From McGill University A plan to improve crop yields instead of shutting down industrial society as some potential eco terrorists want to do. Norman Borlaug made huge advances in agriculture. He was an American agronomist, humanitarian, and Nobel laureate who has been called “the father of the Green Revolution”. Borlaug was one of only six people to have won the Nobel Peace Prize, the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Congressional Gold Medal. He was also a recipient of the Padma Vibhushan, India’s second highest civilian honor. If this plan can do anything close to what Borlaug was able to accomplish, I’m all for it. FYI according to Wikipedia, “Green Revolution” refers to a series of research, development, and technology transfer initiatives, occurring between the 1940s and the late 1970s, that increased agriculture production around the world, beginning most markedly in the late 1960s, not to be confused with the counterproductive “deep green resistance”.
Feeding the world while protecting the planet
International team of researchers designs global plan for sustainable agriculture
The problem is stark: One billion people on earth don’t have enough food right now. It’s estimated that by 2050 there will be more than nine billion people living on the planet.
Meanwhile, current agricultural practices are amongst the biggest threats to the global environment. This means that if we don’t develop more sustainable practices, the planet will become even less able to feed its growing population than it is today
But now a team of researchers from Canada, the U.S., Sweden and Germany has come up with a plan to double the world’s food production while reducing the environmental impacts of agriculture. Their findings were recently published in the journal Nature.
By combining information gathered from crop records and satellite images from around the world, they have been able to create new models of agricultural systems and their environmental impacts that are truly global in scope.
McGill geography professor Navin Ramankutty, one of the team leaders on the study, credits the collaboration between researchers for achieving such important results. “Lots of other scholars and thinkers have proposed solutions to global food and environmental problems. But they were often fragmented, only looking at one aspect of the problem at one time. And they often lacked the specifics and numbers to back them up. This is the first time that such a wide range of data has been brought together under one common framework, and it has allowed us to see some clear patterns. This makes it easier to develop some concrete solutions for the problems facing us.”
A five-point plan for feeding the world while protecting the planet
The researchers recommend:
- Halting farmland expansion and land clearing for agricultural purposes, particularly in the tropical rainforest. This can be achieved using incentives such as payment for ecosystem services, certification and ecotourism. This change will yield huge environmental benefits without dramatically cutting into agricultural production or economic well-being.
- Improving agricultural yields. Many farming regions in Africa, Latin America and Eastern Europe are not living up to their potential for producing crops – something known as “yield gaps”. Improved use of existing crop varieties, better management and improved genetics could increase current food production nearly by 60 per cent.
- Supplementing the land more strategically. Current use of water, nutrients and agricultural chemicals suffers from what the research team calls “Goldilocks’ Problem”: too much in some places, too little in others, rarely just right. Strategic reallocation could substantially boost the benefit we get from precious inputs.
- Shifting diets. Growing animal feed or biofuels on prime croplands, no matter how efficiently, is a drain on human food supply. Dedicating croplands to direct human food production could boost calories produced per person by nearly 50 per cent. Even shifting nonfood uses such as animal feed or biofuel production away from prime cropland could make a big difference.
- Reducing waste. One-third of the food produced by farms ends up discarded, spoiled or eaten by pests. Eliminating waste in the path that food takes from farm to mouth could boost food available for consumption another 50 per cent.
The study also outlines approaches to the problem that would help policy-makers reach informed decisions about the agricultural choices facing them. “For the first time, we have shown that it is possible to both feed a hungry world and protect a threatened planet,” said lead author Jonathan Foley, head of the University of Minnesota’s Institute on the Environment. “It will take serious work. But we can do it.”
