Author: Ophelia Benson

Part 2

“In 1950, the U.S. had 22 million head of dairy cows producing an average of 2,415 kg of milk per year. In 2,000, the U.S. dairy industry had 9.2 million cows averaging 8,275 kg milk per year. Total U.S. milk production in 1950 was 53 MT, compared to 76.2 MT in 2000. The dairy industry produced 44% more milk in 2000 with 58 percent fewer cows than in 1950” (Blayney, 2002, cited in  Havenstein, 2006). Blayney, D. P., 2002. The changing Landscape of U.S. Milk Production, USDA/ERS, Stat. Bull. 978, June, http://ers.usda.gov/publications/sb978/sb978.pdf

Contrary to the critics of modern agriculture, there is no scientific evidence that “organic” is healthier. There is substantial evidence in peer reviewed scientific literature that there is no appreciable difference. Nor is it more sustainable. Yet too often, the media simply assumes these to be true as do the grocery chain stores ex. – “Stores find organic food is the natural way to go” Houston Chronicle 01/19/2013. 

Per unit of output, organic agriculture as it is allowed to be practiced has a larger carbon footprint and is often less environmentally friendly overall. This includes consideration of nitrogen and other nutrient run-off in food production. Further, conventional agriculture is more amenable to improvement through scientific research. Feedlots animal wastes present a problem but feedlot finished cattle are so much more efficient in animal production, particularly in terms of carbon footprint, that strict regulation of containment ponds to control environmental contamination would be warranted and cost effective. Even better would be regulations mandating the installation of anaerobic biogas digesters that would create a relatively clean fuel and safe fertilizer.  Some of the larger poultry facilities have already done so and found it reduced the operations need for an external fuel source and added to profitability

Being “organic” does not necessarily mean being pesticide free or even being grown without synthetic pesticides. In fact, some of the “all natural” pesticides such as copper sulfate are highly toxic and persistent in the environment. The USDA’s organic program has a list of approved pesticides including some synthetic pesticides. Nor was pre-modern agriculture pesticide free as there was a long history of using toxic substances such as arsenic to protect plants. In agriculture when you grow and concentrate nutrient for human use, you are also concentrating nutrient for birds, rodents, insects, bacteria, fungi and viruses. Plants had to be protected and often substances far more persistent and toxic than those used today were applied to the fields. Again agriculture is not magic and though there were various protective strategies that farmers could use, too often they had to use a toxic substance.

Being organic does not mean being free of toxins – in fact, in many instances, organic produce is likely to have a higher load of toxins. Plants are chemical factories that produce a variety of toxins to defend themselves many of which are carcinogens. According to toxicologist Bruce Ames, over 99% of the toxins that we ingest each day are from those produced by plants. Michael Pollan and others claim that organic produce is more nutritious because it is “less-well protected.” This means that if a plant is invaded by micro-organisms or insects, it will express toxins to defend itself. What is toxic to one organism is not necessarily toxic to another but the proponents of the organic/anti-GMO play word games not using the word toxin when it suits them but use the term toxin (or even poison) to identify plant proteins that protect against micro-organisms or insects but are harmless to humans. The supposedly “more nutritious” parts of the “less-well protected” plants turn out to be antioxidants – flavonoids and phenolics – that are now considered to be of questionable benefit. (Note: Fruits and vegetables are loaded with antioxidants and are considered to be beneficial to human health. Is it because of the antioxidants or the form in which they take in fruits and vegetables? Are fruits and vegetables beneficial because we eat less of other things that might be harmful? Clinical studies on adding antioxidants to diets not only fail to show any benefit but often find significant evidence of harm.)  Not mentioned are the other toxins produced by the invading micro-organisms of the less-well protected organic plants some of which are very toxic to humans. Many chemical food preservatives are also antioxidants.

USDA certification of a product as being organic has no meaning other than it was grown using certain means (and not others) – it has no implications about quality, nutrition etc. as clearly stated by the USDA. These standards were largely the creation of those who either wish to grow or to consume “organic.”

The most sustainable form of contemporary agriculture is what is called “conservation tillage” (AKA – no tillage or minimum tillage) using a genetically engineered herbicide tolerant (Ht) crop with a broad spectrum pesticide such as Glyphosate. 

There is no scientific controversy concerning the safety of transgenic transformations using rDNA (AKA GMOs, “frankenfoods,” genetically modified among others) food crops nor is there about cisgenics, intragenics or antisense technologies (RNAi) though the anti-GMO groups have convinced large segments of the public and the media that there is. This point could easily be documented in detail along with the multitude of examples of activist’s ignorance of some of the basic understandings of modern science. Michael Pollan’s claim in the early editions of “Omnivore’s Dilemma” that carbon was the most common element in the human body and in all life forms would be risible if it were not so pathetic. What about the activist promoted referendum for an ordinance banning the growing of GMOs in Mendocino County, California that defined DNA as a complex protein found in every cell in the body. It passed. Or what about the polls in Europe that found that a majority or sometimes just a plurality of the population believed tomatoes did not have genes unless biotechnologist put them there? In the U.S. we did a little better with a plurality but not a majority believing the claim to be in error. This is just a sample of the activist errors of fact.

