[Nickel]

Hear hear. "Let's help people starve; they'll be much happier and it's good for them and the environment" is not the way to go.

[NeoPeasant]

I just wonder who in the world will still be eating when we can no longer satisfy our green revolution's appetite for petrochemicals?

[Quinny]

So what sort of yield is he talking about? The people with their small piles of crops could well be trading surpluses after a meal rather than efficiently growing cash crops for the west for poverty level slave wages. Actual yields (food not $) per acre are actually higher for more diverse inefficient methods, like many traditional farmers use permaculture designed systems.


$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('lorenzo', 'W')ow, this professor hits the nail right on the head!

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '
')
Green activists 'are keeping Africa poor'

Western do-gooders are impoverishing Africa by promoting traditional farming at the expense of modern scientific agriculture, according to Britain's former chief scientist.

Anti-science attitudes among aid agencies, poverty campaigners and green activists are denying the continent access to technology that could improve millions of lives, Professor Sir David King will say today.

Non-governmental organisations (NGOs) from Europe and America are turning African countries against sophisticated farming methods, including GM crops, in favour of indigenous and organic approaches that cannot deliver the continent's much needed “green revolution”, he believes.

Speaking before a keynote lecture tonight to the British Association for the Advancement of Science, of which he is president, Sir David said that the slow pace of African development was linked directly to Western influence. “I'm going to suggest, and I believe this very strongly, that a big part has been played in the impoverishment of that continent by the focus on nontechnological agricultural techniques, on techniques of farming that pertain to the history of that continent rather than techniques that pertain to modern technological capability. Why has that continent not joined Asia in the big green revolutions that have taken place over the past few decades? The suffering within that continent, I believe, is largely driven by attitudes developed in the West which are somewhat anti-science, anti-technology - attitudes that lead towards organic farming, for example, attitudes that lead against the use of genetic technology for crops that could deal with increased salinity in the water, that can deal with flooding for rice crops, that can deal with drought resistance.”

Sir David, who stepped down in December as the Government's Chief Scientific Adviser, will use his presidential address to the BA Festival of Science in Liverpool to accuse governments and NGOs of confused thinking about African development.

“Solutions will only emerge if full use is made of modern agricultural technology methods, under progressive, scientifically informed regulation,” he will say. “The most advanced form of plant breeding, using modern genetic techniques, is now available to us. Plant breeding needs to meet a range of demands, including defences against evolving plant diseases, drought resistance, saline resistance, and flood tolerance. The problem is that the Western-world move toward organic farming - a lifestyle choice for a community with surplus food - and against agricultural technology in general and GM in particular, has been adopted across Africa, with the exception of South Africa, with devastating consequences.”

His remarks will place him in direct opposition to former Whitehall colleagues. The Government endorsed recently the International Assessement of Agricultural Science and Technology, a report from 400 scientists and development experts published in April, which championed small-scale farming and traditional knowledge. The exercise was led by Professor Bob Watson, the chief scientist at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. Sir David said that its findings were short-sighted. “I hesitate to criticise Bob Watson, who I admire enormously, but I think that we have been overwhelmed by attitudes to Africa that for some reason are qualitatively different to attitudes elsewhere.

“We have the technology to feed the population of the planet. The question is do we have the ability to understand that we have it, and to deliver?” Sir David, who was born and brought up in South Africa, added: “I think there is a tremendous groundswell of feeling that we need to support tradition in Africa. What that actually means in practice is if you go to a marketplace in a lovely town like Livingstone in Zambia, near Victoria Falls, you will see hundreds of people with little piles of their crops for sale.

“This is an extremely inefficient process. The sort of thing we're seeing existed in this country hundreds of years ago. I don't believe that will lead to the economic development of Africa.”
He will cite the example of rice that can resist flooding, which has been developed by the International Rice Research Institute in the Philippines. Its development has been held up for several years because scientists felt they could not use GM techniques, such is the scale of Western-influenced opposition to the technology.

He will also accuse green groups such as the UN Environment Programme of agitating against new technologies on the basis of speculative risks, while ignoring potential benefits.

“For example, Friends of the Earth in 1999 worried that drought-tolerant crops may have the potential to grow in habitats unavailable' to conventional crops. The priority of providing food to an area of the world in greatest need appears to not have been noted.For decades, approaches to international development have been dominated by this well-meaning but fatally flawed doctrine.”

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/e ... 699096.ece

[burtonridr]

Lol, yes thats just what they need, more dependence on oil like we are

Lets give them pesticides and fertilizers! Yea lets pollute their ground water and water run off just like we are which really does more harm than good.

