I would argue that famine is not always caused by lack of purchasing power, but sometimes by the lack of infrastructure and political will. When we send food relief to some countries, the food never makes it to the people who need it because there is no way to get it there.

I wonder what source she's using for her claim that Indians are eating fewer calories in the last 20 years.  UN FAO data shows an increase in calories per person over the last 35 years.  2400 calories per person strikes me as reasonable.

This is most definitely not an anti-science movement. It takes massive amounts of biological know how to make organic systems maximize productivity. This is an anti-assault on natural systems movement. We cannot rely on chemical fertilizers, they have so many other impacts and they are all based in one way or another on fossil fuels.

As for industrial poly-culture: such a thing does exist, but is not commonly used because it is more difficult to separate. The main problem is that two grains may be indistinguishable by a machine. But you can still grow them for feed for animals that do eat grain.

I agree with the point that this is mostly about looking at the problem from a whole new point of view, and recognizing that almost all of our problems, poverty, biodiversity, climate change, etc all have overlapping causes and solutions, but that does not mean there is only one solution and we need to look at many.

Read "Dirt:The erosion of civilizations" for a good primer on the problems of agriculture over the millenia.  This is why Shiva is focusing on soil; unless the soil is replenished, all that will happen with superduper agricultural productivity is that the soil will be depleted faster, and then billions will starve.

Tom, have you seen the new Wired magazine?  full-tilt boogie on "scientific" agriculture.

Vandana Shiva is a wonderful spirit and leader, and a brilliant thinker. Thanks for the report, Tom.

That said, I'm actually responding to vakibs, via Jon, because Jon gets it...

vakibs -- it appears you are stuck in an old paradigm.

When you say: "Compost is a good fertilizer, but it cannot be sufficiently satisfy fertilizer demand," you are mistaken on several points, and I'd focus on this to make clearer the different paradigms.

First, compost isn't a fertilizer, never was, never will be. It is an organic soil amendment that brings a carbon, micronutrient and microorganism rich renewal to soil life.

A chemical analysis of compost will show about 1% nitrogen because it ignores two things: the N content of the organisms (bacteria are about 20% N, for example), and it ignores the N potential of the microbial community in the compost. There are millions of organisms in a teaspoon of compost, and healthy soil.

In addition to the N content of the organisms, converted to plant use by other organisms, the work of numerous organisms in a soil matrix is to extract N from the air!

Air is 79% N! How do you think wild, untended land can be so lush?! There is no shortage of N out there. We have to get out of the way!

Put that compost in un-chemically-treated soil and all the soil creatures -- the bacteria, archaea, fungi, protozoa, and others -- will ensure a plant has sufficient N, as the plant needs it.

Plants are not stupid. When they need N, they produce root exudates that stimulate the organisms that will bring them N, from root zone fungi consuming bacteria, from the wastes of worms and other organisms (generally also consuming bacteria), or other organisms that will extract it from air.

The "need" for fertilizer was invented to get us to buy industrial, synthetic N produced in large chemical factories that had to do something with all that capital investment after WW II.

An irony here, I suppose, is that the synthetic N we think is needed (NOT) actually disrupts the soil organism matrix in major ways, so while we think we're doing such good for our plants, we're putting them into a stress state and destroying the very soil life matrix they need to thrive.

But plants are survivors. They will produce something, even if they are drowned in inappropriate, and polluting forms of N.

I gotta stop. I get upset about this. The environmental consequences are terrible. The quality of our food is reduced. The soil loses its life. Industrial and chemical agriculture is a scourge on the earth and its people.

Plants and their soil organism partners can produce all the "fertilizer" they need on their own.

On another topic, organic soils can also absorb more CO2 and sequester more carbon than any other medium on the planet, and can be a major contributor in mitigating climate change. Check out soilcarboncoalition.org.

I just found (but now can't find) an article from November 2000 about a farmer who does exactly this. They calculate his GHG reduction garnered from his organic gardening plot.

