we grow organic rice, and usually use hybrids from the local Philippine rice research institute.
I am old enough to remember the Population bomb, the book by Paul Ehrlich that insisted the world was going to see mass starvation in the 1970s.
The reason we didn't have the mass starvation that Paul Ehrlich predicted is that an unsung scientists who developed hybrid grain that had increased yields.
these things were controversial: They required fertilizer and herbicides. High prices made some small farmers go bankrupt.And of course a lot of NGOs opposed the introduction because it meant changing the way traditional farmers worked, destroyed local culture, and the new seeds that had to be bought from big agri businesses displaced native seeds that although had smaller yields, did have biodiversity
Of course, one can do both things: Pay small famers to grow their heirloom varieties, while having larger, mechanized farms produce large crops to feed the many mouths in the large cities.
This is actually being done of course, but the loud voices of the green idiots have replaced the realistic types who see the subtleties of things like: yes, this fancy way of growing crops causes problems, but the alternative is mass starvation.
But Agribusiness isn't the only one pushing green hybrids requiring fertilizer etc. to feed a growing population: China is also big on this, maybe because China has a long history of famines and one reason that people put up with a government that bosses you around is that the government also helps you from starving to death. So irrigation and dams (both of which are anathema to green extremists) have a 3000 year history in that country.
So what about the next step in feeding people? Big Agribusiness and China both agree: GM crops that don't need huge amounts of toxic chemicals but have high yields.
From Science Daily:
Researchers have used the genome-editing tool CRISPR-Cas to create disease resistant rice plants, according to a new study. Small-scale field trials in China show that the newly created rice variety exhibited both high yields and resistance to the fungus that causes a serious disease called rice blast.
Guotian identified one with dark patches on its leaves... "He found that the strain was also resistant to bacterial infection, but it was extremely small and low yielding," ...He used CRISPR-Cas9 to isolate the gene related to the mutation and used genome editing to recreate that resistance trait, eventually identifying a line that had good yield and was resistant to three different pathogens, including the fungus that causes rice blast.
This will be the next green revolution: using crispr instead of slowly cross hybriding seeds. Of course this means the seeds will be sold by big agri companies to make a profit, (bad?) but it also means farmers won't lose crops to disease or insects and they will save on the price of toxic chemicals to stop these pests.
and in the meanwhile, we organic farmers will keep growing old fashioned crops for the growing middle class to eat
I repeat: I see no problem with this: after all a lot of American food is GM food. Hystrical types cry cancer, but hey, better cancer at age 60 than dying of malnutrition related diseases at age 10 or from TB at age 30.
and as I noted: We grow organic food, which is encouraged by our government here in the Philippines. Of course, the price is a bit high but cheap non organic rice can be imported (as it has for 100 years or more) to feed the poor, while local farmers produce luxury goods to sell overseas for a profit. (in the past, this meant sugar, bananas, etc. but now we are looking into exporting our gourmet brown organic rice to more affluent countries).
But isn't this destroying the culture of our villages? Yes, alas. But the dirty little secret is that this is happening anyway. We had land reform a generation ago, and so the farmers could afford to educate their kids. The kids then got jobs either in the cities or overseas (ten percent of working age Filipinos work overseas or in the shipping industry). So the elderly parents want to sell their land because the kids simply don't want to work that hard to live in poverty. these plots are bought by the affluent in Manila as second houses, or by returning OFW as an investment, so they can hire tenant farmers to do the work.
So over the last 20 years we have seen traditional farming by waterbuffalo and harvesting by hand being replaced with farm machinery, and often we have to import people to farm the land from poorer areas like the Visayas.
If I am ambivalent about the ecology movement, I am horrified at how some of the eco crazies are destroying farm output in the name of global warming.
the controvery resembles the luddites, who opposed the industrial revolution. Small weavers were displaced and the result was the terrible pollution of the textile mills, the demand for cheap cotten led to the slave trade and major economic problems in India, but on the other hand, the result was cheap cloth and women were freed from the task of spinning and weaving cloth.
Technology results in both good and bad things.
When it comes to rice, we are hearing rumbles from the green zealots at the WEF who think that rice paddies are producing global warming so should be eliminated.
(rice paddies drown the weeds, which rot and produce methane. Newer methods of limiting flooding produces much less methane, but produces another greenhouse gas, NO, which is even worse for global warming. The war in the Ukraine has resulted in the prices of fertilizer skyrocketing, which means our cheap organic fertilizer is in demand so that price has gone up also.
We worry that we won't be able to keep farming our organic crops due to the increased cost of fertilizer, farm machinery and diesel. So should we switch to non organic rice and make a decent profit, or risk bankrupcy, or having to sell some of our land to keep going?
And why do the WEF and the green idiots back shutting down rice that feeds people? flooding to kill weeds the natural way causes methane. We have already switched to limited flooding of our rice paddies, but this means more money to buy herbicides and more mechanical weeding. So they say replace rice with other foods. Fine. We are medium sized farmers, so could do this, but the small independent farmers cannot.
and the ghost lurking behind the discussion: How green policies caused economic collapse in SriLanka.
These policies are still being pushed by the same green idiots who are destroying Farms in Europe and Ireland
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