Another great seminar - Steve Savage on global warming and agriculture. He described some very interesting observations on the interaction of environmental protection and the free market.
First, he pointed out that despite all the foot-dragging from the Feds, major corporations are already adapting to global warming - mostly in anticipation of public demand, but also in savings of increased efficiency. In the vacuum of government leadership though, each company is haphazardly defining "sustainability" differently (and declaring how their products fulfill it). Since these decisions are driven largely by marketing, little care is invested in analyzing whether apparently environmentally-friendly practices really are (read Wal-Mart's foray into organic food).
Unfortunately, some private certification agencies are similarly more interested in public perception than scientific reality. If any such "sustainability" certification becomes popular, major companies will be compelled to adopt them, enshrining practices that aren't really good for our environment. Again, unless some government or scientific association steps in to fill the void with some facts.
Secondly, he pointed out that in spite of all the lobbying from environmentalists, the only organizations that have managed to prevent the marketing of GMO crops are major food retailers and manufacturers in charge of valuable brands. These companies have already halted the introduction of cultivars such as a ripening-controlled banana and glyphosate-resistant wheat, both of which and with others would have contributed to huge reductions in worldwide pesticide and herbicide use.
note: He also recommended Starving for Science, by Robert Paarlberg, for a description of how the crunchy elite, especially in Europe, have kept life-saving biotechnology out of developing countries in places like Africa. I'll read this and get back to you.In the end, Dr. Savage really emphasized that if you want to optimize the sustainability of agriculture, you really need to establish appropriate standard metrics. He pointed out that if you measure pollution per unit of land, you encourage low yielding techniques that require more land to produce the same amount of food, and produce more pollution per amount of food. He argued that we should compare agricultural systems by the amount of pollution (E.g. carbon) produced per bushel of food. He cited a few studies that found that intensive agriculture, with intelligent use of chemicals and GMOs, produced more food per land/amount of pollution in comparison to organic agriculture (with limited exceptions).
It was also interesting to hear that organic agriculture (contrary to all the hype) accounts for a tiny fraction of total agriculture (half a percent!) and is growing at a slow, linear rate. In contrast, modern no-till ag now accounts for 15% of all ag. He then used no-till ag as a jumping off point to explain how modern, intensive agricultural practices including safe and highly specific chemicals and erosion-limiting no-tillage could be used to sequester carbon. (as another aside, he showed a great chart showing that many modern pesticides and herbicides such as glyphosate, are safer than aspirin and caffeine!)
He explained how a carefully constructed carbon trading program could quickly become very profitable for many growers. At $5 a ton, carbon would produce greater domestic income than the national grape crop, at $10 a ton, more than wheat, and at $30 it would become the nations second most profitable agricultural "crop."
Overall he recommended changing ag regulations from a system that rewards inefficiency and ignores pollution to one that rewards efficiency and decreases pollution by linking true costs to monetary costs. According to some ag economists, this problem will take care of itself with a little regulation.
Or as the agronomists say,
"The best cure for high commodity prices is high commodity prices"
3 comments:
"[...]glyphosate-resistant wheat, both of which and with others would have contributed to huge reductions in worldwide pesticide and herbicide use."
I I Would like to see the study that came to that conclusion and find out just how muh money Monsanto spent funding it... The truth is that herbicide use increases dramatically w/ the introduction of HT crops and increases progressively as the targeted weeds develop a tolerance to the the herbicide until you end up with a much greater problem than you had to begin with, a problem commonly known as *super weeds.* Plug that into google and educate yourself. And if your Mr Savage is so fond of glyphosphate, give him a nice tall glass of Round-Up and ask him to enjoy it in your presence.(Keep your phone handy to call 911.))After all, it's no more dangerous than aspirin or coffee, right? Here's the deal. Pouring tons of synthetic poisons onto soil poisons it, makes it unhealthy. You cannot grow a healthy plant in unhealthy soil. Organic farming can produce just as much yield as conventional ag methods, but it does so in a sustainable manner, and produces a higher quality more nutritious product.
thanks for the comment!
The point with the glyphosate-resistant crops is that it allows you to control weeds with an incredibly safe herbicide as opposed to using more dangerous pre-emergent herbicides.
Agriculture, like everything, requires a cost-benefit analysis in the end. Agriculture is inherently and always destructive to the environment, and has been for 10,000 years, organic or otherwise. All agriculture displaces wild ecosystems and produces pollution (whether it's nitrate runoff caused by manure or synthetic fertilizer). My ideal is to generate all the food we need with as little land use and pollution as possible. Few objective studies have compared organic to modern agriculture - because so many people on each side have vested interests and because few people can do both forms of ag correctly. The little work that has been done though, does not provide any evidence for your assertion that organic food is more nutritious or safe.
And I'd definitely not like to try drinking a big glass of Roundup!
... but I would drink it instead of atrazine (an incredibly toxic old-fashioned synthetic) or sulfur (an organic pesticide and the number one cause of farmworker injuries in California) any day!
In the end we need to choose a combination of new and old techniques that will allow us to eat with as little ecosystem damage as possible, and encourage our growers to farm responsibly - e.g. not let thoughtless organic farmers generate E. coli outbreaks by fertilizing their fields with un-composted manure!
oh, i forgot to address your "superweeds" comment. Weeds and pests have been developing resistance to human pesticides as long as we've been inventing them.
Resistance generally doesn't develop to very broad spectrum pesticides (e.g. sulfur, copper and fire), which tend to also be extremely dangerous to animals (such as farm workers!).
That more specific pesticides lead to resistance is a fact that we've known about for decades. Every time a new pesticide is invented, the scientists involved invariably predict how long it will last until it becomes useless. It's a basic dogma of plant pathology that, thanks to genetic variation, resistance to every possible chemical already exists in the natural population BEFORE it is ever used! The new pesticide becomes useless whenever the right pest is able to build up its population enough to be noticed.
So what if glyphosate resistance develops in weeds? When Roundup becomes useless as a herbicide, it'll be relegated to the pesticide museum with hundreds of other once-common chemicals (E.g. Benomyl!). It's a basic fact of ag that none of these chemicals last forever. It'll will just be replaced with the next big thing for another decade or so until the next big thing becomes useless. Ag scientists are generally impressed if new pesticides or resistance traits last even a decade or two.
"Superweeds" is really a misnomer too. It's been extremely well documented that all pesticide resistance traits in weeds and pathogens incur fitness costs and virtually disappear from the population almost as soon as you stop spraying said pesticide. Weeds and pathogens don't just accumulate these traits and hold onto them forever.
It's been shown repeatedly that, to the contrary, pests that hold multiple pesticide-resistance traits are much LESS fit than their non-resistant counterparts. There's nothing "super" about them.
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