[uNkNowN ElEmEnt]

"Miracle" crops, hailed as the answer to global famine, are contributing to widespread brain impairment in the developing world, a new report concludes. It says that the high-yielding rice and wheat varieties that brought about the much-heralded "Green Revolution" are among a range of environmental factors undermining human intelligence.

The study concludes that a deadly combination of soil erosion, pollution and inadequate diet is affecting the intelligence of millions of people, with effects ranging from severe intellectual disabilities to "sub-clinical decline" in whole populations.

The report says that the new crops, unlike their predecessors, fail to take up minerals such as iron and zinc from the soil. So even as people consumed more calories, their intake of these key "micronutrients" fell.

"High-yielding Green Revolution crops were introduced in poorer countries to overcome famine," the report says. "But these are now blamed for causing intellectual deficits, because they do not take up essential micronutrients."

The report is written by Dr Christopher Williams, a research fellow with the Global Environmental Change Programme. Using already published UN data he has calculated that 1.5 billion people -- one quarter of the earth's population -- are affected by "Green Revolution iron deficiency". He claims the condition impairs the learning ability of more than half of India's schoolchildren.

The greatest drops in the intake of iron took place in South and South East Asia, the very areas where the Green Revolution was most successful.

Other UN figures show that half the world's pregnant women are anaemic, because they have too little iron, putting both them and their babies at risk. The condition is thought to be responsible for 200,000 deaths a year.

See News report in The Independent, London:
http://www.biotech-info.net/hi_tech_crops.html

Pollution 'damages intelligence' -- BBC News
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/te ... 722907.stm

"The Environmental Threat to Human Intelligence", by Dr Christopher Williams
http://www.susx.ac.uk/Units/gec/pubs/br ... ief-13.htm

See also Seeds of the world and Nutrient starved soils lead to nutrient starved people.

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[Raxozanne]

What can I say.

Humans try and make changes for the better but most times their changes just end up causing yet more problems.

Yeah sure we have more people in India or Africa or wherever now but there are probably the same number starving now as before the green revolution as they have just multiplied up to their new level of resource contraint but now they have the extra problem of aneamic women and low iron crops leading to dumber people.

[Raxozanne]

Then to top it all off humans have the gaul to call it 'progress'.

[oowolf]

I just ate a half-pound of raw Alder (Alnus rubra) catkins. They're in their prime right now. Great wild food and good for the brain. They can also be toasted and mixed with honey--yum! The stretch of creek I live on is lined with 3 miles of alder. I estimate over 80.000 pounds of catkins are available free for the picking. They can be dried and retain their high protein content (a complete amino acid food). I know of only 1 other person who regularly harvests Alder catkins. Tons of high quality food go to waste while people continue to eat petroindustrial-"agriculture" genetically-modified poisonous crap. I know 2 grade school teachers (combined 55 years of teaching) who tell me the loss of intelligence from year to year is now plainly observable.
http://wildwoodsurvival.com/survival/fo ... index.html

[The_Virginian]

Well, too much of just any one kind of food is bad as well.

Certainly World Health Organization knew about the nutritional (or lack therof) value of the crops they advocated to "fight" hunger from the begining.

Not only is this a condemnation against WHO and "Mirarcle"/GM crops, but against the more extreeme Vegan fringe that fantcizes that being an Omnivore is somehow "bad."

Humans need variety of food stuffs, not bowls of gruel day after day...

That is not aid, it is ENSLAVEMENT...