In the media and on the internet, much of the opposition to genetic engineering of plants focuses on Monsanto even instances where Monsanto is not involved. Monsatan as the clever activist wordsmiths call it. One of the enduring myths of the anti-transgenic is that farmers are sued by Monsanto for pollen drift on to their fields. This is widely claimed, endlessly repeated in a multitude of different media and widely believed even though there is not a scintilla of evidence for it. The myth is repeated so often that I periodically would called a friend of mine who is considered a leading expert on agricultural law who would reassure me that in no instance in the cases settled in court did the defendant claim accidental pollen drift. It is one thing to make a claim in a documentary film and another to make it under oath in court.

Much as we are all must trust the expertise of others since it is impossible for any one of us to know everything first hand. On a controversial issue like farmers being sued by Monsanto, I would prefer to have direct knowledge but there was no way I was going to read all the many court cases. Fortunately, the activists overplayed their hand and filed a suit to enjoin Monsanto from suing farmers for being the recipients of pollen drift. The case was Organic Seed Growers and Trade Association v. Monsanto Co., 11cv2163, U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York (Manhattan) filed in March 2011 with a ruling on January 2012 by Judge Naomi Buchwald, a Clinton appointee.  

Judge Buchwald dismissed the case since the plaintiffs could not offer in court a single instance where Monsanto had sued a farmer for accidental pollen drift. It was dismissed, not tried because there was not a case to be made. Her dismissal was affirmed June 2013 (Organic Seed Growers and Trade Association v. Monsanto Co., 12-1298) by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (Washington).

The anti-Monsanto activists have also been peddling the tale of the Canadian canola grower Percy Schmeiser who it is claimed was the innocent victim of a lawsuit by Monsanto. Monsanto Canada Inc. v. Schmeiser is a case that I have read and re-read multiple times to make sure that I was not missing something that those who use it for ant-GMO propaganda were finding. I encourage those who are interested in these issues to read the case themselves. A reasonable person would find that numerous claims made by Schmeiser were rather preposterous.   

“The courts at all three levels noted that the case of accidental contamination beyond the farmer’s control was not under consideration but rather that Mr. Schmeiser’s action of having identified, isolated and saved the Roundup-resistant seed placed the case in a different category” (Quoted from Wikipedia, September 2013). The judge in the initial case ruled that Schmeiser had either known or ought to have known that he was planting a patented seed.

Pollen drift is not “contamination” unless one can demonstrate harm in that the resulting crop actually harms those who eat it. By clever use of language such as “contamination,” activists seek to control the discourse by controlling the language. Historically, those producing a specialized crop are responsible for maintaining its genetic identity. Similarly, those whose religion requires food to be halal or kosher assume the full cost and responsibility for maintaining it. I respect that.

The proponents of organic agriculture, unlike those who require halal or kosher expect other farmers and producers of food to bear the cost of sustaining their ritual purity for a product for which they receive a price premium. The rules for what could be labeled organic were established following a series of town hall meetings. Organic farmers were prohibited from planting GMOs. The USDA certified organic label strictly applies only to the way that a crop was raised and has no implications concerning sustainability of the production system or the nutritional quality of the food produced.

Not satisfied with the rules that they created, organic consumers and others demanded even stricter prohibitions against any pollen drift into a field of organic production even though it would still qualify for USDA organic certification. It is a free country and if that is what they want and they are willing to pay for it, then that is their privilege. But instead of paying for it, they are seeking to use the courts to shift the burden from the roughly those who grow 1 to 5% of the sugar beets and the alfalfa to those who grow the roughly 95 to 99% of these crops. This is the antithesis of democracy.

Many of those involved in lawsuits and organizing for labeling laws have made it clear that there ultimate objective is to eliminate genetically modified food from the marketplace. There is more than a bit of hypocrisy or even fraud for those who rail against Monsanto for allegedly tyrannizing American farmers then filing a lawsuit that would have forced GMO Alfalfa growers (representing at least 95% of all Alfalfa grown) to pull up their already planted crop, a crop that they had been growing for five seasons. The basis of the lawsuit was not any evidence of harm but on a technicality in the previous approval process. Fortunately, an Appeals court overturned the initial court decision ordering the uprooting of the plants.

This has become a common tactic of claiming to represent the “oppressed” farmers while working to impose restrictions on the choices of the vast majority of farmers. It should be noted that in the above cases, the organizations representing the majority of the affected farmers stood in opposition to the activist’s legal position. This is part of a larger narrative in economic development where NGOs claim to offer a bottom up process of development as opposed to the alleged traditional top down approach to development. Yet when those they presume to want to help fail to follow their development prescriptions, they inevitably turn to the UN or supporting governments or institutions in the developed world to try to impose their agenda.

