in my last rant, I lamented that the green types (including the Pope) seem to want to go back to the good old days of (methane producing flooding of) rice paddies, using manure and plowing with a waterbuffalo, because they are nostalgic, and hey it isn't their backs and heads that ache after a day plowing or weeding the fields in the hot sun.
Now, we sell organically grown brown rice, and Joy supervises and teaches local farmers to grow organic rice and veggies in nearby Bulacan. There is a market for organic produce and rice among the growing middle class here in the Philippines and it is good for farmers to be encouraged to grow traditional strains of rice because monoculture of high yield rice makes food more vulnerable to pests and disease...
but our prices are too high for the average factory worker or tricycle driver to buy. And of course, farming is vulnerable to disasters (like typhoons, droughts, floods, insects and plant disease, not to mention climate change, aka global warming or maybe global cooling from volcanic ash).
Paul Ehrlich predicted mass starvation in the Population Bomb in the 1980s, but he lost a bet with Julian Simon, who pointed out that new technology would probably prevent that from happening.
Enter Norman Bourlag, the least known hero of the modern world, whose green revolution in new crop strains probably saved the lives of a billion people.
Which is why I am not anti GM food or chemicals and herbicides: as the saying goes: embrace the power of "AND".
It's a big world and there is a need for diversity and natural food, but if we are going to feed 8 billion people, we will need newfangled technology to do it.
and the dirty little secret is that this technology will be invented by people seeking a solution to the problem, but the harder step, the implementation of the technology, will probably be done by Big busines types so hated on conspiracy page sites (with good reason: because you need critics to keep them in line, but don't make a religion about it and burn them as heretics just because they are changing mother earth or something).
So does big agri tech have an answer to those who lament famines and TEOTWAWKI scenerios?
Maybe. And one possible (partial) solution could be Vertical farming and hydroponics. (and maybe robot farmers).
CoryDigs, an (anti NWO blog but honest) investigative site has a nice article discussing the money being invested in this technology of vertical farming, hydroponics, and of course GM food.
Lots of details with links there, and not my area of expertise.
but just put it this way: it could be the wave of the future. I mean, these big money guys are not investing money out of the goodness of their sweet little pea picking hearts. If it fails, they lose their investment and move on. But if it works, people don't starve to death, and they get rich.
Most of the articles discussing hydroponics and vertical farms are about a way to grow fresh veggies for city dwellers, as an alternative to importing veggies from other parts of the USA or Latin America. USDA article link.
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| Indoor and vertical farming may be part of the solution to rising demands for food and limited natural resources. Photo credit: Oasis Biotech |
Some of this tech is known to me, because this is similar to how we grow organic veggies on our farm: in a greenhouse made with sheets of clear plastic and a wooden frame (we used soil and rice husks in a tray for them to grow): you plant and grow the veggies inside the greenhouse and so you don't need herbicides or pesticides. Our greenhouse was cheap to build, and so when the typhoons hit and flattens it, (something that happens every couple of years), you just rebuild instead of trying to fix an expensive glass or plexiglas house.
Ah, but man does not live on veggies alone: What about grain: specifically, what about rice, the grain that feeds one third of the world?
This article is about Singapore's experiment in growing rice in vertical farms...full article here.
Hmm.. Singapore is also a world leader in desalinization of sea water. Maybe because they are small and know the importance of being self sufficient in water after Malaysia cut off much of their water supply a few years ago.
So they are seeking self sufficiency just in case of other problems arising: first water, then food.
Well, Singapore is small but wealthy, but what about smaller less wealthy countries like the Philippines.
Inhabitat has an article (2013) about how this could be done in the Philippines.
a 2021 article and this article from the Philippine Rice Institute also discusses vertical farming to grow vegetables (similar to what we do, but more advanced because it uses many layers, not just a single flat bed to grow the veggies) and using modern tech ways to grow rice.
in other words, most of this is in the future, but there are people trying to find solutions to hunger (and make a profit while they do so).
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