Is "green" activism responsible for millions of deaths?

I've always questioned the ethics of people who sit around with their needs comfortably met and dictate acceptable behavior to people under situations of extreme duress. Considering that the green movement has yet to demonstrate any practical advantage to such concepts as "organic" farming one must further question its value when weighed against the suffering and death of millions. It's always easier to behave idealistically when you aren't the one who has to suffer the consequences of the behavior.

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

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article4699096.ece

""The problem is that the western world's 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 the whole of Africa, with the exception of South Africa, with devastating consequences."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/sep/08/gmcrops.food


~Raithere

 

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First of all it's not true that organic farming has no advantages. It's sustainable in the long term, where factory farming is not, due to it's required high inputs of the products of fossil fuel. The soil in the US is basically just a substrate for fertilizers, the fertile top soil of the plains is practically gone.

The same thing is true in Africa. While fertilizer and irrigation might work in the short term, what's going to happen when there is no more fuel for the tractor? ...When the well runs dry? ...When your precious GM seeds succumb to some African disease?

The most promising advance in African agriculture today is the planting of exotic (for us) native African fruit trees. African strains of crops might not produce high yields, but they can survive the local conditions because they have been bred through thousands of years of native selection.

We might also have to accept that with climate change, some parts of Africa might not be able to sustain human habitation.

 

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I'm still looking to see this demonstrated on any large scale. Vast amounts of fertilizer must be brought in and pesticides are still regularly needed. It's only the type of fertilizers and pesticides that are used that is different. Again, I'm waiting to see the advantage be demonstrated. What has been demonstrated is that "organic" farming produces a smaller yield per acre and requires much more labor.

I'm failing to see where this situation would be any different for organic farming. They still need tractors to cultivate, water in arid regions, and natural plants still succumb to diseases. Organic farming is proof against none of this.

Which means that efficiency remains poor and people continue to starve. Meanwhile, drought resistant crops could vastly improve crop yield and save lives. My point exactly.

Unrelated issue.

I will state that I'm not against the improvement of farming methods. Certainly there are plenty of ways we can improve upon our stewardship of the land. I just don't see jumping back to 19th century methods as an improvement and I cannot imagine the morality that justifies asking other people to pay the difference in lives while risking nothing myself.

~Raithere

 

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I figured I should point this out as well. Even if we assume organic farming can eventually equivalently replace current farming methods eventually it cannot do so at the moment. What right do we have in requesting others starve while we figure it out?

~Raithere

 

First of all great avatar.

Secondly, is it really a problem of agriculture there. I would think that even with heavy producing farms, that the powers that be would still get the lions share of any wealth created and control the distibution of food to the poor. It's always more of a political problem there than anything else.

They have enough land to do whatever they want. We aren't keeping them from doing what they need to do, they are.

 

It's the future. What right do we have to make African farmers adopt a way of life that will be obsolete as soon as oil prices become volitile? We might just have to accept that the Earth cannot sustain unlimited numbers of people anywhere they might chose to settle.

I wouldn't prevent Africans from farming any way they would wish, but why actively promote something that will not work for them in the long term? The vast majority of poor African farmers cannot afford a tractor.

Gm crops bred for vield may not have the same resistance to drought that native crops do. Africa needs a uniquely African solution.

 

It's not a matter of making them do anything. The question is; if you have the ability to save someone now is it ethical to pretend to help by offering a less effective solution?

What long term? If you're dead there is no long term.

They do when they're modified specifically to survive droughts. Droughts are not unique to Africa. Such crops are being used in India and Asia with enormous success saving hundreds of millions of lives. Fortunately, people like Norman Borlaug (the greatest man in history *) started their work in those countries before the green idealists got their hooks into politics and started convincing governments that saving millions of lives wasn't as important as the green agenda.

http://www.agbioworld.org/biotech-info/topics/borlaug/special.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Borlaug

~Raithere

 

I believe you're right. What if we gave them more ak-47s, more aids, and salted the entire continent. Natural selection would sort out the rest.

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I agree with you honestly though. I can imagine myself in africa, after they have a problem with communism to liberate them. It's best to help them help themselves. Rather than help them damn themselves, again.

 

I think we have to face the reality that Africa will not be able to sustain so many people no matter what. Would it be better to have them prepare for a way of life that has no future? ...Or better to improve things to a lesser degree that will genuinely serve them for hundreds of years?

It would be better to supply them with billions of condoms.

 

Wow.

I wonder though. Why don't you then suggest we take care of all our problems this way? I mean once the petroleum runs out and we all go to war over the crashing food and energy supplies there will be few, if any, humans left. Those that do survive will necessarily be using organic farming methods and life on Earth can go merrily about its way. I mean, why bother at all?


~Raithere

 

Good point.