In Brazil, it was Greenpeace that sued to block the planting of GMO soybeans. It was farmers illegally planting GMO soybeans smuggled in from Argentina that eventually forced the Lula government to reverse course and approve their use. In India, planting Bt. cotton was banned by the Government in spite of the fact the a 30 person panel of leading scientist tasked to study the issue and rule on it found them to be safe. Some farmers were illegally planting the Bt. cotton seeds anyway. When a devastating attack of the Asian Bollworm wiped out field after field of cotton in Gujarat, the largest cotton growing state in India, it was the fields of the illegally planted Bt. cotton that were left standing. After initially threatening to destroy the unaffected fields, the Government capitulated and approved the planting of Bt. cotton.

From 20,000 farmers growing Bt cotton in India the 1st year of approval, it grew to 7.4 million farmers growing it in a few years. It has continued at this level to the present as over 90% of cotton grown in India is GMO. India has gone from being the largest importer of cotton in the world to being one of the world’s largest exporters of cotton. The farmer’s real income is up which is reflected in a recent study by Matin Qaim and Shahzad Kouser finding improved health and nutrition among those growing Bt. cotton. Numerous other peer-reviewed studies including some by Qaim have found increased real income from growing Bt. cotton for farmers, for women and for field workers (Genetically Modified Crops and Food Security, PLOS/ONE, June 5, 2013, http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0064879

If you can’t beat them then lie by claiming that farmers in India have been driven to suicide by the failure of transgenic cotton. This has been refuted by numerous careful studies such as one by IFPRI (International Food Policy Research Institute). More important, it is refuted by the fact that 7.4 million Indian farmers continue to grow it. Some of these are farmers who have switched to cotton from other crops because of the more reliable yields and higher income. Yet the myth of Bt. cotton leading to farmer’s suicides continues with some clever activists branding them as suicide seeds (Bt cotton failure and farmer suicides in India: Reviewing the Evidence, The International Food Policy Research Institute’s (IFPRI) IFPRI Discussion Paper 00808, October 2008, http://ebrary.ifpri.org/cdm/printview/collection/p15738coll2/id/14501/type/compoundobject/show/1/popts/all/filename/14438.pdf page or http://ebrary.ifpri.org/cdm/ref/collection/p15738coll2/id/14501 )

GMO soybeans in Brazil and Bt. cotton in India are only two of many instances where European and North American based ideological NGOs have worked to thwart the choice of farmers and others in the developing world while claiming to be defending them. In some areas, such as India, they frequently work with urban based elite groups. Not content to restrict themselves to a variety of propaganda and legal tactics, the anti-GMO activists have attacked research labs, slimeing transgenic plant researchers and going into the fields destroying crops in test plots. The most recent destructive rampage of a test plot of Golden Rice in the Philippines gave rise to a letter condemning it signed by over 6,000 scientists from around the world many of them being leaders in their field.

One can’t even begin to tell the story of Golden Rice and the 400 to 500 million children in the world who are Vitamin A deficient with horrendous consequences for life and for death. Opposing some forms of transgenic agriculture such as Golden Rice (Vitamin A enhanced – actually enhanced with Beta carotene the precursor of Vitamin A) has very serious consequences for poor children in developing countries. Those who engage in disruptive activities or support organizations that do, have to accept responsibility for the adverse consequences that flow from their actions. What we are talking about is children going blind and dying from Vitamin A deficiency.  Today over 1,000 children will directly die as a result of Vitamin A deficiency. Another 5,000 are estimated to die each day because their immune system was weakened  by Vitamin A deficiency for a total of 6,000 deaths each day. On an annual basis, this comes to 350, 000 children dying each year directly of Vitamin A deficiency while the best estimates are that the direct and indirect deaths from Vitamin A deficiency are 2 to 2 ½ million (some estimates run as high as 3 million)  deaths each year. A significant number of these are children of subsistence rice farmers and their deaths could have been prevented by Golden Rice. Will those opposed to Golden Rice accept responsibility for this outcome? The safety and potential benefit of Golden Rice has been demonstrated by multiple projects with their results being published in leading peer reviewed journals such as the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

See for example: Golden Rice – Lifesaver? By Amy Harmon, The New York Times, August 24, 2013.

Golden Rice is an effective source of vitamin A1–4 by Guangwen Tang, Jian Qin, Gregory G Dolnikowski, Robert M Russell, and Michael A Grusak, American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, vol. 89 no. 6, June 2009 , pp.  1776-1783; DOI: 10.3945/ajcn.2008.27119

β-Carotene in Golden Rice is as good as β-carotene in oil at providing vitamin A to children,  American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, vol. 96 no. 3, September 2012, 658-664

For some earlier articles see Stein A.J., Sachdev H.P.S., Qaim M. . “Potential impact and cost-effectiveness of Golden Rice.” Nature Biotechnology 24(10),2006 1200-1201. http://www.nature.com/nbt/journal/v24/n10/extref/nbt1006-1200b-S1.pdf  and

Genetic Engineering for the Poor: Golden Rice and Public Health in India by Alexander J. Stein, H.P.S. Sachdev and Matin Qaim 2008. World Development  36(1): 144-158, January 2008.