Lets give them tractors so they can plow more and grow more and help destroy the their environment faster.

How is handing them a way of life that is unsustainable a good thing? Especially this late in the game?

[Starvid]

Never trust NGO's, they all have vested interests and hidden agendas - says the guy who's on a NGO board.

[dorlomin]

I am sure our resident dark lord Jack will be wildly aplauding the setiments of King. Nothing will cause a population to crash quicker than increasing dependence of fossil fuel.

That aside, turning to industrial agriculture, forcing small farmers of the land, before a nation begins developing large scale industry to employ people is simply a recipe for vast shanties full of urban ultra poor. Industrialisation of agriculture in Europe and America followed the mass industrialisation of the cities. It did not drive it.

[americandream]

Here's a challenge to all those who are green activist westerners on here who advocate that poor countries adopt traditional methods of farming out of a deeply held preference for those methods.

Move to one or other of those poor countries and immerse yourselves fully in those communities. I look forward to the day I see green activist whites fully immersed in the lifestyles they have been foisting on their black counterparts through the comfort of jet-setting NGO lifestyles.

I may be inclined to take the losers seriously then. As things stand it is my view as a Marxist that science, if applied wisely and not for profit, can uplift all humanity and there's nothing I see in the clarion calls of the current crop of trendy greenie to suggest otherwise.

[dorlomin]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('americandream', 'I') may be inclined to take the losers seriously then. As things stand it is my view as a Marxist that science, if applied wisely and not for profit, can uplift all humanity and there's nothing I see in the clarion calls of the current crop of trendy greenie to suggest otherwise.

[EnergyUnlimited]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'U')K Chief scientist: Green activists are keeping Africa poor

[Ludi]

Green activism in Africa:

http://www.greenbeltmovement.org/

"Conserving the Congo forest, and indeed all of our forests in Africa, as well as accelerating forestation efforts, is vital to our survival on a continent where the Sahara Desert is expanding to the North and the Kalahari Desert is expanding to the Southwest."

[dohboi]

Scape-goating 'greens' for every problem from high gas prices to rural poverty has become the very predictable mantra of the right. No surprise to find it here.

[Nickel]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('dorlomin', 'I') am sure our resident dark lord Jack will be wildly aplauding the setiments of King. Nothing will cause a population to crash quicker than increasing dependence of fossil fuel.

[Nickel]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('dorlomin', 'I')ndustrialisation of agriculture in Europe and America followed the mass industrialisation of the cities. It did not drive it.

[dohboi]

Growing turnips and radishes on marginal land, mostly for fodder, was also important in the expansion of European population.

What exactly do you mean by land management? Cut down the forest and grow cash crops? Parts of Africa represent some of the few places on earth where humans aren't invasive species. The folks who have been living there for longer than anyone has been living on any other land in the world might just know a bit more about it than we do. A little humility may be in order here.

[Ludi]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Nickel', ' ')A situation where Africans don't have to have 42 kids to make sure enough of them survive to grow enough food to feed about half of them?

[Nickel]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Ludi', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Nickel', 'A') situation where Africans don't have to have 42 kids to make sure enough of them survive to grow enough food to feed about half of them?

[mattduke]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'K')galema Motlanthe, 59, a former trade unionist once imprisoned during the apartheid era on charges of terrorism, was overwhelmingly elected Thursday by Parliament as South Africa's third president.

But whether he merely keeps the seat warm until elections next year — when Jacob Zuma, his party's leader, presumably will take over — depends on whether Zuma, 66, can continue to skirt the corruption charges that have long followed him.

[Cashmere]

Not a very fair title.

If he was convicted of being a terrorist by the apartheid govt, then wasn't he really a freedom fighter?

[americandream]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('mattduke', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'K')galema Motlanthe, 59, a former trade unionist once imprisoned during the apartheid era on charges of terrorism, was overwhelmingly elected Thursday by Parliament as South Africa's third president.

But whether he merely keeps the seat warm until elections next year — when Jacob Zuma, his party's leader, presumably will take over — depends on whether Zuma, 66, can continue to skirt the corruption charges that have long followed him.

[jbrovont]

Usually you only get called a terrorist until you win. Then you get to be a "revolutionary."

It's not that good guys always win, and bad guys always lose. It's that winners are always good guys and losers are always bad guys.

Apartheid really was bad, but until the oppressors got overthrown, they still called everyone against them "terrorists."