I thank you for eloquently stating what I was thinking without the emotion I was feeling toward such backwards thinking.

Dr. Shiva is right. We forget that Nature knows best how to grow things, been doing it without human help for millions of years, and we need to model our growing habits like our Mothers and there will be no pollution or waste. Again, thanks Tom. I always enjoy reading your thoughts!

"For as long as space endures, and for as long as living beings remain, until then may I too abide, to dispel the misery of the world." - Shantideva

I think most of us would agree that Shiva's vision of agriculture is what we should strive for. Nobody can be against the conservation of biodiversity, water, soils.

But the question is whether Shiva's alternatives can really provide enough food, bioenergy, fiber and forest products for the world's growing population. That's the question. And there's a lot of doubt over this.

Shiva should first prove her system and demonstrate all the longterm social, economic and environmental effects of this concept.

It's not like we're simply going to believe or trust a guru. That would be a very dangerous mistake. Demonstrate the feasibility of the concept first.

Let's also not forget that we only need to increase food production for the coming 5 decades. After that, world population stagnates and then begins to decline.

Converting a single African country like Congo or the Central African Republic to Green Revolution technologies, suffices to provide enough food for all the people that will be born between 2010 and 2075 (Congo alone can produce food for an estimated 3 billion people).

Maybe it's wiser to wait until population levels begin to stagnate and decline (from 2075 onwards) - then we can take this huge risk of transitioning towards a more organic and biodiversity-rich form of agriculture, the impacts of which are unknown.

In the meantime, we just need to produce enough food to feed the world's newborn babies and the hungry. The most efficient, immediate way to do this is by following the hugely successful Green Revolution approach.

The problem with Shiva, though, is that she seldom sticks to facts. I recently witnessed her making the link between GM cotton, endebtedness, and farmer suicides in India. The link is exactly the contrary: farmers who didn't invest in GM cotton got bankrupt and committed suicide. That was one example that struck me. She often relies on incorrect information, to make a case the grist of which is entirely rational and elegant, though.

So only two problems:
-demonstrate the concept first
-and use correct information

If she succeeds in both, she may become Nobel Peace Prize material.

One thing to keep in mind is that industrial agricultural research has probably received billions of dollars, stretching back to the middle of the 19th century (land grant colleges like UC Berkeley, for instance), while things like permaculture, biointensive gardening, or even studies of what the indigineous peoples of South America did, have all had shoestring budgets.  Now you're asking, quite rightly, that we have global models of how to feed everybody using soil-building as opposed to soil-destroying techniques.  So the bottom line is that some real money is going to have to go into these studies.

Jon, I quickly wanted to add that Mrs Shiva doesn't have to start from scratch to "prove" the viability of her concepts.

If I recall it correctly, there recently was a study from the FAO or the UNEP (not sure), claiming that "organic farming can feed Africa". It blew me a bit off my chair, because I had never expected this to come from the FAO/UNEP, agencies that don't sell bs.

So, can someone at Grist plz quickly look this up? It would be a very important reference in this 'debate' over whether organic agriculture can work on a large scale, and in such extremely difficult and key areas like SSAfrica.

The study was, I think, based on a very large body of previous research (t was a bit of a meta-study of kinds).

I just meant to say that one of Mrs Shiva's staff's more important efforts should go towards gathering evidence, from long-term field trials.

Supercomputers will do the rest for her. It's not like she has to prove scenarios, she just has to pour some data into the terminal.

And I think she could convince more sceptical white men like myself if she gets a bit rid of that guru-goa-beatles aura of hers - I've seen her sitting in her garden, surrounded by tantalized hippies who literally prayed to her. Truly horrible.

Mrs Shiva should definitely look into Monstanto-esque marketing strategies.

