Jennifer Marohasy

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Real Food Shortage Will Require Real Science and Technology?

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The British government is preparing to open the way for genetically modified crops on the grounds they could help combat the global food crisis.

At least that’s according to Andrew Grice, Policitical Editor with The Independent, reporting on a meeting between Britian’s Environment minister, Phil Woolas, and the Agricultural Biotechnology Council, amidst claims that “rocketing food prices and food shortages in the world’s poorest countries mean the time is right to relax Britain’s policy on use of GM crops.”

As Graham Young, Chief Editor of e-journal On Line Opinion, recently emailed me, “With food shortages becoming the new Greenhouse type issue, I think that all is set to change. Governments will be throwing money at scientists who say they can feed the world, and it will become a new glamour industry… it is perhaps ironic that hard science, rather than computer modeling, might come back into vogue now that we have a real, rather than potential, problem.”

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Comments

  1. Ivan says

    “it is perhaps ironic that hard science, rather than computer modeling, might come back into vogue now that we have a real, rather than potential, problem..”

    The irony is that the ‘real’ problem has in no small part been created by the AGW pseudo-science and all its attendant hysteria.

  2. Sid Reynolds says

    Certainly new GM crops becoming widely accepted by governments, will be a positive step to stabilizing world food supplies.

    However the Australian as well as the British, and other western governments, have to do a lot more then that. The policies of our own Australian Government, are distinctly anti-farmer, and anti-food production.

    A clear example is their efforts to close down our irrigation industry in a time of drought and low dam levels. Instead of prioritising water for food production, the Government has been taking it instead for “envirionmental flows”, to appease their well heeled urban green supporters.

    Most of the dams were primarily built for irrigation and food production, and if they had not been built, the streams would have been dry during these dry times with no “envirionmental flows” any way.

    And native flora and fauna would survive and re-generate as it always has following extended dry times. (Which makes such a laugh of the ridiculous current claim that the MDB will be dead and finished in six months time).

    Governments, and their agencies are also acting irresponsibly, if not wilfully, by urging seed companies and primary producers to develop seed varieties and farming practices to cope with a ‘hotter dryer climate’ when there is no hard evidence that this is so, (that is, outside the virtual reality world of the global warming industry).

    Irrisponsible and wilful, because what then happens if the world climate continues to cool as it has been for last decade?

    What will probably save us is that commercially focused primary production will always adapt to real changes and threats, rather then those coming from cyber space, and the halls of political wisdom.

  3. Gary Gulrud says

    Right, the British government can safely and responsibly administer GM creations better than Monsanto by throwing money at its hollowed-out academies.
    This has been tried before, see Russian History, 1917-1987.
    Keep those grinding wheels humming lads.

  4. Luke says

    So Reynolds – how do write that nonsense with a straight face. Perhaps a lack of rainfall causes a lack of inflow which causes a lack of irrigation water. Too hard to fathom.

    If things “just bounce back” how come we’re shelling out hundreds of millions ongoing in drought aid when you have it “under control”. How many decades of drought aid would you like now in NSW. You’ve had enough 1 in 20 handouts to last you 300 years.

    No Australian warming trend – oh come now “data deficit Sid”. Where is your national spatial analysis.

    If the system bounces back so well how come trees alive for hundreds of years are now karking it.

    Your agenda presumably is to turn the Murray into a stinking drainage ditch.

    And pray tell where is your graph of a global cooling trend?

    Here’s mine from one of your mates mate.

    http://bp3.blogger.com/__VkzVMn3cHA/SFs25eMZegI/AAAAAAAAAC8/pDT5GEKQTUA/s1600-h/11+Year+Temp+Data.bmp

  6. Ivan says

    “Not sure you can ascribe the drought to AGW:”

    No sensible person would.

    Equally, no sensible person would believe that if we start taxing people for burning fossil fuels that the drought will suddenly break.

    But then again, some people obviously live in a world divorced from reality. No point in trying to argue with them – they might get dangerous.

  7. Helen Mahar says

    “The World Bank recently released a major review of the future of global agriculture, by 400 of the world’s top agricultural scientists. The International Assessment of Agricultural Science and Technology for Development report makes it clear that farmers are now the most vital people in the world. Not only are they responsible for feeding us, but they also manage most of the landscape, its water, biodiversity and, potentially, a large part of climate change via the soil carbon they manage. Without them, we are all in a lot of trouble.”
    Link http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=7514.

    Farmers are going to need real science, based on real research and hard data, to tackle the challenges ahead.

    But agriclutural research has been gutted in Australia over the last two decades. Now the CSIRO is closing a down a number of rural research stations, either shifting the research onus onto State Ag Departments, dismissing hands on researchers, or redeploying them to … wait for it … computer jobs.

    Wrong time to make such a wrong turn, CSIRO.

  8. Aaron Edmonds says

    Here here Helen! Never before have we required more investment in agricultural research than we need today. Why? Because all breeding in the past assumed thing – OIL WOULD ALWAYS BE CHEAP. Now inputs are hyperinflating plant breeders have a massive project ahead to adapt crop varieties to low water, low input and more resiliant biotypes. Of course it is too late now. We have a food crisis on our hands and the recent floods in America are the disaster likely to trigger continued hyperinflation across the entireagricultural commodity complex. Meats are starting to stir (futures account looking very healthy because of it) and it won’t be until meat prices double that the developed world will know how damaging food inflation truly is. 40-50% of disposable income heading to food within 1-2 years in Australia. What is that going to do to already deflating house prices, interest rates and debt loads?

  9. Schiller Thurkettle says

    Helen and Aaron,

    You are both spot-on.

    In developed nations, only a small percentage of the population are farmers. This leaves them with nearly no political clout.

    In fact, it leaves those farmers with about as much political clout as farmers in Africa. Or farmers in Europe, for that matter.

    Actually, farmers everywhere on the planet get the short end of the stick. Farmers everywhere live on the brink of feast and famine, because they’re at the mercy of everything from weather to commodity prices.

    Now, when the developed world is discovering the available food is no longer “a feast”, and a cheap feast at that, cozy urbanites will have to change their attitudes about the conditions they dictate to farmers.

    And dictate, they do. Proceeding with the assumption that farmers are ‘rapists of the countryside’, urbanites impose terms on farmers without regard to the realities of tilling (and preserving) the soil.

    Even so, things are not bad enough. When food poverty strikes even the most affluent major cities of the developed nations, then, finally, a consensus will emerge: farmers know their business. Let them use all the tools available to give us food.

    The situation won’t be bad enough to weaken the green hand that throttles agricultural progress in Africa, though, because the greens have taught us that dead darkies is “all natural”.

    Cynically yours,

    Schiller.

  10. Helen Mahar says

    Shiller, its all very satisfying to despise those who have despised farmers for so long, as I know. But that is not going to get the crops in. The following is more persuasive.

    http://sj.farmonline.com.au/news/nationalrural/agribusiness-and-general/agriculture-to-visit-the-golden-age-of-the-1950s-and0=-1960s/799180.aspx

    Chudleigh claims “It would take a decade of higher prices to drive the level of investment and research needed for the world to ensure its future food needs.” The higher prices are with us, now, and will be for some years. Yep. Research follows the money.

    Is the CSIRO jumping ship too soon?