossly inefficient, because we depend on it and it's difficult and time-consuming to make. Just like burning oil is undoing millions of years of activity which made the globe relatively ideal for our use, we're basically burning topsoil with our farming practices as meaningfully as if we extracted all of its organic material and threw it into a furnace.
Going forward with the Green Revolution is going to lead straight back to global starvation. But that's precisely what we are doing with GMO crops designed to permit application of more pesticides. But when you plant guilds and don't plant monocultures you have trap crops, you have the opportunity for IPM and the mixed crops attract beneficials which attack your pests. Monocultures are part and parcel of everything that is wrong with modern farming; they breed plagues of bugs and they attract plagues of birds, actually permitting the creation of the largest flocks which could not even grow to such sizes without the benefit of these crops to consume.
TL;DR: Unless we go back to saving our shit and using it to grow our food, the only way it will be possible to produce food on any kind of scale will be hydroponically. We are destroying our topsoil.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I don't know why he thought you were paid. The Internet has made it clear that people are willing to be ignorant, racist douche bags for free.
My my, that escalated quickly.
and stupidly.
I some mythical world, it is racist to give people seeds that are high yield hybrids. Seeds that are racist.
Well Sparky, if the people were given seeds that didn't produce such yields, it would be likewise racist, because you were not giving them high yield seeds. Those high yielding varieties would feed more people. Why would we keep the highest yield seeds to ourselves?
The basic truth is that if present day subsistence farmers are going to feed their countries, they are going to have to move forward. Hard to imagine that would be all that bad a thing.
Which is where my commentary comes from. If the conditions for helping a person is to enable them to continually need help, they really are not being helped, are they. We've just become permanently supporting pseudo-parents.
So instead of bellyaching, crying, moaning, and gnashing of teeth about how fucking awful we are, if some farmer in these lands wants to use high yielding seeds that need to be purchased - let them. Then if other farmers want to use the non-racist seeds that they can continue to save seeds from - let them.
Seems like a win-win situation to me. And if the non-racist seeds prove superior to the racist seeds, then the racist seeds won't be used any more.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
The same argument was used for the green revolution. But it's led to starvation as cropland has become nonviable due to use of its inherently destructive methods. Some sources suggest that the green revolution did not actually save a single life, but we know beyond any shadow of a doubt that it has had massive costs. You can in fact get more crops per acre with zero-tilth intensive planting of guilds, but it requires a lot more human labor so we went another direction and now our ability to produce food by traditional means is at risk.
Isn't that a whole lot like what the subsistence farmers are doing now?
Okay, we better leave them alone, because they must be doing much much better than we are with their superior agricultural methods.
No one is starving over there, nothing to see, except maybe we need to find out how they are achieving their success, while we are all starving.
Parse that.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
that doesn't require chemicals to live.
Using the word 'Chemical' as a scare word shows that the person using it has no real argument against the topic.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Incorrect.
", GMO has failed big time. Cross pollination has already carried the Roundup resistant genes,"
That makes zero sense.
That's like saying 'Cars have failed big time. The pinto had a higher risk of explosion when rear ended.'
The issues about GMO need to be looked at individual. They have been overwhelmingly successful as a group.
Most people don't mind, especially in countries where they need food. What we have is the scientifically illiterate making things up and using FUD. Those people need to stop.
"But there's no telling if mutations in the wild will be harmless."
which is true of every crop, ever.
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesa...
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Isn't that a whole lot like what the subsistence farmers are doing now?
Isn't what? Quote only the part to which you're replying, or use emphasis or something. You are permitted to use the HTML tag for emphasis. HTH, HAND.
Okay, we better leave them alone, because they must be doing much much better than we are with their superior agricultural methods.
False dichotomy. Instead of helping them use an inherently destructive method of farming, help them use inherently creative methods. When we fertilize with shit, and not with chemicals, we build topsoil. When we fertilize with chemicals, we destroy it. We kill all the biological material and wash away the organics and are left with an inert growing medium. It can actually contain micronutrients needed by plants and yet not provide it to them because the microorganisms which make the nutrients bioavailable (package them in a form the plants can use, that is) are absent from the soil entirely.
No one is starving over there
People are starving right here, where these farming methods dominate overwhelmingly. There is more than enough food on the planet to feed everyone on it. Suggesting that we need to use destructive farming methods is foolish at best.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Has there been work done on researching methods for recovering land that has been subject to G.R. style farming practices? Is it possible to rebuild topsoil or is that something we have to let time and the insects handle?