The research was funded by NSERC, NASA, NSF
The study Solutions for a Cultivated Planet was published in Nature. To read an abstract: http://www.nature.com/nature/
These “researchers” apparently didn’t do much in the way of research. They neglected to consider the realities of politics and economics, the wisdom of farmers and the science of human nutrition. I readily agree that turning food or feed crops into fuel is utter folly. I vehemently oppose any suggestion of a global switch to to vegetarian diets. Humans must consume protein to maintain health. Now, it is possible to get all essential amino acids from vegetable sources, but it isn’t easy and the total volume and variety of various grains and legumes that must be consumed is impressive. Animal protein (meat and fish) is a concentrated, efficient source of essential protein (particularly specific amino acids not found in soy). Then, of course, there are all the animal by-products mankind utilizes (e.g. milk, leather, wool, etc.). Then one has to consider that farmers don’t necessarily consider maximum calories and nutrition per acre, but rather $ per acre for the crops they produce. SW Michigan has incredibly fertile crop land. You can grow virtually anything there that can withstand winter. There several really large raspberry farms in the area. The same land could produce a LOT more soybeans than raspberries, but raspberries, even though labor intensive to harvest, yield much higher profits.
If we could end ethanol subsidies and the government mandated use the industry would collapse. Within two years the cost of food would drop precipitously. If feed stock gets cheaper, so does meat and every other product made from these crops. I wouldn’t dare sully the good name of Norman Borlaug with this tripe.
If the price is high enough it will be produced, the only certainty is that phd dictats will do nothing. Third world problems are numerous but if you want Incentivise producion in areas of deficit, ensure stable prices and educate the local farmers. Support local co-operatives to process foods, create distrubition networks and supply inputs. Not rocket science.
DrDavid says:
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7. Ban ethanol.
Don’t you mean Ban ethanol for fuel? I would assume that ethanol for human consumption should not be banned.
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No, ethanol production for human consumption is way more efficient, calory-wise, than meat production, and should be encouraged.
As you read this look at the whole picture including the land grab by Al Gore’s New Forest Co. funded by the World Bank and HSBC. Consider David Rockefeller’s PRIVATE annual luncheons at his family’s Westchester County estate with the IMF and World Bank and the world’s finance ministers.
Consider Clinton’s admission that he in part through ratifying the WTO and NAFTA, was responsible for the 2008 food riots and the annihilation of Haiti’s farming.
At this point I rather FOLLOW THE MONEY then be hoodwinked by pretty words.
The question of course is this about making money from forcing third world farmers to use patented seeds that then need chemicals to grow instead of local varieties that have adapted to the local environment over thousands of years.
I am well aware of hybrid vigor and I have no real problem with GMO if properly tested, what I do have a problem with is seed monopolies or monopolies/cartels of any kind.
David Rockefeller from his 2002 autobiography “Memoirs”, page 405:
“For more than a century, ideological extremists at either end of the political spectrum have seized upon well-publicized incidents to attack the Rockefeller family for the inordinate influence they claim we wield over American political and economic institutions. Some even believe we are part of a secret cabal working against the best interests of the United States, characterizing my family and me as ‘internationalists’ and of conspiring with others around the world to build a more integrated global political and economic structure – one world, if you will.
If that’s the charge, I stand guilty, and I am proud of it.”
From Rockefeller family friend, Sir Julian Huxley, Director-General of the United Nation’s human-rights organization. His document UNESCO: Its Purpose and Philosophy (1946)
“The general philosophy of UNESCO should be a scientific world humanism, global in extent and evolutionary in background…its education program can stress the ultimate need for world political unity and familiarize all peoples with the implications of the transfer of full sovereignty from separate nations to world organization…Political unifications in some sort of world government will be required…Even though it is quite true that any radical eugenic policy will be for many years politically and psychologically impossible, it will be important for UNESCO to see that the eugenics problem is examined with the greatest care, and that the public mind is informed of the issues at stake so that much that is now unthinkable may at least become thinkable.”
From the United nations on the subject of seeds:
“FAO is supporting harmonization of seed rules and regulations in Africa and Central Asia in order to stimulate the development of a vibrant seed industry…An effective seed regulation harmonization process involves dialogue amongst all relevant stakeholders from both private and public sectors. Seed quality assurance, variety release, plant variety protection, biosafety, plant quarantine and phytosanitary issues are among the major technical areas of a regional harmonized seed system. The key to a successful seed regulation harmonization is a strong political will of the governments involved…” (quote is several years old and may have been changed) http://www.fao.org/ag/portal/archive/detail/en/?no_cache=1&tx_ttnews%5Btt_news%5D=5730&tx_ttnews%5BbackPid%5D=1886&cHash=7f04326e35
Direct from the Rockefeller Foundation:
A Timeline of Dr. Norman Borlaug’s Work Involving the Rockefeller Foundation
1944. Dr. Borlaug joins the Foundation as the plant pathologist in the Rockefeller Foundation-Mexican Ministry of Agriculture Cooperative Program….
