THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
An Online Journal of Political Commentary & Analysis
Volume VIII, Issue # 251, December 21, 2006
Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
Government Committed to & Acting in Accord with Conservative Principles
Ensures a Nation's Strength, Progress, & Prosperity
ELITE MAGAZINE SAYS HIGH-YIELD FARMERS
ARE SAVING WORLD WILDLIFE
By Dennis T. Avery
HIGH-YIELD AGRICULTURE AS SAVIOR OF THE EARTH'S WILDLANDS & WILD SPECIES: UNLIKE LOW-YIELD, ORGANIC
FARMERS, HIGH-YIELD FARMERS, WHO USE INDUSTRIAL FERTILIZERS, CHEMICAL SPRAYS & IRRIGATION WATER FROM
DAMMED RIVERS, ARE PROVIDING THE SAFEST & MOST PLENTIFUL FOOD SUPPLY IN HISTORY &, AT THE SAME TIME, ARE
LEAVING ENOUGH ROOM ON THE PLANET FOR FORESTS & WILDLIFE -- THE SUCCESS OF HIGH-YIELD FARMING & ITS
BENEFITS TO PEOPLE & THE ENVIRONMENT REFUTE THE PROPAGANDA CLAIMS OF POLITICAL ENVIRONMENTALISTS, THE
HOLISTIC MOVEMENT, & THE ADVOCATES OF THE ORGANIC FOODS INDUSTRY -- REALITY VERSUS THE IDEOLOGY &
PROPAGANDA OF POLITICAL ENVIRONMENTALISM
FULL STORY:
The Economist, one of the most influential magazines in the world, is lavishing praise on non other than the world’s
high-yield farmers — for saving the planet’s wildlands and wild species!
That’s right, a powerful media outlet is touting the environmental triumph of those oft-reviled farmers who grow food using
industrial fertilizers, chemical sprays, and (horrors) irrigation water from dammed rivers. After 40 years of an organic, Green,
and holistic coalition effort to turn our food providers into villains, a few non-farmers have finally caught on: Without
high-yield farming, there wouldn’t be any room on the planet for forests or wildlife.
The magazine’s cover for December 9-15 prominently features “Why Ethical Food Harms the Planet.” Its editorial says:
“Farming is inherently bad for the planet. Since humans took it
up around 11,000 years ago, the result has been deforestation
on a massive scale. But, following the ‘green revolution’ of the
1960s, greater use of chemical fertilizer has tripled grain yields
with very little increase in the area of land under cultivation.
Organic methods, which rely on crop rotation, manure and
compost in place of fertilizer, are far less intensive. So
producing the world’s current agricultural output organically
would require several times as much land as is currently
cultivated. There wouldn’t be much room left for the
rainforest.”
As it happens, humans are already cropping and pasturing about 37 percent of the world’s land area and using virtually all of
the high-quality land. That means doubling the cropped area, from about 10 percent to more than 25 percent of the global land
area, to practice organic-only food production would more than double soil erosion.
With the low, mostly organic crop yields of 1950, the world would need to clear virtually all of the world’s remaining forests to
grow today’s food supply, leaving no additional land to provide better diets for the undernourished in Africa or to feed the last
increment of human population growth due to peak in 2050. All 16 million square miles of the world’s remaining forests would
be gone by now.
The Economist notes that organic farmers can’t even use the soil-safest low-till farming systems. Low-till uses herbicides
to kill weeds, so the seeds can be planted without disturbing earthworms, soil bacteria, or soil carbon. Organic farmers can’t kill
their own cover crops, let alone their weeds, without bare-earth, energy-costly plows and mechanical cultivators.
The magazine is just as harsh about the other feel-good food buying strategies. Fair Trade coffee? Ninety percent of the
premium goes to the retailer, not to the coffee pickers in the Third World.
“Buying locally” too often burns more fuel for consumers’ shopping trips than is needed to move produce long distances by
ship, train, and truck.
Fancy restaurants’ chefs tout the wonders of organic food, perhaps in order to justify their high meal prices and/or to appeal to
elitists. The Green movement continues to scare consumers about pesticide residues, though tests show we swallow a
thousand times more “cancer risk” in the natural pesticides that plants have evolved to protect themselves.
The Economist concludes that saving the world by shopping is emotionally appealing — but is as likely to lead the
world away from progress as to improve it.
Our conclusion: It is past high time to return the White Hats to today’s conventional farmers who are doing a phenomenal job
of providing the safest food supply in history and allowing the wild creatures to continue to live in their forest homes.
LINKS TO RELATED TOPICS:
Policy Issues Relating to Energy, Environment,
& Natural Resources
Government, the Economy, & Economic Prosperity
Science, Ethics, & Human Health
Dennis T. Avery is a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute in Washington, D.C., and is the Director of the Institute's Center for
Global Food Issues (www.cgfi.org). Formerly he was a senior analyst for the United States
Department of State. He is the co-author, with atmospheric physicist Fred Singer, of the book, Unstoppable Global Warming:
Every 1500 Years (Blue Ridge Summit, Pennsylvania: Rowman & Littlefield, 2006). Readers may write Avery at Post Office
Box 202, Churchville, Virginia, 24421. Email: cgfi@rica.net
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THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
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Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
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