The customer is not always right. Government is always right, because it is Government that has all of the guns that allow it to be always right.
People are starving in India because people have always been starving in India. There have always been people starving everywhere. The question is whether there are MORE people starving in India now than before green revolution.
I don't have access to data that goes that far back, but the FAOStat page for India puts the per capita food supply at 2459 kcal/person/da, which is 25% higher than the FDA RDA of 2000 kcal/day. It is also a little more than 200 kcal more than 1996.
Greater consumption by the wealthiest can of course result in an increase in the average, without changing things in a meaningful way for those at the bottom. Fortunately the FAOStat page also indicates that the prevalence of under nutrition went from 21% in 1999 to 18% in 2012. Again small changes, but definitely an improvement when you consider that India has 1/6th of the world population. That 3% point improvement in access to nutrition for India represents 0.5% of the GLOBAL population. Not too shabby.
AS to the population issue. I agree that population control could help, but I see improving production as far more likely than getting the global population to agree to reduced population growth. Data shows that the best way to slow population growth in a country is to increase the quality of life. There is a consistent negative correlation between quality of life in a nation and the reproduction rate from citizens (discounting immigration and immigrant families from developing nations).
GMO crops enable no-till farming. That is but one of the ways that they CONTRIBUTE to sustainable agriculture. If you'd ever planted a GMO crop you might know that.
Bureaucracy expands to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy.-Oscar Wilde
You do a very good job of misreading, almost sounds intentional to prop up your world view. Anyway, try reading the page right-side-up, and while you're out there, learn a teensy bit about what motivates things, and then come back to me, leave the grad school propaganda at home please, I just tune that crap out.
Jeeze you're right. You do sound like a damn liberal, the kind that reelects politicians merely for being a democrat. No doubt you believe that crap too. I do admit, you illustrate perfectly the simplicity of the solution, and also why it won't happen for a very long time.
I'm posting this AC because of moderation attacks on the account for posting honest and apparently politically incorrect observations. I'm very familiar with that issue also.
So, have a good one. You are free to respond or ignore as you will wish. You seem to take an interest. That's a start. I always enjoy new friends.
-f
People are starving right here, where these farming methods dominate overwhelmingly. There is more than enough food on the planet to feed everyone on it. Suggesting that we need to use destructive farming methods is foolish at best.
Yes, and much of that food is produced using modern farming practices. If the US were to revert to the traditional agricultural practices people view through the rose-tinted-glasses of affluence and satiety there would be MORE people starving both inside and outside of the US. We are a net exporter of grains, and those surpluses are possible because of those modern production techniques. There are many nations that are dependent upon US grain to feed a significant portion of their population. Cutting off US exports because we've decided to throw out the last 20 to 30 years of agricultural improvements would throw the world food supply into havoc. A drought in the Midwest US a couple of years ago was global news and affected food prices just about everywhere. What we grow in the US helps to feed the world.
Bureaucracy expands to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy.-Oscar Wilde
Rebuilding top soil is a matter of fertilizing. The green revolution does not, contrary to the baseless claims by drinkypoo, "Destroy" top soil. Fertilization is an integral part of both traditional and modern farming techniques.
Plants extract nutrients from soil as they grow. The faster and larger they grow, the more nutrients are extracted. Traditional farming techniques utilized manure and other waste products to restore fertility to the soil, but in an imprecise way. Modern fertilizing techniques involved testing the soil, identifying the deficient nutrients, and then applying exactly what is needed to ensure optimal fertility. Modern techniques still use manure, but they also use other sources of nutrients to ensure that nutrient supply is as close to optimal as possible.
Traditional fertilizing involves spreading manure and other nutrient dense products without considering the ratios of the various nutrients present in the soil and fertilizer relative to the needs of the crops. Manure from swine tends to have much higher ratio of Nitrogen to Phosphorus than is ideal for corn and soy. If you apply manure as your sole source of nutrients you are either over supplementing with one (contributing to run-off and water eutrophication) or shorting your plants and reducing yields. Traditional farming techniques are inefficient due to ignorance, not apathy, but they are still harmful.