1960. Under a joint UN Food and Agriculture Organization-Rockefeller Foundation training program, Dr. Borlaug begins training Asian wheat scientist in Mexico…..
1961. The Rockefeller Foundation and the Ford Foundation establish the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) in the Philippines to do for rice what Dr. Borlaug has done for wheat.
1963. Building on the Rockefeller Foundation’s agriculture program in India, Dr. Borlaug begins testing Mexican semi-dwarf wheat varieties in India and Pakistan…..
1966. The Rockefeller Foundation and Ford Foundation establish the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) in Mexico, building on the Rockefeller Foundation cooperative program. Dr. Borlaug is seconded by the Rockefeller Foundation to CIMMYT as Director of the International Wheat Improvement Program.
1968. William Guad, Director of USAID declares a “Green Revolution” is occurring in South Asia, based on Dr. Borlaug’s wheat varieties and IRRI’s rice varieties.
1970. Dr. Borlaug is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for the Green Revolution…..
1983. Dr. Borlaug retires from the Rockefeller Foundation and CIMMYT at age 65 and is made a Lifetime Fellow by the Rockefeller Foundation Board of Trustees……
No mention of increase crop yields through GM foods.
A large chunk of the subsidized corn grown in the US that is not used for ethanol is used for either high-fructose corn syrup or cattle feed. Given that grass-fed beef is much healthier for humans to eat, we are paying a lot of money to subsidize crops that have a net negative effect on human health. Also, with the collapse of the theory that animal fat causes heart disease and the realization that heart disease, diabetes and other chronic diseases are more likely caused by excess consumption of sugar and flour, maybe they need to be thinking of ways to boost production of animal protein.
The easiest, surest method to further increase global food production, would be, to somehow increase atmos CO2 concentrations to the 800-1000 ppm levels. If it was at all possible, it would be nice to increase temperatures slightly and thereby bring up food production in semi-frozen locales, such as Canada, Russia, N. Europa, China. Now, if we could just increase bio-available moisture… WOW… a very green planet.
Anyone know how we could accomplish THAT??? GK
Hi Anthony, is there any weight in the “urzeit-code”? This could really help if its not another fantasy.
Actually, this makes sense if done properly. Another term for “paying farmers to not grow crops” is “paying farmers to hold excess food production capacity in reserve”.
Once cropland (food production capacity) is diverted to other uses (apartments and parking lots), it is pretty much impossible to ever convert it back. Once it’s gone, it’s gone. Meanwhile, the population continues to grow, and in general the need for cropland grows in parallel. It makes good policy sense to delay the day when food requirement exceeds production capacity One way of accomplishing that is to pay the owners of that land to hold it in reserve until the time it’s needed to produce food.
Borlaug 2.0?
HARDLY!
I mean really! This isn’t science, this is a press release dressed up as science, making the case for more funds for research, and more central control of the economy. Let’s go through their 5 points:
1. Subsidies for eco-tourism to discourage clearing of land for crop production. Yeah, that’ll increase the food supply all right. Take money out of tax payer’s pockets and put it into someone else’s pockets via a government run monopoly is more like it.
2. Changing crops to those more suitable to the land than what is being grown now, and improving farming practices. Ooooh. I bet there aren’t any farmers who ever thought of THAT! Oh and a little we mention of genetic engineering slipped in where it almost goes unnoticed. Yup, the free market would NEVER come up with any of those things themselves. Well actually they wouldn’t because the existing system is over regulated and twisted up by subsidies that drive bad decisions and as for GM…well the very people who are screaming about the starving masses seem very energetic about blocking GM…via regulation…
3. Supplementing the land more “strategically” to get maximum yields. That would be different from improving farming practices in number 2. above…how?