It is more than ironic that the list of organizations actively opposed to modern agricultural science such as transgenics are largely those who have never done anything, I mean never done anything to help poor people obtain the food they need or in any way contributed to the food production in general. Tragically, those they most often attack are they very persons and organizations that have done so much to reduce to help produce the food to feed the needy and who are working constantly to continue fight against hunger and malnutrition. For some inexplicable reason, much of the media and the public give credibility to ideological organizations whose main functions seems to be to disrupt the work of those seeking to solve problems.

What we are trying to show is that there are a multitude of very favorable trends in the world from declining infant, child and maternal mortality to increases in food supply and decreases in hunger and malnutrition. In agriculture, there are trends in efficiency in milk, meat and grain production including decreases in fertilizer and pesticide use per unit of output. As the UNDP report that I cited indicates, there are many more favorable trends then I can even begin to enumerate. These trends can neither be denied  or  ignored. They must be included and protected in solutions to problems that we face. In many respects, they are a vital part of the pathway to progress on our environmental problems. Unfortunately, too many activists see to condemn and eliminate the very important means necessary to solve our problems.

Let me close with a cogent statement by Rajiv Shah, Administrator, United States Agency
for International Development:

“What’s really at stake in the genetic engineering debate? Better nutrition and incomes for poor families everywhere.

“Throughout history, our greatest development advances have come from introducing safe, proven and appropriate technologies to the world’s most vulnerable people. That’s how we helped hundreds of millions of people avert starvation during the Green Revolution. Today, stresses from climate change, conflict and poverty make this approach more urgent than ever.

“It’s taken 25 years of ingenuity and perseverance to bring Golden Rice from vision to reality. Who will stand between it and millions of undernourished children?”

Are those members of or in any way supportive or connected to the organizations opposed to Golden Rice who read this or who hear my lecture willing to take responsibility for their actions? Are they willing to consider the possibility that their actions may be costing the lives of poor children around the world?

In some circles, there is now what appears to be an established, unquestioned and largely unchallenged consensus that modern agriculture is an unsustainable failure and responsible for any number of ills in our society. The media and our larger cultural discourse are riddled with well-orchestrated misinformation about our food supply and how it is produced. Every ill is blamed on modern food production. An outbreak of E coli 0157:H7 in spinach was widely blamed on industrial. Months later when the source was identified as being organically grown spinach and that the E coli probably came from free range cattle in a low density ranch across the river, it was old news and largely unreported. In fact, it is difficult to find any reporting of it in either mainstream media or alternative media. There are numerous other incidences such as avian influenza or swine flu where the initial news got it totally wrong. In the case of avian influenza, the mythologies cumulated through time from its origins to its transmission. The anti-modern agriculture ideologues know the cause of all our food ills before they happen and are quick to put in Op-Ed pieces (including in the Houston Chronicle, in this case via the L.A. Times) and otherwise voice their opinions blaming “industrial agriculture.”  Those who await the evidence from scientific inquiry will find that contrary opinions are again not accepted because they are no longer news. Unfortunately the internet and the abiding faith of the anti-modern true believers means that no matter how thoroughly the original myths are factually refuted, they tend to live on in cyberspace to be called forth years later as needed.

All too often, what the critics propose would make our food less safe in the name of protecting us from the evils of industrial agriculture. A demagogic cooking program on a major television network initiated a tirade against “lean textured beef” (LTB) which was called pink slime. This was followed by news stories that were almost as bad on that same network, and by a national campaign led by a local activist that resulted in school districts across the country no longer serving it in school lunches, and supermarket chains no longer selling it. The local activists proudly wrote an op-ed piece for the Houston Chronicle which had an editorial praising it and endorsing her work. What the overall publicity succeeded in doing was closing three of the four meat processing plants that were considered by both industry and food safety experts as among the safest if not the safest in the country. A call to the Texas A&M Center for Food Safety or the A&M Department of Animal Science would have obtained an informed contrary view. If the local network affiliate, the Chronicle or the activist contacted A&M, it was lost to me in the voluminous noise on the subject. I have a huge file on this matter and I would both like to comment further and debate both the activist and the editorial writer when the libel suit filed against several of the parties including the network and the local activist is settled. To my knowledge, it has not been but I could be wrong.

One of the proffered remedies for the alleged dangers of lean textured beef was for the consumer to pick out a cut of beef and either have the butcher grind it for you or for the consumer to grind it at home. Any food safety expert can see the real dangers in doing this and I will leave it to the reader to find out why. When confronted with the safety procedures at the LTB plants such as testing for toxins (STECs) not tested for by other producers, an activist dismissed this added safety procedure on the grounds that the 2011 sprouts outbreak in Germany that killed 53 and sickened 3,950 was caused by a previously unknown bacteria, E. coli 0104:H4. Somehow, we were confronted with the logic that because of the possibility of unknown bacteria lurking out there somewhere, food safety would be furthered by closing the safest plants. May I add that the sprouts were grown organically.

