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http://www.bioscinews.com/files/news-detail.asp?NewsID=5570

Eco-Myth and Agricultural Reality

- BioScience News and Advocate, Thomas R. DeGregori, December 9, 2003

Modern agriculture has become a villain of choice for many who reject
modernity finding the trends of the last half of the 20th and beginnings
of the 21st century to be ecologically destructive if not life
threatening. It is increasingly being used as an all encompassing category
by critics of globalization and transgenic (genetically modified) food
crops and by street protestors and their mentors and organizers.

The phobias about transgenic crops have their antecedents in the
persistent mythologies about the Green Revolution technologies in which no
amount of cumulating evidence can in any way overcome mindless opposition
to it. The litany of those critical of Green Revolution is that the HYV
(high yielding varieties) seeds "require" more fertilizer, water and
pesticides when in fact they outperform the traditional varieties at most
any level of inputs.

These three factoids is all that most of the believers know about the
Green Revolution in addition to the fear that modern monoculture is a
global catastrophe waiting to happen from an as yet non-existent pathogen.
Unfortunately for the true believers, each of these beliefs is not only
wrong, they are exactly contrary to what can be factually demonstrated to
be the case.

According to the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), modern rice
varieties are three times as efficient in using water compared with
traditional varieties. In other words, we are using today about the same
amount of water to grow almost three times as much rice than in 1960.
Overall, The FAO estimates are that "water needs for food per capita
halved between 1961 and 2001."

Higher yields "require" more fertilizer as the more nutrient that is
extracted from the soil, the more that has to be replaced. Nobel
Prizewinner, Dr. Norman Borlaug states that "the high-yielding dwarf wheat
and rice varieties ... not only respond to much heavier dosages of
fertilizer than the old ones but are also much more efficient in their
use" with each kilo of nitrogen applied yielding about 2 1/2 times as much
grain than in traditional varieties.

The Green Revolution seeds turn out to be more disease resistant requiring
less pesticides as plant breeders have added multiple or polygenic disease
resistant genes - gene stacking from new sources using genes that provide
different forms of resistance. The stability of modern varieties is
demonstrated by the steady decrease in the coefficient of variation for
rice production for the last forty years. For wheat, researchers at the
International Maize & Wheat Improvement Centre (CIMMYT) have found that
"yield stability, resistance to rusts, pedigree complexity, and the number
of modern cultivars in farmers' fields have all increased since the early
years of the Green Revolution."

Central to the anti-modern agronomy mythology is the belief that the Green
Revolution technologies have led to a vast increase in monocropping,
worsened the nutritional quality of the human diet and fostered a
mentality that has been pejoratively called "monocultures of the mind."
Rice has had an association with monoculture long before the Green
Revolution.

It might therefore come as a surprise to many that researchers at the
International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) found the percentage of total
crop harvested area in rice (defined as hectares under rice multiplied by
the number of croppings per year) has fallen "in nearly all Asian rice
growing economies since 1970." For example, rice in China went from a 0.24
share of total crop area harvested in 1970 to 0.18 in 2001 while Vietnam
went from a 0.75 to a 0.62 share in 2001 in the same period in becoming
the second largest rice exporter in the world to Thailand which went
from0.64 share to 0.57 share.

True believers always have a fall back position allowing them to protect
their anti-modern beliefs. With the possible exception of Vandana Shiva,
no one today can deny the higher yields from the Green Revolution crops.
To the argument that these higher yields allowed more land to be preserved
for conservation and biodiversity, there is a deafening silence. Yes, the
Green Revolution produced more output but contrary to all evidence of
increased height (a very good proxy for health from generation to
generation), health and life expectancy, it is being claimed that the
modern varieties are less nutritious. One activist generalizes the
nutritional attack against the Green Revolution by claiming that: "Two
billion people now have diets less diverse than 30 years ago. The Green
Revolution stripped out the micro nutrients and encouraged monocropping."

For those of us seeking to advance and continue to improve modern
agriculture, there is good news and bad news in the foregoing. The bad
news is that no matter how successful we may be, there will always be some
who will find ways of being in denial. The good news is that in spite of
the steady drumbeat of misinformation, the Green Revolution has taken hold
and succeeded. We must be ever vigilant to make sure that the same is true
for the biotech revolution

Thomas R.DeGregori, Professor of Economics, University of Houston and
author of the just published, Origins of the Organic Agriculture Debate.
Ames IA:Iowa State Press: A Blackwell Scientific Publisher.