by Michael Smith (Veshengro)
Small-scale, not industrial farming, is the answer to food shortages and climate change, so organic farmers are arguing.
In meeting at the Organic World Congress, the International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements IFOAM - www.ifoam.org - has criticized a recent UN food summit for advocating chemical fertilizers and genetically modified (GM) crops rather than organic solutions to tackle world hunger.
This shows that where the UN stands on this issue, we can clearly see here, and as to who is backing certain groups within the UN; in this case, quite obvious, the likes of Monsanto and others of that industry.
The World Bank says an extra 100 million people worldwide could go hungry as a result of the sharp rise in the price of food staples in the last year.
And at the same time the rich countries of the world, including busybodies such as the UN, advocate the creation and production of bio-fuels from food crops. If that makes sense then I don't know what the world is coming to.
At the UN food summit in Rome this month, the World Bank pledged $1.2 billion in grants to help with the food crisis.
"The $1.2 billion the World Bank says will solve the food crisis in Africa is a $1.2 billion subsidy to the chemical industry," Vandana Shiva, an Indian physics professor and environmental activist, said, speaking at the Organic World Congress in Modena.
"Countries are made dependent on chemical fertilizers when their prices have tripled in the last year due to rising oil prices," she said. "I say to governments: spend a quarter of that on organic farming and you've solved your problems."
Industrial farming is based on planting a single crop on vast surfaces and heavy use of chemical fertilizers, a process that used 10 times more energy than it produced. The rest turns into waste as greenhouse gases, chemical runoffs and pesticide residues in our food.
In contrast, organic farms could increase output by 10 times by growing many different species of plants at the same time, which helps to retain soil and water. On a one-acre farm in India they can grow 250 species of plants.
The UN's Food and Agriculture Organization Director General Jacques Diouf said in December 2007 there was no reason to believe that organic agriculture could substitute conventional farming systems in ensuring the world's food security.
"You cannot feed six billion people today and nine billion in 2050 without judicious use of chemical fertilizers”, he said.
You cannot? If people begin to live more sensibly and if we do not waste growing space for the creation of bio-fuels and especially not food crops then maybe we can actually do that.
Vandana Shiva has begun a civil disobedience campaign in India against the patenting of natural seeds, particularly of crops that resist flooding and drought and can better withstand climate change.
"We need this worldwide”, she said. “Seeds are for everyone.”
The patenting of seeds is also a rather evil idea, in this writer's opinion, as by doing so, that is to say by patenting this or that seed, seeds will then only be available, legally, via the likes of Monsanto and their ilk.
A quarter of all greenhouse gases are emitted by industrially farmed crops and livestock, according to IFOAM. This proportion rises to 40 percent when the emissions caused by transporting commodities around the world are included.
Members of the IFOAM also criticized the production of fuel from grains, citing a US university study that it took 1.3 gallons of fossil fuel to make 1 gallon of ethanol from corn. Which can only be said to be bonkers. How can anyone claim that bio-fuels then will remove our dependence on non-renewable fossil fuels?
We can but wonder as to what the agenda here really is... food for thought for sure.
M Smith (Veshengro), June 2008
Small farms best for environment
