World's CRAZY Agriculture methods!!

From the block-buster book "More Good News" by David Suzuki and
Holly Dressel

IDEAS ABOUT AGRICULTURE: THE ZOMBIES

"In 1965, wheat yields were 4.6 million tons in Pakistan and 12.3
million in India. By 1970, after the introduction of our new
wheat, Pakistan produced nearly twice its amount, while India
increased its yield to 20 million tons. The trend continues. This
year Pakistan harvested 21 million tons, and India 73.5
millionall-time records."

Norman Borlaug, "Father of the Green Revolution," in a Wall
Street Journal editorial"

The so-called Green Revolution, the massive, post-World War 11
transformation of agricultural practices that uses chemical
fertilizers, pesticides, and monocultured crops, began to claim
yields like those described above shortly after it started. But
they give a very distorted picture of what's really been
happening in food production since the 1950s. Growing larger
"desirable" parts of a plant through selective breeding and
genetic engineering has resulted in more harvestable seed, as
when hybrids of wheat, say, are bred to produce huge, tasseled
heads and little stems. This kind of plant does mean more wheat
seed per acre, but it also means less straw and fodder, which
still have to be grown somewhere. That loss to the farmer isn't
tabulated. Moreover, these new varieties always demand more
chemical fertilizer: nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium made
from fossil fuels, as well as a great deal more water. When those
crops fail to perform, their creators always blame lack of water
or insufficient application of fertilizers and pesticides.

People who turn to the first Green Revolution's latest
technological fixes like genetic modification, or huge irrigation
projects, claiming they will feed the planet's growing
populations, never subtract the cost of lost crops, depleted
watersheds, and heavy chemical inputs from their projected
yields. They also routinely overestimate what technology can do.
A recent overview of genetically modified (GM) crops correctly
points out that "Hype and promises... notwithstanding, there is
not a single commercial G M crop with increased yield,
drought-tolerance, salt-tolerance, enhanced nutrition, or other
attractive... traits. Disease-resistant GM crops are practically
non-existent." By contrast, modern conventional breeding
techniques are coming up with drought-tolerant cassava, a
traditional rice high in iron and zinc, and higher-yielding soya.
These crops are developed by publicly funded organizations rather
than for-profit chemical conglomerates, which probably explains
their focus.

Using high-tech means such as genetic engineering to deliver more
food is rapidly becoming what medical researchers call a "zombie
argument" - which is to say, it's dead. For years independent
researchers across the globe have been finding massively against
these high-tech solutions because of their downsides, like
destroyed soils and water tables and the impossibly escalating
costs of their fossil-based inputs. But the idea that genetic
engineering or intensive industrial agriculture will "feed the
poor" is still dug up from its grave over and over again, for the
simple reason that it serves vested business interests. Dressed
in new scarves and gloves, the zombie is paraded before the
public, who are made to feel guilty if they withhold the
blessings of the chemical industries' most ghastly mistakes from
an impoverished Africa or India.

Truly increased yields are central to the industry's argument
about its ability to create more food; and yet, all that genetic
engineering has produced so far is "yield drag" - a measurable
lessening of production of between 5 and lo percent, depending on
the variety. Often such losses in yields are presented as
acceptable, because the farmer saves time and costs in weed or
pest control, since the most common genetically engineered crops
resist a patented herbicide or contain their own pest killers.
However, the time-saving factor doesn't support the claims for
potential growth in the food supply, even if increased yields per
acre were the only way to help more people avoid starvation.

If we were to accept that the way to feed the hungry is to
increase food production by increasing yields per acre, something
that's debatable, doing so by gene manipulation would require
augment ing more soils with more nitrogen, the key fertilizer for
plant growth. Hybrids and genetically engineered varieties of
plants demand a great deal more nitrogen to function than do
normal varieties. They also need much more water than
conventional varieties, and that fact presents its own problems.
Plant scientist and respected specialist on agricultural
production E. Ann Clark, of the University of Guelph, points out
that there is "an inherent conflict between our efforts to
increase yields and safeguarding the environment." She explains
that, "If you're using a lot of nitrogen to boost yield, you're
increasing the generation of methane in the livestock that then
eat such rich foods. Food crop soils [of any kind] can also leak
nitrogen oxide." For example, "when the amount of nitrogen you
apply exceeds what the plants can use, denitrification losses
result-oxydized nitrogen, a powerful Greenhouse Gas, then escapes
into the atmosphere." In short, once again, we run into
biological limits. Producers can have increased yields, but one
way or another, after certain natural limits are reached, people
can harvest more food per acre only at the cost of our atmosphere
or our water supply.

If enriching fields with nitrogen to increase food yields leads
to pollution and climate change, what else can we do? A new body
appointed by the UN has some of the answers. The International
Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for
Development (IAASTD)--analogous to the Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change (IPCC), the fount of global knowledge on climate
change - is composed of four hundred international agricultural
researchers. Like the INCC it receives its funds from the World
Bank, the UN, and the Global Environment Facility. Before
IAASTD'S hotly anticipated first study was due, the mainstream
press was excitedly predicting it would champion all kinds of new
techno-solutions.