Sprouts have been continuing source of E coli and salmonella. One national chain with local outlets had salmonella outbreak in one area of operation followed by an E coli outbreak in another. Following these and a multitude of other instances another chain also with local outlets suspended its offering of raw sprouts as did several grocery chains. Basically the humidity and temperature for sprouting seeds are almost perfect for culturing various harmful bacteria from even the slightest contamination. Most all known methods of cleaning them with solvents are not effective as there are a multitude of niches in which the bacteria can be safe. There is one sure safe way of cleaning sprouts – irradiation – but restaurants and food stores know the demagogic campaigns that will be waged against them if they offered them. Forget the dirty little secret that many spices have been irradiated and for very good food safety reasons. I will forego revealing which brands are irradiated and which are cleaned in other ways since it is likely that none of the readers could tell the difference.

Let us step back a bit and look at some population data to get an idea of what modern agriculture has achieved. In other words, let us look at how many people are being fed today compared to previous times and how quickly this transformation has taken placed. These are numbers that I go over repeatedly in class because they are illustrative of the changes in food production that had to take place. Let us start about 500 years ago in 1500 in the Common Era when world population was around 400 million people. That number was to double to 800 million people in 1800 reaching 1 billion in 1830 and 1.6 billion in 1900. Population reached 2 billion in 1930 adding another billion to 3 billion in 1960 and doubling to 6 billion in 2000. Today, world population is between 7.2 and 7.4 billion. This means that world population has increased nine times in a little over 200 years. Even if one uses other population estimates for the pre-1900 populations such as population reaching 1 billion by 1800, it still means more than a seven fold increase in population in a little over two hundred years.

Let me add as I will argue below, the world is better fed today than ever before. Let us look at the dates such as 1800. This was two years after the 1st edition of “An Essay on the Principle of Population” by Reverend Thomas Malthus which was first published in 1798. If someone in the 1790s had forecast a seven or nine fold increase in population in the next 200+, even William Godwin or the Marquis de Condorcet against whom Malthus was arguing would have had trouble being optimistic about the prospects of feeding 7+ billion people.

From 1960 to 2000 when world population doubled, food supply increased 270% or 35% per capita with the largest increase in the developing world such as East Asia where the per capita increase was closer to 70%. In fact since 1960, per capita food production and availability has increased on every continent except Africa. Africa has seen a number of countries turn their food production around in the last decade. In the 1960s, we had Paul Ehrlich and others making wild predictions about famine and almost unimaginable mass deaths. Some of the doomsday forecasters are still around today, and remain unabashedly critics of the modern agriculture that helped us to avert the mass catastrophes that they so confidently expected.  None will ever admit that they were wrong.

Looking more closely at the population data, historically, global population growth has been associated with declining death rates and not increasing birth or fertility rates. Some economists have looked at population growth in Europe and often found that countries with the fastest rates of population growth also had the highest rates of economic growth. It is not always clear in which direction the causality runs but it does show that the population issue is much more complicated than the catastrophists realize.

Since 1950, it is certainly true – as one writer has claimed, mixing his metaphors – that global population has grown not because we are breeding like rabbits but because we are not dying like flies. From 1950 to the present, decade by decade data indicate the most rapid decline in the global birth rate that is known to us. In 1950, fifty million people died of all causes. For the next 30 plus years as world population was close to doubling from 2 ½ billion to close to 5 billion in the 1980s, the number of people dying each year was fifty million or below. Now with a population close to three times that of 1950, the number of people dying this year will likely be less than 60 million. An aging population is an important factor in the increase number of deaths in addition to an increase in population.  

It should be noted that if the births and death rates of 1950 were projected to the year 2000, the population would have also reached just over 6 billion only with a lot more births and deaths along the way. Projecting these rates to 2050 would give us over 15 billion people. Current projections are for about 9 billion, possibly 10 billion for 2050 with some demographers predicting a declining population after 2050. In other words, the best way to control population is to bring down the infant and child deaths. Thus far, this has led people to want fewer children knowing that the smaller number will survive. Population programs promoting voluntary population control can be helpful maybe even essential but they work best when other factors such as declining death rates are operating.  To ignore these other factors dooms population control programs to likely failure.

In other areas, the data is as spectacular. The infant mortality rate today is about 1/3rd of what it was in 1950. In 1960, the first year in which the under-five child mortality figures were calculated, close to 20 million children died. Than number fell to 12 million in 1990 and declined slowly until about 2004 when the decline accelerated reaching 6.9 million in 2011 and 6.6 million in 2012. That number is clearly lower today. If the 1990 rate prevailed currently, 14,000 more children would be dying each day. Maternal mortality has also accelerated in its decline being down 47% since 2000. Global life expectancy has increase more than 20 years since the 1950s.  One of the class projects for both of my classes this semester will be a presentation with graphs and charts etc. showing the number of people, adults, infants and children who are not dying each year because of the transformations of the last half century.

