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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."
" And Big Ag doesn't just feed hippies, it feeds the world, and there currently isn't any good substitute for it."
Bullshit. We have plenty of alternatives to chemical-intensive agriculture. From vertical farming methods to advanced hydroponics methods that can reduce water AND nutrient requirements by 95% and 60% respectively.
~former research director for international horticultural company
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
We did that for millennia before switching to hybrid seed. Ever consider that there might be a reason why farmers would be willing to pay more for their seed? Over the past century hybrid seeds, as well as increased focus on plant breeding, have given massive yield gains. No one is saying that locally adapted traits shouldn't be used, of course they should, everyone including the companies selling they hybrid seeds know that, but hybrid vigor is a very real and very powerful thing, and there's no way around that.
??? Dude, that is the way my great-grandfather farmed when he moved from New York to homestead in the Iowa territory. Most grains haven't been grown from saved seed for two generations. Pigs are now hybred breeds. Dairy has been using artificial insemination breeding programs for two generations. You are a little behind the times, my friend. Before you go spouting off about agricultural science, I suggest you learn some..
"Most do not, and most farmers have failed or are underwater financially specifically because the only buy pioneer/du pont/etc."
I live in farming country and believe this is simply untrue. Provide a cite please.
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