Partners like the OECD and the World Bank expected the report to
push for a "New Green Revolution" based on more high-tech
engineering and more chemical inputs; the fertilizer and biotech
industry confidently awaited a boom in business. These groups
have blamed the twenty-first century's rapid downturn in supplies
of food on a "decline in investment in agricultural research and
infrastructure." Rather than acknowledge the possibility that the
global food crisis might be the result of breaching natural
system limits, the industrial and scientific mainstream-even the
general population, if polls are anything to go by - have been
looking to research rather than restraint for answers.
When the IAASTD report came out in April 2008, however, it did
not push for more research and technology. Instead, it recognized
natural system limits and suggested real, sustainable solutions,
beginning with-of all things-an expansion of small-scale, organic
agriculture. The IAASTD remains the most prestigious
international agricultural research body in the world, and anyone
interested in the global food supply should read its report. The
section dealing with national food security starts by listing the
reasons why world food prices in the early twenty-first century
spiraled out of control; in other words, why the IAASTD's work
had become so vital. Its analysis is that the crisis was
fundamentally caused by the same small-government, big-business
policies that have broken the financial system: trade
globalization and financial and corporate deregulation policies
introduced by Ronald Reagan, Brian Mulroney, and Margaret
Thatcher twenty years ago.

The report lists the many forms of agricultural activities around
the world that are unsustainable because they depend on heavy
chemical inputs, export markets, and irrigation with imported
water. Also typical of these unsustainable forms of agriculture
are landgrabs and international speculation on food. The IAASTD's
fundamental criticism of the current paradigm is that
"international trade in agricultural commodities as currently
organized [for example, the big boom in investing in biofuels]
sets consumers in different countries into competition for the
same land and water resources." China and the Arab Gulf states
are buying up agricultural land all over the world to feed (or
fuel) their own populations. The question is, what land will the
countries they're buying from, in Peru, Southeast Asia, Africa,
and even the U.S., now use to feed their own populations?
From Turkey and Pakistan through Thailand, and the Philippines,
government elites in desperately poor regions are giving away the
land beneath their feet to anyone who will pay them to lease or
buy it. In June 2009, when Arab investors lost money during the
economic downturn, the Turkish minister of agriculture and rural
affairs, Mehdi Eker, declared open house. "We have made maps of
all our lands. Take and cultivate which you want." The wealthy
Gulf oil states and China are leading the landgrab, but U.S.
billionaires like Bill Gates aren't far behind, using a
supposedly "mutually beneficial" organization called AGRA (the
Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa) to acquire the best
farmland on the continent; although one can imagine that chemical
companies will benefit most from "developing Africa's
breadbasket" with Green Revolution technologies.

The situation in Africa has gotten so serious that many countries
have placed de facto moratoriums on land purchases until they can
better assess the situation; but 6.2 million acres of farmland in
five sub-Saharan African countries have already gone missing. The
UN's Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food has called for a new
set of human rights principles to control landgrabbing. Canada
has its own reasons to join the Third World in supporting
building strong international oversight. In fall 2009 Chinese
investors were roaming the farmlands south of Montreal, trying to
buy up big chunks of what little agricultural land Quebec has
been able to preserve, putting its Loi sur la protection du
territoire agricole to a severe test.

The IAASTD report suggests the best way to reverse this trend is
to support collectives of small farmers by "improv[ing] tenure
and access to resources." In short, by making sure local people,
not distant multinationals or richer countries, own and manage
their local food supplies. They ask that the international
community "address market concentrations, especially in grain
markets, at the global level," pointing out that "Investment in
the agricultural sector has focused largely on export crops to
generate foreign exchange, forcing countries to rely on continued
low international food prices to meet national food demand. That
strategy has failed." The last statement is incredibly strong,
considering the IAASTD's exalted position and the expectations of
the actors that funded it. It's strong because the four hundred
researchers had to base their recommendations on global reality,
not financial pipe dreams.

Today six private multinational corporations-Bayer, Syngenta, BA
SF, Dow, Monsanto, and DuPont - control over 80 percent of the
agrochemicals produced in the world. In 1994 there were thirteen
agro-giants, but mergers and consolidation in what is aptly
termed the "agrochemical industry" reduced these and continue to
reduce the field today. Such a concentration of ownership places
opportunities for price fixing and major food policy decisions in
the hands of profit-obsessed corporations rather than governments
or farmers. Moreover, power over a third of all the staple grain
seed produced globally is shared by only four firms, three of
which, Monsanto, DuPont, and Syngenta, also control the
fertilizers and chemicals. Is it any wonder that these
corporations have only developed seeds that need chemicals and
have concentrated on seeds and inputs that they can patent and
withhold from producers, depending upon their profit needs?
Potential good news abounds in the IAASTD's suggestion that
"market concentrations" must be addressed - a mainstream
acknowledgment that profits, not food quality or need, are the
only concern of the biggest food players." In support of the
IAASTD's concern with actual food production, the report even
suggests that governments "Mobilize the capacities of
supermarkets and other public and private actors along
value-adding chains to offer consumers affordable, safe, healthy,
fair-trade foodstuffs that demonstrate commitment to poverty
reduction, environmental and climate change goals." That makes it
clear that this UN body favors a Growing Power, rather than a
Maple Leaf, Smithfield, or Walmart business model....
..........

NEXT, FROM THE SAME BOOK, WE SHALL SEE HOW THE LITTLE GUY ALL
OVER THE WORLD IS WINNING BACK AGRICULTURE.