From: gary@ke4zv.uucp (Gary Coffman)
Newsgroups: sci.environment
Subject: Re: Malthus was just ahead of his time
Date: 6 Apr 92 15:40:42 GMT
Article-I.D.: ke4zv.1992Apr6.154042.10089
Reply-To: gary@ke4zv.UUCP (Gary Coffman)
Organization: Gannett Technologies Group

In article <NELSON.92Apr2215009@cheetah.clarkson.edu> nelson@sun.soe.clarkson.edu (Russ Nelson) writes:
>In article <1992Apr3.010202.25966@cs.rochester.edu> dietz@cs.rochester.edu (Paul Dietz) writes:
>
>   In article <1992Apr2.230421.5973@zip.eecs.umich.edu> carnes@sparky.eecs.umich.edu (Richard Carnes) writes:
>
>    >  expand world food output.  One is the growing scarcity of new cropland
>    >  and fresh water that affects most of the world.  The second is the
>    >  lack of any new technologies, such as hybrid corn or chemical
>    >  fertilizer, that can dramatically boost output.  And the third is the
>    >  negative effects of planetary environmental degradation on food
>    >  production.
>
>   These "old" technologies are certainly widely used in the developed
>   world, but they are still new to the third world.  I understand
>   that most crops used in the tropics have not been the subject
>   of selective breeding, and that when this is done, as with the
>   cassava in western Africa, the improvement can be considerable.
>
>Smacks of racism to me, Paul.  "Those people with dark skins are too
>stupid to pick the best seeds for next year's crop."  We white boys
>will go in there and show them how.  White man's burden and all that.

Picking the "best" seeds for next year doesn't give hybrid vigor. Instead
it depletes the genetic stock on which hybrid vigor is based. It's a crude
old purebred technique that leads eventually to genetic collapse of the
stock as the genetic pool becomes smaller and smaller. Your ignorance,
as well as your racism is showing.

>Selective breeding is nothing new.  Even dumb niggers like G.W. Carver
>figured it out long ago.

This is disgusting. George Washington Carver was one of the brightest
agronomists of the pre-genetic engineering era. His work at a land
grant University on hybridization led to rapid advances in crop yields
here in the US. Thanks to the system of land grant Universities and
the Extension service, his techniques, and the techniques developed
by many other bright researchers,  were rapidly communicated to
farmers in every part of this country. This system of agricultural
research and communications is the bedrock of the Green Revolution
in agriculture in this country. It's missing from most of the third
world. 

The Extension service's counseling and demonstration plots have 
successfully spread the latest techniques to every farmer. Few
countries in the third world have shown any interest in developing the
systems needed to bring their farmers the results of the latest
research. That's one of the main reasons their agricultural practices 
have remained rooted in the past while we churn out surplus bounty.

Mechanization, mass produced fertilizers, and chemical controls have allowed
an enormous reduction in the *labor* input to American farming, but it's
the hybrid seed, and the techniques developed at the land grant schools
that have been the *real* generators of bounty. The third world can
substitute cheap hand labor for machinery and chemicals and *still* reap 
many of the gains in production of the Green Revolution.

>--russ <nelson@sun.soe.clarkson.edu> I'm proud to be a humble Quaker.

Farmers in the third world aren't stupid. They're like you Russ, they're
ignorant. Most aren't as boorish though.

Gary