There are many factors that account for these declines in death rates. Immunization and antibiotics clearly top the list. It is hard to imagine these interventions working their magic without an improvement in food availability beginning in the womb. This observation is re-enforced by the global increases in average height which require improved nutrition.

In 1950, close to 60% of the world’s population was in hunger. In 1960, roughly 50% of the world’s 3 billion people were in hunger. Since then, there has been an almost continuous decline in in the rate of hunger reaching around 12 to 13% today.  These figures also reflect an absolute decline in people in hunger from 1.5 billion to just under 800 million today. Add in another 1.2 billion malnourished human beings and that gives us a total of 2 billion people malnourished with 800 million of them in hunger also. However, horrific these numbers maybe, they also mean that over 5 billion people are getting adequate food today – an extraordinary achievement!

From the press release for the Human Development Report 2013 (I have read the entire report for which this release is accurate): “Over the past decades, countries across the world have been converging towards higher levels of human development, as shown by the Human Development Index,” says the 2013 Report. “All groups and regions have seen notable improvement in all HDI components, with faster progress in low and medium HDI countries. On this basis, the world is becoming less unequal (Human Development Report 2013: The Rise of the South: Human Progress in a Diverse World, UNDP, http://www.undp.org/content/undp/en/home/librarypage/hdr/human-development-report-2013/).

However spectacular these trends maybe, they are not grounds for complacency. There is a critical need to understand the basis of these trends if we are to continue or even accelerate them. One would hope that in the lifetime of readers of this article that they will see the spectacular changes that I have been privileged to see and in a small way be involved in. With enough effort and understanding hunger, malnutrition and preventable deaths will be eliminated. It will not be achieved by shouting feel-good slogans or by romantic visions of nature and agriculture.

Apart from the favorable trends just noted, at some level of discourse, one has to credit modern industrial agriculture with simply its ability to accommodate these increases in population without the predicted catastrophes and to ask whether there were alternate pathways that could have gotten us to the Twenty-first century. It would be naïve to believe that we could have achieved these levels of population growth and food supply increases without creating problems.  Contrary to fairy tales of living in harmony with nature, agriculture however it is carried out disrupts the environment. If we act intelligently, we can try to minimize the disruption and try as best as possible to work with various forces of the environment rather than against them. But some disruption is inevitable and the larger the change in population and food production, the greater the potential for disruptions that have to be corrected.

If you look at the population growth data from 1500 to 1900, you will find that it was concentrated in two population groups, Chinese and Western European peoples in Europe and the areas of the world in which they colonized.  For the Chinese it was improved varieties of paddy rice that allowed for an additional crop each year and new crops such as sweet potatoes from the New World. For Europe and emigrants of European descent around the globe, it was as we will argue the rise of science, technology and the industrial revolution. For both the Chinese and the European populations, the addition of new crops from the New World was also important.

Part of the transformation of European agriculture after 1500 was simply to catch up with agriculture as practiced in China for hundreds of years. In the European Middle Ages, China was obtaining about a ton of wheat per hectare while Europeans were generally getting about 500 pounds. For every wheat seed planted, Europeans were getting (by the best estimates available) about 4 ½ + seeds back. Needing to plant one meant that the farmer received a net of about 3 ½ seeds for eating. Plant breeding in the 17th and 18th centuries got the seed to yield ratio for wheat to about 1 to 7 or 8. For the activists with their slogans of save the seed and claims that farmers have been doing that since time immemorial, it should be noted that the 17th century English plant breeders were frequently criticized for replanting their own seeds instead of importing them from north England or Scotland.  Today, the seed to yield ratio for wheat is about 1 to 20.

However important the plant breeding of the gentleman farmers was, even more important was the new crops that came to Europe.  Maize and potatoes came from the New World in what is called the Columbian Exchange. Though sugar cane came from India, Europeans would be getting it from the Caribbean at a critical time in their history. Corn (maize to the rest of the world), potatoes and later sugar cane have been demonized by the critics of modern agriculture yet they played an absolutely essential role in allowing the transformations in Europe in the four centuries from 1500 to 1900. Corn with its high yields per hectare or acre and its high sugar content made excellent silage for cows and its seeds for chickens increasing the milk, meat and eggs for the population. There is a growing literature in economics on potatoes with their high yields both for feeding animals and allowing fewer people on the land to feed a growing urban population not only allowing for the Industrial Revolution but also for the growth in Universities with their arts and music and their science. Urban life and all of its manifestations as it developed in Europe from the 17th and 18th century onward would not have been possible without corn and potatoes. As Robert Fogel has shown, by the end of the 18th century, much of the population received barely enough calories for basal metabolism and the work that they had to carry out. In the 19th century, sugar from the Caribbean, those proverbial empty calories, provided the additional energy to help drive the expansion in population and the economy.