4.Stop growing biofuel and animal feed on cropland that can support production of food for human consumption. DUH! Get rid of the subsidies and the regulations that drive bad decisions, done.
5. Eliminate waste. Oooh, genius. I would NEVER have thought of that. Neither did the free market unless you count all those semi-trailers with reefers on (refridgerated cargo capacity in other words), just in time delivery systems so that the food hits the shelves just as it ripens, storage systems for everything from grain meat that can preserve food for years, in the case of canned goods, potentially decades… no, nobody thought of those things yet.
This not only isn’t Borlaugh 2.0, it is science no more valuable that Michael Mann’s tree rings.
Shifting diets. Growing animal feed or biofuels on prime croplands, no matter how efficiently, is a drain on human food supply. Dedicating croplands to direct human food production could boost calories produced per person by nearly 50 per cent. Even shifting nonfood uses such as animal feed or biofuel production away from prime cropland could make a big difference.
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First question. Why are Cows (sheep, pigs, chickens) feed corn instead of grass/bugs/sterilized kitchen waste, their historic food???
Answer: Because the US (and EU) farm subsidies are for commercial farm products (think GMO patented seed) like Wheat, Rice, Cotton and Corn. These are sold at below the cost of production and make PASTURE FED noncompetitive. This led to almost complete vertical integration of the hog, poultry, egg by large corporations and to some extent the beef industries.
Second the newer strains of animals have been bred to take advantage of the high input of grain and “finish” faster at a higher weight but are not necessarily at a better food value. Nutrition: Grass fed beef
Second question. Exactly WHAT land is used for pasture???
Answer: This is where the fallacy comes in. Nice flat, fertile, well watered, rock free land is generally used to grow crops. Animal pasture, if done correctly is rocky, hilly, or worn out land not prime crop land.
You want to get rid of the factory farms??? You want to maximize food production???Then quit subsidizing commercial farm products and subsidize orchards, veggies and grass fed livestock instead. Encourage the breeding of animals for a non grain diet and good health that does not require antibiotics and frequent worming. Encourage inter-cropping instead of Mono-crops especially in the third world. Get rid of bio-fuel and carbon trading idiocies that do nothing but put money in the pockets of Monsanto, ADM, Cargill, Goldman Sachs, Al Gore…..
Note:
The “Green Revolutions” heavy reliance on Mono crops with chemicals increases run off (including topsoil) especially in the more tropical areas. Grass filter strips, inter-cropping, cover crops and rotation to pasture works much better. Monocrops are also more likely to be subject to catastrophic failure (read famine) due to the reliance on one genetically identical strain of plant. Inter-cropping helps prevent the spread of disease and allows at least some harvest.
I have no complaint with Dr. Borlaug. New strains are always a great idea. I do have a complaint with Ag giants “stealing seed and then patenting it or suing farmers who had their farm saved seed contaminated by a neighbors patented seed.
Global scale social engineering.
Lots of BS there, sprinkled with a few workable lynch-pins. Biofuels cost more energy than they produce, usually fossil-fuel derived. And food for locovores requires more fuel/lb to deliver than remotely bulk transported supplies.
And many of the assumptions are bogus. In 2005, the UN declared a goal of halving poverty in 10 yrs. Unfortunately, it happened, mostly on its own, in 5, by 2010. So all these calls to cut poverty and starvation are really deeply dishonest: except for political basket cases like Zimbabwe, it’s happening anyway.
Oh, and re:
What would you have them do, John? The local marketplace is flooded with “free food”. Neither farmers nor merchants can compete with “free”. The result of food aid is destruction of the local economy, guaranteeing perpetual dependence. As always with wealth/resource “sharing by fiat”. Or even with misguided kindhearted charity.
The Green Revolution’s successes, IIRC, were the use of NPK fertilizer; followed by breeding of plant and animal strains better able to withstand the conditions of their environments eg shorter-stemmed wheat; the controlled use of pesticides; ability to dry harvests in wet weather conditions; mechanization eg combine harvesters; factory farming in humane conditions; clean greenhouse & polytunnel vegetables with CO2 blown in; imaginative variety of applications of science & technology to ancient ways of life.