Bureaucracy expands to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy.-Oscar Wilde
*Beware of Greeks bearing gifts* I would recommend more long term thinking on this. Haste can only lead to trouble.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Instead of helping them use an inherently destructive method of farming, help them use inherently creative methods.
So tell us of the inherently cretive methods.
What you have been saying so far is that our methods are wrong. So why on earth would anyone want to use our methods? And why would we be required to change our methods to some inherently creative method? Besides, If it is inherent, it already exists, therefore our help is not needed.
When we fertilize with shit, and not with chemicals, we build topsoil.
Yeah, manure is the cure for all fertilization problems, except when it isn't. I've grown up around organic gardening - parents and grandparents and myself. Its not bad, but on a large scale you must be very, very careful. I use leaf composting mostly myself.
As noted, on a large scale it can be devastating.
http://www.cbf.org/document.do...
part of what reads:
The Chesapeake Bay is choking on nutrient pollution from a myriad of sources – from urban runoff, industry, automobiles, and human sewage, but the largest source is agriculture and, increasingly, from the manure pro- duced by livestock, which now outnumber the watershed’s human population by 11 to 1. Most of that manure is spread on the surface of nearby cropland, and studies show that within two years as much as half of its nutrient pollution washes out of the soil and into rivers and streams or seeps into groundwater. Both of these pathways lead to pollution in local waterways and, ultimately, in the Bay.
When we fertilize with chemicals, we destroy it. We kill all the biological material and wash away the organics and are left with an inert growing medium.
Now here is your chance to refute the Chesapeake Bay Foundation's assertions about manure's contribution.
It can actually contain micronutrients needed by plants and yet not provide it to them because the microorganisms which make the nutrients bioavailable (package them in a form the plants can use, that is) are absent from the soil entirely.
Only it really isn't that simple. Large scale manure use can direclty kill other food sources.
Fish kills
http://www.deq.virginia.gov/Po...
http://www.dailyiowegian.com/s...
http://www.extension.org/media...
And of course, the Chesapeake Bay fishery industries.
There are a lot more, but the point is that while manure is indeed a source of carbon and nitrogen, it takes a whole lot of work to keep it safe, and a lot of that work seems like our methods. I live in an area with a lot of farms, and most have manure tanks and use manure. But you don't just take old Bossie out to the field and let her drop her patties there. And you really should not use carnivore manure
Here is organic gardener Mike McGraff's advice on using manure. for general interest, and carnivore manure note.
http://www.gardensalive.com/pr...
He is an excellent source of environmentally responsible plant growing knowledge.
My Grandmother used to make manure tea. The chickens she kept produced a lot of manure, but chickenshit is very powerful mojo. So whne she cleaned out the coop, it went into a rain barrel, and was filled with water. Makes manure tea. Once a summer (maybe more but I doubt it, and was a little kid at the time, she'd take na old saucepan and dip it in the tea, and pour some on the plants. She could coax some awesome stuff from the ground. But it all has to be processed first. Trying to use
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Haste can only lead to trouble.
Says the one who isn't hungry.
Hey, if the poison buys you another minute, go for it. This is still fraud, hungry or not.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
And you really should not use carnivore manure
Plant's don't know whether the N, P, K, etc in fertilizer came from pigs, chickens, or cows. For manure from any species it is important to know the nutrient concentrations of the manure, the pre-existing loading of the soil, the requirements of the plant to be grown on the soil, the drainage properties of the soil, etc. Same goes for using synthetic fertilizers, BTW.
As I understand it, much of the problems in the Chesapeake Bay water shed came from incomplete understanding. Farmers were paying at least some attention to the N part of the equation, but were not paying any attention to the P part. Turns out that most manure has a much higher P to N ratio than plants need, so applying manure based on N only resulted in P overloading. Over the last couple of decades farmers have found ways to improve the P to N ratio and have limited application rates based on P as well, thus avoiding over loading. Even if it required an application of another fertilizer to get the N content of the soil right.
Bureaucracy expands to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy.-Oscar Wilde
Overall I agree with most of what you posted. The one line I'd like to challenge you a little on is this one:
And you really should not use carnivore manure
Plant's don't know whether the N, P, K, etc in fertilizer came from pigs, chickens, or cows.
It's a parasite thing as opposed to nutrient. And I think that the fellow I got that from was concerned about toxoplasmosis. Nutrient wise, I wouldn't be surprised if they were equal or better in some nutrients.