By the 19th century, Europe’s success in getting ever increasing amounts of food out of the same amount of land began to take its toll. If you grow food one place and eat it someplace else, you will be mining the soil. Farmers can use various strategies to try to mitigate the decline in fertility but eventually they will have to replenish the lost soil nutrient. Agriculture is not a form of magic though many seem to view it that way. Repeat it was the increasing success at growing more food to feed a rapidly growing population that created the potential crisis.

Fortunately chemistry was able to provide new understandings that allowed for the emergence of modern agriculture and its ability to address these problems. It was believed that humans could not create organic compounds; only living matter could. In 1928, Friedrich Wöhler was able to synthesize urea providing at least some of the foundation for organic chemistry and signaling the end of vitalism. How and why he did it is a matter of some controversy but the fact is he did it. Justus von Liebig followed in the 1830s and 1840s analyzing the chemical constituents of plants and what chemicals were needed in the soil to grow them. He argued that minerals from non-living sources in the soil could be used to provide the required nutrients for plants.  He also posited his famed Law of Minimum stating that a plant or other organism was limited in its growth by the least available nutrient.

In 1843, John Bennet Lawes founded the Rothamsted Experimental Station to study organic and inorganic fertilizers and their impact on crop yields. It is now the longest continuously operating agricultural station in the world. What Rothamsted showed and has continued to show was that Liebig was essentially correct and that non-living matter can provide plant nutrients.  

Opposition to Liebig formed the basis of the modern organic or biodynamic (as it is called in Europe) movements. First it was argued that it would not work.  Rothamsted and the growing effective use of fertilizers proved the critics wrong. So others conceded that it would work but that the plants lacked vital properties. Currently the litany runs that these plants are less nutritious. Writers such as Michael Pollan seem almost obsessed with Liebig as they offer a gross distortion of his ideas.  In accusing him of “NPK mentality” reductionism, they clearly do not understand or maybe are not even aware of his Law of Minimum. Pollan’s work such as the “Omnivore’s Dilemma” is so riddled with basic errors of fact that it can best be described as empty calories for nutritionally deficient intellects.

Chemistry was necessary but not sufficient to solve the problems of 19th century declining soil fertility in Europe and parts of North America. One of the most interesting chapters in world history was the mad rush by various countries including the United States to claim uninhabited islands for their guano. Guano was definitely a depletable resource but by the early 20th century, chemistry once again came to the rescue with the Haber-Bosch creation of synthetic fertilizer.  

Modern Scientific Agriculture as land sparing

Had crop yields had remained at the 1900 level, “the crop harvest in the year 2000 would have required nearly four times more land and its total (nearly 60 MKm2) would have claimed nearly half of all ice-free continental area rather than the less than 15% the agricultural lands claim today” ( “less than 15%” is actually about 12% agricultural land area would have had to more-than double its actual 1998 level of 12.2 billion acres to at least 26.3 billion in order to produce as much food as was actually produced. Thus, agricultural land area would have had to increase from its current 38 percent to 82 percent of global land area. Cropland would also have had to more than-double, from 3.7 to 7.9 billion acres. In effect, an additional area the size of South America-minus-Chile would have to be plowed under. Thus increased land productivity forestalled further increases in threats to terrestrial habitats and biodiversity” (http://goklany.org/library/Water%20International%202002.pdf , Comparing 20th Century Trends in U.S. and Global Agricultural Water and Land Use By Indur M. Goklany, Water International, Volume 27, Number 3, Pages 321–329, September 2002 , International Water Resources Association).

Currently, about 12% of ice free land is being cultivated while another 24 to 26% is pasture for a total of circa 38%. Statements by Smil and Goklany about how much land that we would need to produce current output assume that the additional land would be of equal quality to that already in production. In other words, as these authors well know, their estimates of land needed are considerable understatements. At either 1900 or 1961 yields, it is quite likely that we could not produce today’s output.  In the U.S. today, we have less land under cultivation for corn than we did in 1925 yet our output is at least seven times higher.

From my own article Green Myth vs. the Green Revolution (Butterflies and Wheels 2004): 