Amazing achievements. However, there are serious downsides. For instance: the soil will likely become sterile and rock-hard and impossible to plough in a few years, if inorganic fertilizers only are used. In India, a quiet revolution is taking place where farmers are converting, one by one, to biodynamic practices that actually restore soil fertility, feel good, and eventually are better propositions even economically. They get out of the Monsanto death-spiral too.
* Cuba found creative ways to cope, when the oil supplies dried up (unlike North Korea).
* Permaculture practices turned arid Dead Sea desert area into fertile orchards.
* Tierra Negra appears to have wonderworking properties of restoration of fertility to the soil.
* Send A Cow is a Christian charity that works one-on-one, teaching African women to care for a cow (worth checking, this charity, I think it has a lot going for it – but still depends on local politics being stable enough – in the Congo, nothing like this would work at present).
And so on. There are many hopeful ideas that can be found if one looks carefully – some of which utilize scientific principles that orthodox Science says “cannot exist” but I say, if it works, s*d orthodoxy! The ideas from McGill University, however, are dangerously cerebral IMHO – out of balance (eg no sense of relevant politics, culture, spirituality, commonsense), and really not new.
Read my favourite book Secrets of the Soil. Here you can see both the good and the bad reasons why really important developments have to stay small-scale for quite a while. This is a goldmine for the future. Let it change your thinking.
How about we let cows do what they do best: eat grass and fertilize the soil. We eat the cows and use that wonderful rich soil for crops.
Crazy idea 101. Stop the food marketing boards in the developed world from limiting the food produced and or destroying any extra. If they don’t want it sold in their country in order to keep the price high for their producers then they should pay shipping to the areas where starvation are occurring.
More Soylent Green! says:
October 13, 2011 at 11:40 am
No mention of increase crop yields through GM foods.
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That is because the increase is due to farming methods.
“..Interesting then that a contributor to the FAO’s Forum, Professor El-Tayeb, Ph.D. Professor Emeritus of Industrial Biotechnology at Cairo University commented that: “..currently available (GMO’s) mostly contribute negatively to poverty alleviation and food security – and positively to the stock market.” http://www.warmwell.com/gm.html
Now, if we could just increase bio-available moisture… WOW… a very green planet.
Anyone know how we could accomplish THAT??? GK
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Divert all that money spent on CAGW to desalinization and transportation. Takes care of the Seal Level rise at the same time (snicker)
“An Israeli consortium unveiled the world’s largest reverse osmosis desalination plant on Sunday in the coastal city of Hadera, hoping to help alleviate the arid country’s water shortage.
Israel’s H2ID, which is jointly owned by IDE Technologies and Shikun & Binui, said its plant will supply 127 million cubic meters of desalinated water a year, or about 20 percent of the yearly household consumption in Israel.
It is the third in a series of five desalination plants being built over the next few years that will eventually supply Israel with about 750 million cubic meters annually….. http://www.reuters.com/article/2010/05/16/us-israel-desalination-idUSTRE64F1O820100516
the map is misleading, it’s a so called plate carree projection which gives too much emphasis on the poles, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mollweide_projection for an equal area projection
Gail Combs:
It takes a farmer, to understand, the truth and wisdom of your words. That is a very small proportion of the developed world population. Food comes to the supermarket, wrapped in modern plastic, with little to indicate, the original lifeforms, or effort to obtain. Most city folk have only seen a cow, while driving by a dairy farm, on the way to the beach. Your words are “Greek” to them. I know of nothing, that will change this trend, until there is a catastrophic agricultural failure. The demise, of the small family farms, certainly didn’t do it!
The last two years, I have seen large tracts of marginal and pastureland, tile drained, for corn and grain production. GK
Nary a word about peak sunlight.
