This week environmentalists won a mammoth concession from the Monsanto corporation, which announced it would not use its so-called terminator gene technology to produce genetically modified seeds that are good for only one generation. But is it true, as the Green lobby has consistently argued, that "organic" methods of agriculture are always better? Not according to a timely collection of essays called "Fearing Food: Risk, Health and Environment" (Julian Morris and Roger Bate eds., Butterworth-Heinemann, 302 pages, GBP 15.99). "Such irrational attacks on modern agricultural technologies," says Julian Morris of the London-based Institute of Economic Affairs, "are neither informative nor helpful."
The roots of the "organic ecohype" are correctly traced to Rachel Carson's 1962 book, "Silent Spring," about the supposed horrors of pesticides such as DDT. Time and again, serious scientific research has undermined Ms. Carson's apocalyptic view of the future, a view that has far too frequently been allowed to warp public policy making with regard to the safe use of pesticides and fertilizers. In Sri Lanka, for example, DDT had reduced malaria to only 17 cases annually by the year 1963, when it was abandoned. Now, there are over two million cases per year. It's a perfect example of the dark side of Green politics, a neo-colonialist movement that so often afflicts the poor and the disadvantaged of the developing world in the name of saving the planet -- or, more often, just some animals or plants in the North.
A series of well-argued and thoroughly referenced studies, "Fearing Food" begins by examining the false logic behind the Frankenstein image of agricultural technology that has been so assiduously peddled by organizations like Greenpeace. The section "But is it true?" deconstructs the Green cases against pesticides, dietary nitrates, antibiotics, genetic modification and food packaging. Dennis Avery, director of the Center for Global Food issues, rightly describes the organic lobby as followers of a "faith," a faith that even fails to fulfill its own "kinder to Earth" criteria. Organic farmers introduce alien species into new environments to control pests, leave fields fallow which causes soil erosion, and use more land per crop produced. By contrast, Michael A. Wilson, John R. Hillman and David J. Robinson, in their excellent chapter on genetic modification and biotechnology, argue that GM crops are far kinder to the environment. They require fewer chemicals. And increased production means more land can be left in its "natural" state.
In the second part of the book, "If it's not part of the solution, it's part of the problem," the authors demonstrate that the Greens promote counterproductive and unwarranted constraints on real sustainable development. Farmer Linda Whetstone, for example, shows how the infamous Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) in Europe causes not only overspending and overproduction, but also environmental degradation.
The book ends with a section asking: "So what is the solution?" Indur M. Goklany of the U.S. Department of the Interior perceptively argues that new technologies are vital because they offer the possibility of producing more food from less land, and keep us ahead of population growth. Bruce Yandle, an economics professor at Clemson University, then takes up an earlier point made by French doctor Jean-Louis L'Hirondel about nitrate fertilizers: namely, that "command-and-control" measures are not an efficient way of controlling dispersed sources of pollution. He would prefer the use of marketable permits. I found this to be the only disappointing section of the book; I would have liked to have seen it greatly expanded.
But the book is well edited, and provides an executive summary for quick absorption, author biographies, a comprehensive introduction and a full index. Its message is also important. The Green lobby has filled the air with noise and clamor, and the world's media with myths and images that can only damage long-term human development in the face of our ever-changing world.
For me, however, the most powerful quotation in the whole book did not come from a modern author, but from Charles Darwin himself: "It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change." As in the past, modern food and agricultural development are the only way humans will survive population growth, environmental change, pests and diseases. To oppose such developments is not only folly, but deeply immoral. The idea that the Green movement holds the ethical high ground has held sway for far too long. This book will help to challenge the lie. We adapt with new technologies, or we die.
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