While yes, the HB process is pretty remarkable, especially for something that came from making a bomb. And you can keep throwing Nitrogen at soil and it will keep making stuff grow more..sort of. There are a few problems

Excessive plant growth may happen, but that does not mean the soil has all the micronutrients like vitamin A and Iron to make all those veggies and grains as good as they need to be.

As we grow all those crops, that over intensive, industrial system (it has to be industrial, or it defeats the purpose of fertilizing the crap out of it) degrades the physical structure of the soil, leading to massive erosion. Witness the decline in midwestern topsoil in the last century

All the nitrogen does not often get absorbed into the soil and usually runs into streams where it eventually becomes giant algae blooms and dead zones.

So, in summation: Haber-Bosch, impressive, but not perfect.

Thanks for the commentary, although I would add to mdwalsh's list, I believe natural gas is used to make N-fertilizer, and I'm not sure if that's a trivial thing.  I don't know enough about agriculture to say one way or the other about haber-bosch, although we know runoff is a big problem (and to nitpick, haber-bosch would not be possible without the even more fundamental innovations in production machinery, such as machine tools and steel-making, that make the haber-bosch machinery and processes possible).

The important point of consideration is what fertilizer does to the soil, because without soil, we're all kaput.

Also, it's not as simple as getting a supercomputer and a terminal.  Somebody or group of somebodies have to sit down and write the programs and feed the data in, not always so easy.  Something certainly worth a bunch of big grants, it seems to me (and I'll try to find that study about Africa, or if someone else knows about it,please provide a link).

Hi Tom,
Good to see someone raising the importance of carbon. It's been painted as the bad guy so much it's only seen in a negative light these days, when it's actually essential for good quality food (and, of course, the general health of the planet). I'm curious, though, about your assertion, that Shiva's talk was "one of the most hopeful" you've heard... Can I ask what you found the most hopeful, as opposed to just the list of her points about what needs to be done? Does she think the world is turning in the right direction on the key issues she raises? Is that why you felt buoyed?  

John,

Interesting assertions, but I have some issues with the report you cited, and the depth of related articles on the site. I don't think the jury's in on this.

I'm also quite suspicious of singular USDA-ARS studies, having observed significant bias, when they have an agenda. I don't know if that's the case here, and I haven't done a lot of animal methane production research, but using the same cows for pasture feed and high-grain feed is a flag for me, in terms of research design, as is the "highly-digestible" grain diet vs. the "low-quality fiber" pasture diet.

I also didn't get how they got good measurements in winds of 2 meters/second, and "rapidly changing winds." Could bring a new understanding of the term "breaking wind," I suppose.

Do you have some other research citations that reach this same conclusion?

Shiva says She pointed out that peasant farmers in India's most fertile area are fighting to save their land from being swallowed up by a car factory. The truth, from what I've read, is somewhat different. It appears that the farmers were willing to give up their land and had agreed to a deal, but some local Commie leader (they are often backed by China) decided to rile everyone up and force the govt to renege on the deal. The result was that Tata (the manufacturer) just got up and moved their factory to another state. Now the state has lost not only the jobs from this factory but potentially several other car manufacturers. And for what - several acres of land - i wonder how many people that's going to feed. I should end this post with a disclaimer - I'm no fan of corporations, and pretty much agree the essence of what Shiva's saying.

Bottom line, if we do not divert all household and commercial organic waste to compost, it
will end up as a resource in landfill sites that produce methane GHG's - so lets endorse large scale composting programs that give that compost to area farmers for free - afterall, when we run out of oil, how are farmers going to convert from soil non-enhancing petrochemical fertilizers to soil-building methods that will be so necessary in the new regime of farming that has to happen, regardless of who puts forth the argument to the contrary!  If it is true about the night soil, human sludge from sewage plants going directly on farm soil, we will have a build up of heavy metals on our soils that we will have to deal with as well - so, building and protecting soil has to be a research priority - we need to research so that we can get on the same page about what is going on, and stop debating everything relating to how the natural world actually functions - before it really too late!!!!