As I understand it, much of the problems in the Chesapeake Bay water shed came from incomplete understanding. Farmers were paying at least some attention to the N part of the equation, but were not paying any attention to the P part. Turns out that most manure has a much higher P to N ratio than plants need, so applying manure based on N only resulted in P overloading. Over the last couple of decades farmers have found ways to improve the P to N ratio and have limited application rates based on P as well, thus avoiding over loading. Even if it required an application of another fertilizer to get the N content of the soil right.
To be sure, I don't blame farmers all that much. As our population grows, we overload natural systems. And I agree it's a learning process. Some of the biggest no=nos are when the cows have a creek running across the pasture, and do their business right in it. Others are when a farmer spreads manure on a late winter snow covered field. Then a spring melt comes along and a lot of raw manure goes directly into a stream. Enough of these incidents, and the Chesapeake gets quite fertile. It is a minority - by and large, our farmers are very savvy about their responsibility.
Now let's translate that into lands where people are just learning about a lot of this stuff. Many won't even believe that manure in ariver will do any harm. Could be pretty nasty.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
The GP is a moron. Anyone who has been to India over the last 25 years (for about 25 years I went every year or two) knows food security has MASSIVELY improved. Hell, when I was really young we would carry boxes of Ritz crackers to the country so we would have something easy to eat if we either got food poisoning (every trip, at least once) or were going rural and knew there would be little to no food around.
He is literally spouting complete lies about a country he knows little or nothing of.
Quite eyeopening that a per-capita GDP of $4000 is middle income on the world scale. I would have guessed at least something like $10,000 per-capita.
I don't doubt that Drinkypoo believes what he's saying. The Anti-GMO crowd has been spreading that particular FUD for several years now. I've seen it in political propaganda dressed up to look like documentaries on several occasions. Their books and websites are similarly full of such BS.
If you have no connection to the country or agriculture it is hard to recognize that the claims don't match reality. Especially if the stories fit your preconceptions. Cognitive bias and cognitive dissonance are both very real phenomenon that can catch otherwise intelligent and honest people.
I've known several people from India and I've gotten the impression from most of them that things are much better than they were. Glad to hear further confirmation.
Bureaucracy expands to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy.-Oscar Wilde
There is a reason why africa is still considered the dark continent. It's occupants are just a notch above stone age subsistence existence. It's time that they get their shit straight or get the fuck out of the way and let people who know what they are doing do it. They clearly don't and never have.
I'm seeing a lot of no-till and low-till farming in my area, now the large-scale crop farmers are using precise soil testing and only using the amount of artificial fertilizers absolutely necessary. A lot of what your saying is standard practises have went out of style in the late '70s.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
I own a dry land farm in Southwest Oklahoma. I don't like the price of GM or Hybrid seed but I sure pay it every time. I need less fertilizer, fuel, insecticide, water and herbicide than with public domain seed. The patents on seed don't last forever and they will still be good in coming years as they are rotated to preserve the patents and to stay ahead in the arms race between insects, weeds and GM plants. Twenty or thirty years form now the GM genetics we use now will be useful again as the pest will have lost most of the resistance the developed to them.
If you look on the drought monitor http://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/ there is a dark red spot in Oklahoma that been there for years. My place is in the middle of that. Some years have been a bust but the fellow that farms it has harvested the best crop of both cotton and wheat off it ever made in the last 5 years on an unbelievably small amount of rain.
The only thing different is being able to farm it no till due to GM Cotton in rotation with conventional bred alfalfa hay and Hard Red Winter wheat. He kept what little moisture he had by not disturbing the soil. My family has farmed that place for right at 100 years with better average yields almost every year until the last 7 year drought. It will make that up when the drought breaks as they always do. I've been though 3 and my family has been thou 9 and 2 really bad weather events. My grandfather was very impressed by his grand fathers stories of the Year with out a summer. My great grand mother's stories of the winters of 1885-1886 and 1886-1887 when 75% to 80% of the cattle on the range in the USA froze to death in the "Great Dieup" kept the winter of 1899 from killing even more cattle when Galveston Bay froze over in a 5 day cold spell at 9 degrees F.
I'll take modern farming thank you as the world was on the edge of starvation using organic methods in 1900 before the Fritz Haber invented an efficient way to make ammonia from natural gas and electricity.
Red