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  chemical fertilizer & GMO seeds? Disaster!

  While I agree with Sachs' urgent call to solving world problems, I think he is dead wrong about what should be done to feed the world and improve agriculture. Like Theodor Roszak said in the introduction to Schumacher's famous book "Small is Beautiful" 35 years ago "Economists, for all their purported objectivity, are the most narrowly ethnocentric of people. Since they are universally urban intellectuals who understand little of rural ways, they easily come to regard the land, and all that lives and grows upon it, as nothing more than another factor of production. Hence, it seems to them no loss, but indeed a gain, to turn all the world's farming into high-yield agri-industry, to depopulate the rural areas, and to crowd the cities to the point of chronic breakdown and crisis" (p.7).
  Sachs assumption that the application of modern fertilizer and GMO seed sounds like a great pitch for American agri-industry but in the long run would be disastrous for the world's poor. Here is a great study out of Africa to prove my point:

  Organic farming in Africa wins over chemical methods
  http://www.ucsusa.org/food_and_agriculture/feed/feed-nove ...
  A major study from the United Nations Environment Program reported that the use of organic practices in Africa produces higher yields than farming with pesticides and fertilizers. The study of 114 projects in 24 countries found that yields often more than doubled when organic or near-organic practices such as crop rotation and composting were used. Organic agriculture also brought benefits to families and communities: it encouraged the improvement of local infrastructure like roads, built social relations in the community, increased farmers' incomes, improved soil fertility, and increased the land's resistance to drought. Because organic agriculture relies on available resources rather than on expensive inputs like genetically engineered seed or pesticides, poor farmers can more readily implement organic methods than industrial agriculture methods, and they can retain more earnings. The study concluded that organic techniques are a practical way for African farmers to achieve the crop yields they need and generate food security for the growing population. Read the report (http://www.unctad.org/en/docs/ditcted200715_en.pdf), or read an article about it in The Independent
  http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/organic-fa ...(UK).On Jeffrey Sachs, economist and eco-problem solver, chats about his plans to save the world posted 12 months ago 9 Responses