Techno beat

Vilsack: biotech will solve our ag problems 6

Tom VilsackUSDA chief Tom Vilsack has been in Italy at the G8 meeting, talking ag policy with reporters. As the global hunger crisis lingers and climate-change and population fears fester, Vilsack is using the opportunity to push agri-biotech as the solution to the globe’s food needs. Here is the Financial Times:

Mr Vilsack said the challenge to boost output to feed the world’s population – expected to reach 9bn by 2050 from today’s 6.5bn – was compounded by climate change. For that reason, he called on the G8 to back the use of science in agriculture, including genetically modified organisms, to boost productivity.

A few days earlier, Vilsack weighed in on a key debate in global food policy: the need for organized government grain reserves. In 2008, grain and rice prices spiked, driven up largely by biofuel mandates in the US and Europe. The spikes rippled through the global south, propelling tens of millions of people into hunger and worsening condition for hundreds of millions of the already-hungry.

One lesson to be learned is this: the global food system is extremely vulnerable to price shocks. When grain supplies fall short for any reason, tens of millions go hungry. One response might be to build some robustness, some resiliency, into the system. For most of agricultural history, societies have kept grain stores, to be released during shortages to soften shocks. Starting about 20 years ago, the U.S. government and  institutions like the IMF and World Bank decided that government grain reserves interfered with the magic of the market and began selling them off and discouraging developing nations from keeping them. It’s a little bit like dismantling levees, on the theory that they interfere with the magic of water flow.

Last year, the spike in grain prices exposed the folly of this policy. Yet Vilsack clings to it.  Here is Reuters:

United States Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack cautioned on Saturday against the idea of creating global grain reserves, saying it might not be the ideal tool to ensure food price stability.

Instead, the secretary insisted, technology holds the key:

Vilsack said the U.S. experience with such schemes had shown it was better to focus on technical advances in irrigation, seed varieties, machinery and farming methods.

Is that really the lesson we want our ag secretary to be drawing from the last 50 years of U.S. food history?

Grist food editor Tom Philpott farms and cooks at Maverick Farms, a sustainable-agriculture nonprofit and small farm in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina. Follow my Twitter feed; contact me at tphilpott[at]grist[dot]org.

Related Stories

Advertisement
Advertisement

  1. bailsout Posted 11:50 am
    21 Apr 2009

    Still treating the symptoms instead of the cause. Let's start working on reducing the population in the US and globally.

    Permalink

  2. amazingdrx's avatar

    amazingdrx Posted 11:54 am
    21 Apr 2009

    Biotech?no no no. It can't save the climate and feed the human population of planet earth.Organic tech agriculture?  yes it can!  With no fossil fuel GHG spewing fertilizer and fuel.  Robotic organic ag for the developed world and human operated organic ag in the underdeveloped world.  It's advantageous to cost, carbon sink, healthy soil, dust bowl prevention, soil erosion, water conservation, renewable energy backup with biogas from waste.  And that backup lets solar and wind power the bulk of the economy.Storing vegetable protien in a stable persistent form for famine emergencies is a very good idea. doing it to stabilize food prices might be more difficult,but maybe it's worth it.  I think fighting monopoly chemical ag subsidies and encouraging organic ag might be a better way to get to the same end. And cure the climate doing it.@amazingdrx

    Permalink

  3. JamesHarrisburg Posted 12:17 pm
    21 Apr 2009

    Why can't everyone realize how much this will help!!

    Permalink

  4. amazingdrx's avatar

    amazingdrx Posted 8:10 pm
    21 Apr 2009

    Becaise pursuing the same biotechnology and expecting different results is insane?  just a guess.I know why i oppose agri-chem biotech monocrop ag.  I have to guess on the broad popular objections.Bio-acumulation of toxins, drug resistant disaese evolution, GHG emissions, soil carbon sink destruction, aquifer destruction, hormone related disease, tasteless food, obesity, slave working conditions, mass starvation, the list goes on and on.@amazingdrx

    Permalink

  5. liamelegoog Posted 3:33 am
    22 Apr 2009

    Vilsackmy buddies workinon sum bile tech soes youcan eat yaw tie

    Permalink

  6. urbanfoodguy Posted 1:48 pm
    22 Apr 2009

    Thanks for the great reporting, I put it on my Facebook page and blogged about it as well: urbanfoodguy.blogspot.comI think Vil sack of shit should be removed, I think he should never have been appointed and thankfully there is a movement a foot of like minded soles who think the same, so maybe, just maybe we have a chance.

    Permalink

Add a Comment

You are not logged in. Thus, you cannot post a comment. If you have an account, log in. If you don't have an account, well, by all means go make one! Meet you back here in five.

Hello, Visitor!    Why not register?

Viewed
More
Commented
More
Advertisement