THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
An Online Journal of Political Commentary & Analysis
Volume XIII, Issue # 287, December 12, 2011
Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
Government Committed to & Acting in Accord with Conservative Principles
Ensures a Nation's Strength, Progress, & Prosperity
THE WASHINGTON POST CONVERTS TO CONSERVATION?
By Dennis T. Avery
THE IMPACT OF GOVERNMENT ECONOMIC & ENVIRONMENTAL POLICIES ON A NATION'S FOOD PRODUCTION: THE GREEN REVOLUTION VERSUS
ENVIRONMENTALISM -- BIOTECHNOLOGY & HIGH-YIELD AGRICULTURE VERSUS LOW-YIELD ORGANIC FARMING -- THE EUROPEAN UNION'S BLOCKADE OF
BIOTECHNOLOGY -- THE VERY POOR JUDGEMENT OF THE EUROPEAN UNION, AS REGARDS ITS AGRICULTURAL & TRADE POLICIES
FULL STORY:
For 25 years, the Washington Post has praised organic foods, while I warned that low-yield organic farming posed a threat to the world’s wildlife. I estimated
that Norman Borlaug’s Green Revolution not only saved billions of people from starvation, but, at the same time, saved seven million square miles of wildlife habitat
that would otherwise have been plowed down for more low-yielding crops. Seven million square miles is the land area of South America. That’s “high-yield
conservation.”
I was thus amazed when a December 4, 2011, Washington Post editorial recommended more high-yield farming! The Post noted in “Feeding the
Future” that human numbers may rise as high as 10 billion before they level off about 2050. “The smart response,” said the Post, “is to improve how humans
produce food by applying ever-more-efficient agricultural techniques more widely.” The paper even prodded the environmentalist movement for opposing
“biotechnology, another important tool for efficiency . . . which enhances the ancient practice of artificial genetic selections and could make crops more productive
and more resistant to drought and bad weather.” The editorial also chided the European Union, where “unfounded opposition [to biotechnology] is particularly
extreme . . . blocking just the sort of breakthroughs environmentalists and world poverty advocates should encourage.”
The Post’s change of heart is coming at the crucial moment. Yes, the world’s seven billionth person has just been born, somewhere. But the Post now
seems to realize that birth rates in the poor countries have come about 80 percent of the way to stability since 1960. Birth rates in the First World are already well
below the replacement rate of 2.1 births. The lower birth rates mirror the planet’s declining death rates and human numbers are about to shift from slow increase to
slow decrease.
This means the world’s current wildlife habitat could mostly be saved with one last major burst of higher-yield farming technology. We’ll need to double world food
output in just 40 years — but for the last time! Global food demand will stabilize, then decline. The Reverend Thomas Malthus’ 19th-century misunderstanding of
population dynamics can then finally be put to rest.
The food production problem is that we’re farming just about all of the planet’s high-quality land — and using the available high-yield technologies on most of it:
fertilizer, pesticides, irrigation, improved seeds. The one big high-yield farming technology we haven’t fully exploited is biotechnology.
In fact, the European Union has not only opposed biotech for its own markets, but has threatened the Third World countries with import bans, if they plant biotech
seeds to feed their own people. The European Union has “helped” poor countries install onerous regulations to ensure that new biotech breakthroughs won’t get
into farmers’ fields until decades have passed, if ever. “Golden rice” can save millions of poor children in rice-eating culture from going blind and both mothers and
children dying of severe Vitamin A deficiency. It was discovered 20 years ago, and hasn’t yet been allowed to be planted in a farmer’s field!
The European Union thinks this blockade of biotech is very clever. However, they also thought it was very clever to let Greece, Italy, and Spain overspend their
budgets for decades, while Germany and France covered the debts. Now the differences are too great to paper over. We, and perhaps even the Washington
Post, understand more fully now that the EU’s judgment on longterm issues is highly questionable — and, in the case of the Third World, despicable.
LINKS TO RELATED TOPICS:
Agriculture, the Economy, & Human Health & Welfare:
Policy Issues Relating to Food Production & Consumption
Political Environmentalism Versus Human Progress & Prosperity:
Policy Issues Relating to Energy, Environment,
& Natural Resources
Dennis T. Avery, a senior fellow for the Hudson Institute in Washington, D.C., is an environmental economist. He was formerly a senior analyst for the U.S.
Department of State. He is co-author, with S. Fred Singer of Unstoppable Global Warming Every 1500 Years. Readers may write to him at P.O. Box 202,
Churchville, Virginia, 2442; send email to cgfi@hughes.net; or visit our website at www.cgfi.org
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THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
An Online Journal of Political Commentary & Analysis
Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
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Conservative Government Ensures a Nation's Strength, Progress, & Prosperity