 

You might want to check out Borlaug's actual opinions and actions.

You seem to be blurring effective and significant improvements in farming practices with agribusiness takeover of the African agricultural economy. There is no conflict between "organic" and "scientific", "organic" and "improved". Organic researchers (Wes Jackson, say) are very poorly funded, but even so have made the major advances: Borlaug did no genetic engineering, for example - his improvements were made the same basic way the Inca bred potatoes, as "organic" as compost.

 

You mean such as these?

" Borlaug found that some foundation managers and World Bank officials had become hopelessly confused regarding the distinction between pesticides and fertilizer. He says, "The opponents of high-yield for Africa were speaking of the two as if they were the same because they're both made from chemicals, when the scales of toxicity are vastly different. Fertilizer only replaces substances naturally present in the soils anyway."

When asked about the criticisms stemming from fears of the potential hazards of biotechnology and genetically engineered crops, Borlaug comments: "As a matter of fact, Mother Nature has crossed species barriers, and sometimes nature crosses barriers between genera--that is, between unrelated groups of species. Take the case of wheat. It is the result of a natural cross made by Mother Nature long before there was scientific man."

http://www.agbioworld.org/biotech-info/topics/borlaug/special.html

~Raithere

 

They'll do - keep reading. He's an interesting guy, taken as a whole

 

Is the opposite of being "green" responsible for this:

Global warming of 7C could kill billions this century

 

I know that Borlaug's method of crop improvement was crossbreeding and artificial selection rather than GM. However he strongly advocated and implemented modern technology to increase food production. I've also already stated that I support the improvement of farming methods, though I fail to see how decreasing crop yield is an improvement. I fully support research towards a more sustainable, lower environmental impact, less chemically dependent agriculture.

If you have a specific, salient, quotation or point please present it. Otherwise this is merely an aside. None of this is relevant to the thrust of this thread, which is the morality of letting people die for an agenda however noble it might be. Particularly when those driving the politics and policies are not the ones at risk. Wealthy, fat, and happy in countries bursting at the seams with a surplus of food they nobly strive to deny the poorest of the very technologies that create the surplus they feast upon.

~Raithere

 

A few points here:

1. Based upon your prior statements why the fuck do you care? Or is it just Africans that you don't care about?

2. How do you justify the imminent death of millions over some unrealized possible loss?

3. If you're such a fervent believer in the dangers of anthropogenic global warming that you feel that others should die in order to help prevent it why not put your money where your mouth is and join their sacrifice?


~Raithere

 

He also favored local political control, farming done by farmers who own and control their land and produce food for their fellow citizens; agricultural practices that improve, rather than destroy, the soil and water base of agrarian civilization; food that is nutritionally superior and not toxic to eat; economic structures that do not beggar one part of the community in enriching another.

He is as well known for working with actual farmers, getting his boots muddy and working on actual improvements at that level, as he is for any great theoretical achievements of his. He would never have created the industrial agribusiness that destroyed simultaneously the farming and pastoral communities of the Kazakh steppes and the fishing communities of the Aral Sea.

You continue to divide the matter along "technological" lines. That division is what kills millions of people - the false choice between corporate-run agribusiness based in international trade and banking, and inadequate hoe gardening of a few meager and grasshopper-eaten foodstuffs without a road to market them.

For example: The "organic" division in genetic engineering is not in the technique of the genetic combinations, but in their nature and purpose. If you use genetic engineering techniques to do what Borlaug did, to imitate "natural" breeding only faster and cheaper, to the overall benefit of the farmers and the farm and the local community involved, that's one thing. If you use it to create a short term bonanza crop whose cultivation degrades the soil and poisons the water, while imposing financial dependency of the local farming community on international banking and planetary trade, that's different.

 

I don't really care, but that's beside the point. We should do whatever expedient action possible in the interest of human beings. Right now people are dying from global warming, it's not a future threat. Do we double down and try to turn sub-saharan Africa into the American midwest? Or do we develop African solutions to African problems with agriculture that is local, sustainable, and that keeps the money with the people?

It's not like GM seeds and industrial farming is saving people in Africa presently, except when we simply send them our food.

Others are going to die anyway, it's not a sacrifice, you are making a false choice. Climate change in Africa is what made human beings so resourceful in the first place. We have to reject the hubris that an unlimited supply of cheap oil has imprinted on our psyche, that not every problem can be solved with technology.

 

I'll reply in more detail to last two posts when I have a bit more time as I want to be careful about not getting off topic. For now I will merely point out that all I am seeing here is avoidance of the question. Regardless if your motivation is anti-corporatism, environmentalism, global warming, or long term sustainability both of you merely seem to be making justifications for letting millions of other people die while taking no personal risk.

~Raithere