From: Dale McMillen <dmcmillen@igc.apc.org>
Newsgroups: alt.politics.greens
Date: 06 Jan 93 22:59 PST
Subject: SUSTAINABLE AGRICULTURE
Nf-ID: #N:cdp:1678600049:000:3304
Nf-From: cdp.UUCP!dmcmillen    Jan  6 22:59:00 1993


Hi Folks,
 
As you may recall, John McCarthy and I had a disagreement over the
value of the Green [sic] Revolution.  To refresh your memory, here
was the discussion:
 
JOHN: The two billion malnourished people are less malnourished than
      before the Green Revolution, and there is a lot more where that
      came from.
 
ME: The Green Revolution [sic] brought in mono-culture crops supported
    by biocides, fertilizers, and oil consuming farm machinery.
    Originally, there was a surplus because the soil was still rich from
    its previous organic care and because the insect pests had not mutated
    to adjust to the biocides.  However, this method of farming began to
    render less and less as the soil was depleted of its organic nutrients
    and the insects became resistant to biocides.  In many parts of the
    world, the situation has gotten so bad that farming communities have had
    to revert to traditional organic methods of farming.  And guess what?
    The soil began to produce abundantly again!
 
JOHN: You just made this up out of anecdotes.  Look up some actual
      statistics of world agricultural production over the last 30 years.
 
Well, since I don't like being called a liar, I did a little research.
It turns out that I found a number of articles which supported my
general statement.  None of these articles actually gets into
world agriculture production statistics directly, but since that
wasn't my issue anyway, I didn't feel the need to extrapolate certain
future assumptions from past statistics.
 
So, I have compiled a number of articles and posted them as a response
to this topic for your reading pleasure.  Let me say, however, that
I am not an expert in this field and am not able to debate many of
the more technical points of these articles.  If you have questions,
you might be able to reach the original author or person who posted the
article on email. Just be sure to postfix "@igc.apc.org" to their account
name.
 
These articles seem to be mixed as to whether the "Green" Revolution
actually increased food production for anything more than the short term.
They do, however, they all seem to agree, when they discuss these subjects,
that it has concentrated wealth and power, harmed the environment with
biocides, disrupted traditional farming communities, added harmful chemicals
to our food, and contributed to world hunger.
 
Here are the articles I've included:
 
The Green Revolution: Another look
 
    Problems of Rice Farmers in the Phillipines
 
Chemical Dependent Farming 2
 
    A U.S. Farmer describes "addiction" to farm chemicals
 
High Cost of Pesticide Dependence
 
    Cornell University Study
 
IPS:NIGER REPORTED TO RETURN PESTIC
 
    U.S. and Europe Dump Pesticides in Africa
 
Sustainable Ag Policy Conf 3/89	1 response
 
    Article describing desireability of Organic Food and its the problems
    associated with continued profitability
 
NGO SUSTAINABLE AGRICULTURE TREATY JUNE 11, 1992
 
    Statment from the United Nations Conference on Environment
    and Development (UNCED)
 
NGO FOOD SECURITY TREATY JUNE 11, 1992
 
    Statment from the United Nations Conference on Environment
    and Development (UNCED)
 
 
Note: Together, all these articles are 1012 lines or 54000 characters.
 
Happy Reading!
 
Dale