Btw:
Dr. Frank Wentz, director of Remote Sensing Systems (RSS), measured an absolute increase, in moisture, of 6.5%, per degree warming, over a period (1986 and 2005), when both factors (precipitation and atmos. water vapor) increased by between 1.1% and 1.2%. GK
Take a look at Jeff Lowenfels’ Teaming With Microbes for a way to recharge spent soils and keep existing soils productive. You need to keep a reasonable population of bacteria, fungus and higher animals present. It requires mulch and not a lot of work. Best of all is that it is sustainable. He is pretty hard core organic farming, but it also works really well for those of us who do not buy into the dogma of the organic religion. Url follows. Cheers –
http://www.amazon.com/Teaming-Microbes-Organic-Gardeners-Revised/dp/1604691131/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1318540780&sr=1-1
They are wrong to put animal food and biofuel production in the same undesirable category. Animal food is necessary unless you want to make us all vegetarians. Biofuel production, on the other hand, is a crime against humanity. The claimed benefit is emissions reduction which turns out to be very marginal. But emissions reduction per se is insanity because there is no dangerous greenhouse warming ahead. Satellite temperature measurements show that within the last 31 years there was only a short stretch of warming. It started with the 1998 super El Nino, raised global temperature by a third of a degree in four years, and then stopped. It was oceanic, not greenhouse in nature. The warm platform reached lasted for nine years and was then followed by a resumption of ENSO oscillations the super El Nino had interrupted. There was no warming before or after this step warming despite AR4 prediction that twenty-first century warming would proceed at 0.2 degrees per decade. We are now into a period of ENSO oscillations – El Nino peaks alternating with La Nina valleys – that is similar to the eighties and nineties. Except for the step warming of 1998 to 2002 there has not been any warming for the last 31 years. And this warming is needed by the IPCC to prove that the greenhouse effect is real. Their showcase example of global warming is Arctic warming that manifests itself in constantly decreasing summer ice coverage, opening up of the Northwest passage, permafrost melting, polar bears in trouble, etc. Unfortunately Arctic warming is not greenhouse warming. It had a sudden start at the turn of the twentieth century, paused in mid-century, then started up again in 1970 and is still going strong. There was no simultaneous increase of carbon dioxide in the air which makes it quite impossible that the warming is greenhouse warming caused by CO2. That is because the absorptivity of carbon dioxide in the infrared is a physical property of the gas and cannot be changed. Hence, if you want to start a warming you must put more carbon dioxide in the air and we know this did not happen at the turn of the century. The cause of the warming is very likely a reorganization of the North Atlantic current system at the turn of the century that directed warm currents like the Gulf Stream into the Arctic Ocean. An expedition visiting the Arctic recently measured the temperature of the warm currents reaching the Arctic Ocean now and found them to exceed all previous temperature values for the last 2000 years.From all this it is clear that no observations of Arctic warming can be used to prove the existence of greenhouse warming. Which leaves very few observations, if any, that prove it. And if you go back earlier than the satellite era you find that the first part of twentieth century warming took place between 1910 and the start of World War II. There was no warming after the war and global temperature went nowhere from that point till 1998 – a good fifty years without warming. At the same time, carbon dioxide concentration was climbing relentlessly. If you want to prove that greenhouse warming is real you have to explain the absence of warming for this fifty year stretch. And don’t give me aerosols which have been proven wrong.
@ur momisugly Gail Combs says:
October 13, 2011 at 12:38 pm
Shifting diets. Growing animal feed or biofuels on prime croplands, no matter how efficiently, is a drain on human food supply. Dedicating croplands to direct human food production could boost calories produced per person by nearly 50 per cent. Even shifting nonfood uses such as animal feed or biofuel production away from prime cropland could make a big difference.
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First question. Why are Cows (sheep, pigs, chickens) feed corn instead of grass/bugs/sterilized kitchen waste, their historic food???
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I always enjoy your posts. Good points on this and others. One thing I would mention in regards to livestock – out here in farm country, I and many of my neighbors bag wild game more often than we buy supermarket meat. Dove, deer, wild pig, wild turkey, etc. The same is true in other countries except it’s called “bush meat” and is frowned upon by the WWF and other similar organizations. I’ve made a point of eating the local cuisine when I traveled frequently, even including monkey, dog, and various other common fare. People in the US and other Western nations need to understand that our methods and foods are not necessarily what works elsewhere – usually not, in fact – and Western staples can lead to severe health problems in other cultures. The best thing we could do to help Africa, and others, is to stay out of their business. Free advice (and free food) is seldom wanted.