Studies: Organic farms out produce Chem farms

[groovedaddy]

Hanging in the balance
Fate of the globe’s poor rests with organics, which yield far more than chem-grown crops
By WAYNE ROBERTS - NOW Magazine

"Organic food, which has seemed to cater to an exclusive and affluent group in the industrialized world since 1990, is now ranked by two just-released studies as critical to feeding the world's hungry."

entire article:
http://www.nowtoronto.com/issues/2007-07-26/news_story5...

[groovedaddy]

1. correct link

http://www.nowtoronto.com/issues/2007-07-26/news_story5.php

[kestrel91316]

2. Monsanto isn't going to like this article ONE BIT.

[GliderGuider]

3. This can't be true.

After all, David Pimentel was the author of one of the studies, and Everyone Knows he's just a shill for big oil, what with his badmouthing ethanol and all.

To get serious for a moment, one of the big worries I have is the coalition between the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation to drive the Green Revolution into Africa. This directly attacks the notions of food sovereignty and food security in one of the poorest places on earth.

The announcement:
Gates, Rockefeller Charities Join to Fight African Hunger

Here are some of the objections:

“Green Revolution ( Africa) Beta” programme out now (trial version only)

It is incredible that this simplistic line of thinking is still being followed after so many years of Green Revolution debate. The tremendous environmental damage caused by the Green Revolution model of agricultural development, relying on the lavish use of water, fertiliser and pesticides, is ignored. The soil erosion and degradation caused by the use of chemical fertiliser and pesticides, and the resulting destruction of agricultural productivity, are not mentioned. Instead, the mantra of new seeds and more fertiliser is repeated. The explosive question of genetically engineered crops is studiously avoided in the propaganda – but both the Gates and Rockefeller foundations are among the most active supporters of genetic engineering in Africa.

Also ignored, despite increased international recognition of its crucial importance, is the central role played by local communities, their traditional seed systems and rich indigenous knowledge. Rather than building on these foundations and utilising the treasure of biological diversity available in the villages, Rockefeller has decided to rely on “improved varieties”.

Perhaps the starkest omission is the project’s failure to consider the socio-economic consequences of its model. As more than 600 NGOs put it in an open letter to the Director General of the FAO in 2004: “if we have learned anything from the failures of the Green Revolution, it is that technological ‘advances’ in crop genetics for seeds that respond to external inputs go hand in hand with increased socio-economic polarisation, rural and urban impoverishment, and greater food insecurity. The tragedy of the Green Revolution lies precisely in its narrow technological focus that ignored the far more important social and structural underpinnings of hunger.”

This reality has grown steadily more dramatic. Structural adjustment measures imposed in the past by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund forced African governments to dismantle public agricultural programmes and drop protection mechanisms for their small farmers. The same agencies forced those governments to devote their most fertile land to growing export commodities for the North, thus pushing small farmers off their land and food production out of rural economies. Now, under pressure from the World Trade Organisation and the impending Economic Partnership Agreements with the European Union, African governments are increasingly opening up their markets, forcing farmers to “compete” with the heavily subsidised food and produce dumped into their economies by the US and the EU.

The bitter irony is that many of the measures now destroying African farming are being supported, if not instigated, by the very corporations whose charity foundations are coming to Africa’s “rescue” with technology programmes.