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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).
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.
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
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.
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.
You are confused about what homeopathy means: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H.... Homeopathic medicine is very specifically not medicine.
You are thinking of traditional medicine. Which is, indeed, not 100% hogwash (not 0% either).
quite frankly if there is no proven harm there should be no harm in a label.
It's just arbitrary. Might as well label something as made by people with princess leia hair. I'm pretty sure there's no proven harm, but I would oppose a label for that.
Agitate for people to label things as non-GMO. That's what you really want anyway. When you go to the store for milk you don't check each liquid vessel to exclude the ones that contain traces of apple, orange, alcohol, etc.., you go for milk. If you want something that contains no GMO, then ask for no-GMO labels (and enforce truth-in-advertising laws).
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 [ucsusa.org] that can bypass the built in GMO protection and creating a much larger threat to agriculture than existed previously.
Here is an actual point. However, labelling isn't likely to solve that, you'd have to completely ban them. I'm extremely skeptical that we are worse off, but I'm willing to hear more. So far it looks just like the same "Red Queen's Race" evolution has always provided.
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