The yield-increasing, land-saving nature of the Green Revolution has reduced the pressure to put more land under the plow. Indeed, the recent data bear out this interpretation: Indian food grain output has continued to grow at a healthy rate of 3 percent annually through … 1981-1991 while the land under cultivation has actually decreased annually (Nanda 2003, 243 citing Sawant and Achuthan 1995; Hanumantha Rao 1994). The enhanced Green Revolution yields in the primary food/calories source, makes more land available for a variety of other crops and greater diversity in the population’s diet. This is counter to the conventional wisdom about the Green Revolution and its impact upon diet and nutrition. Sawant and Achuthan found the “decisively superior performance of non-foodgrains vis-a-vis foodgrains” to be the “most striking feature of India’s agricultural growth in the recent period (Sawant and Achuthan 1995, A-3). For 1981-1992 in India, the compound annual growth rates (CAGR) of non-foodgrains of 4.3 per cent “exceeded significantly that of foodgrains” at 2.92 per cent. Though there was annual decline of O.26% in the area of food grain cultivation, “it is important to recognize that foodgrains output continued to grow at the rate of 2.92 per cent as the growth in yield per hectare exceeded 3 percent” for a CAGR of 3.19 per cent, all of which indicates an “an increasing shift of land from foodgrains to non-foodgrains” (Sawant and Achuthan 1995, A-3). “The entire output growth in this period can, therefore be attributed to the increase in yields per hectare” (Hanumantha Rao 1994, 12). –

Hanumantha Rao, C. H. Agricultural Growth, Rural Poverty, and Environmental Degradation in India. Delhi and New York: Oxford University Press, 1994.

Nanda, Meera. “Is Modern Science a Western Patriarchal Myth? A Critique of the Populist Orthodoxy.” South Asian Bulletin XI(1991):32-61.

Nanda, Meera. Breaking the Spell of Dharma: A Case for Indian Enlightenment. Delhi: Three Essays Press, 2002.

Nanda, Meera. Prophets Facing Backward: Postmodern Critiques of Science and Hindu Nationalism in India, New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2003

Water and Fertilizer

The modern rice varieties have about a threefold increase in water productivity compared with traditional varieties. Progress in extending these achievements to other crops has been considerable and will probably accelerate following identification of underlying genes…Genetic engineering, if properly integrated in breeding programs and applied in a safe manner, can further contribute to the development of drought tolerant varieties and to increase the water use efficiency…Overall, The best estimates are that “the water needs for food per capita halved between 1961 and 2001″ (FAO 2003 28). Higher yields “require” more fertilizer, as the more nutrient is extracted from the soil, the more it has to be replaced. Norman Borlaug in his Nobel Prize acceptance speech states: “If the high-yielding dwarf wheat and rice varieties are the catalysts that have ignited the Green Revolution, then chemical fertilizer is the fuel that has powered its forward thrust … The new varieties not only respond to much heavier dosages of fertilizer than the old ones but are also much more efficient in their use” (Borlaug 1970). The old tall-strawed varieties would produce only ten kilos of additional grains for each kilogram of nitrogen applied, while the new varieties can produce 20 to 25 kilograms or more of additional grain per kilogram of nitrogen applied (Borlaug 1970). Not only are the Green Revolution plants more efficient in fertilizer use, but equally important has been the improvement in the use and application of fertilizer. For example, there has been a 36% increase in “N efficiency use in maize” in the United States over the last 21 years as a result of improved knowledge and technology (Blair and Blair 2003). –

Blair, Graeme and Nelly Blair. Fertilizer is Not a Dirty Word, Paper prepared at the IFA-FAO Agriculture Conference, “Global Food Security and the Role of Sustainable Fertilization,” Rome, Italy, March 26-28, 2003.

FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations). Unlocking the Water Potential of Agriculture. Rome: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, 2003.  

http://www.fao.org/ag/AGL/aglw/aquastat/kyoto/index.stm.  ftp://ftp.fao.org/agl/aglw/docs/unlocking_e

Borlaug, Norman. The Green Revolution, Peace, and Humanity, Nobel Peace Prize Lecture, December 11, 1970. http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/1970/borlaug-lecture.html

https://www.academia.edu/195371/The_environmental_impact_of_dairy_production_1944_compared_with_2007

The environmental impact of dairy production: 1944 compared with 2007 by Jude Capper, Journal of Animal Science, Vol. 87, March, 2009, pp.2160-2167.

ABSTRACT:

“A common perception is that pasture-based, low-input dairy systems characteristic of the1940s were more conducive to environmental steward-ship than modern milk production systems. The objective of this study was to compare the environmental impact of modern (2007) US dairy production with historical production practices as exemplified by the US dairy system in 1944. A deterministic model based on the metabolism and nutrient requirements of the dairy herd was used to estimate resource inputs and waste outputs per billion kg of milk. Both the modern and historical production systems were modeled using characteristic management practices, herd population dynamics, and production data from US dairy farms. Modern dairy practices require considerably fewer re-sources than dairying in 1944 with 21% of animals, 23%of feedstuffs, 35% of the water, and only 10% of the land required to produce the same 1 billion kg of milk. Waste outputs were similarly reduced, with modern dairy systems producing 24% of the manure, 43% of CH 4, and 56% of N2O per billion kg of milk compared with equivalent milk from historical dairying. The carbon footprint per billion kilograms of milk produced in2007 was 37% of equivalent milk production in 1944. To fulfill the increasing requirements of the US population for dairy products, it is essential to adopt management practices and technologies that improve productive efficiency, allowing milk production to be increased while reducing resource use and mitigating environmental impact.”

Part 2