The Goose that lays the Golden Eggs is almost dead..

[Fljotsdale]

bumps. Jus' tryin' t' keep the interest goin'!

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[Link]

Just a small add: I notice that in the Netherlands people more and more buy biological food, which is, of course, that absolute opposite of genetically modified. This might be some sort of breakthrough..

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In the foul darkness one figure will emerge to save the world from evil and despair.... Light flashes as his sword comes down, and thunder rolls through the sky when he points his sword up to heaven to signal his victory....People whisper his name as he walks by, evil tries to hide as they sense his presence nearby.... His name? Link......

[Fljotsdale]

Yeah, the Nethelands is pretty good. They do a LOT of recycling too. You can even find shops where they will refil your bottles with some products - mineral water, etc - and they don't offer you plastic bags unless you ask because you are expected to have your own 'proper' shopping bags. You can find 'green' shops everywhere, no need to go hunting for them all over the city as you do in Britain...

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[Moridin]

Originally posted by Fljotsdale: Solution? A major shift in the attitude and thinking of both governments and the ‘man in the street’. I’m no environmental genius, but it seems to me that we need to gradually revert to older farming methods, the labour intensive type of farming, with a wider biodiversity, as Organic Farmers are making an attempt to do. Will it happen? Left to governments and corporations, no. That is why WE have to tell ‘em, loud and clear, that we don’t want to play games with our future any more.

I am short on time but wanted to put something out there to be tossed around. I am going on a short vacation starting tomorrow and will not be back ‘til Tuesday.

The problem with reverting back to older farming methods is that while right now we are over producing, we are also over populating. With the population growing faster than the increase in farm production. So we have two solutions. 1) Continue to find ways to get an ever increasing harvest from a finite land area, or 2) Somehow slow our population growth.

Very simply put, we have a finite land area that is suitable for growing crops. We can not increase that. And, we have an infinitely growing number of mouths to feed. We cannot revert back to ‘old time farming methods’ and continue to increase our population, there is going to be a crossing point when we will not be able to feed the population, then what?

Don’t get me wrong, I too think that we are facing a horrible dilemma with pesticide and herbicide use, and decreasing biodiversity. But can we do anything about population growth? I don’t even hear anybody talking about that option. I would like to see farming revert back to the way it was, but you have to remember the population was less 50 years ago, and the farming methods of the time were adequate to produce enough food.

I would like to write more, but have to run to class (whoo-hoo, I start grad school tonight!)

Hope this makes some sort of sense considering the short time I had to write it



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Never try to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and it annoys the pig
I've got to admit it's getting better, it's getting better all the time
Proud member of the Lecherous Hillbillies...oh no wait the Laughing Hyenas

[Fljotsdale]

Very good points, Moridin! But I think it may solve itself, given a little time.
For some reason - maybe pollution, but I don't know - British males sperm count and sperm motility is going down. I think, but am not sure, that it is pretty general everywhere in the West as well. If sperm count and motility are going down, birth rate is inevitably going to become lower.
Is this pollution-caused or is it 'nature' putting the brakes on? It (she) has done it before. And if it is happening in the West, it will catch up in the East and the 3rd world as well.
And there is still the massive AIDS epidemic to take into account, and the fact that we are also finding all sorts of diseases harder and harder to control as the bacteria/viruses/whatever, become resistant to antibiotics.

The scenario is not nice, but it points to a possible leveling out of population rather than an ever-growing increase. I hope.

Balancing that out, however, is what seems to be an almost certain global warming with all the effect that will have on food production.....


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[Diogenes Of Pumpkintown]

Fljotsdale, I share your concerns. I don't know what the answer is.

Clearly, as Moridin says, world population growth has to be brought under control.

As to what it will take to get people to change their minds about our predominant approach to farming/environment: perhaps it will take a massive worldwide ecological disaster. People can be incredibly stubborn and resistant to change. Often they only change when they absolutely have to.

[Fljotsdale]

I agree, Diogenes. I think people have an amazing tendency to shut their eyes to things they don't want to know, and it WILL take a real disaster or series of disasters in the Western industrialised nations before people will sit up and take notice; and it will take even more to get corporations to shift policies.

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[Sharpedge]

Some very good points have been made here. One I would agree with is that humans in general like to believe that the laws of nature do not apply to us, and we tend to ignore problems we do not wish to see. This is clearly going to get us into a lot of trouble. We are indeed already seeing possible warning signs.

Originally posted by Fljotsdale: Is this pollution-caused or is it 'nature' putting the brakes on?

I would say it's a little bit of both. As has already been said, we are not impervious to the most fundamental of nature's laws. If we begin to outgrow our environment, just like a culture of bacteria on a petri dish, we will suffer a decline of population. No amount of current technology can save us from that simple fact. Perhaps we can prolong our period of growth, or lessen the pain of a decline but that remains to be seen.

I feel it's unlikely that this will take the form of a major disaster as things stand, but if we tip the scales too much more in our favour we may find the repercussions are more severe.

I know a fair bit about biology, but my economic knowledge is very limited, and I'm unsure as to how any changes to our agricultural methods would affect our economic stability. I can guess that we're talking major changes though. It is simply not viable to disregard the complexities of economic stability, as our species has become very reliant upon it. Therefore we must find a careful balance between our economic needs and the biological facts that we are faced with.

Originally posted by Moridin: I think it is a lose-lose situation all around. A farmer naturally wants to use the limited space they have to produce the most food possible. To do so, they have to use a limited number of varieties that produce the high yields. This opens the doors for a massive blight, disease, whatever to come along and wipe out the entire crop. So to protect the crop they use pesticides and herbicides. But then people complain that they have to eat a crop with pesticides on it, or that the pesticides are polluting our water and soil. So where do we win? Ya got me!

Exactly. It is not an easy situation to resolve. However, I believe it is possible for farmers to proceed as they are as long as they observe certain precautions. We do need to ensure that we preserve background genes in gene bank facilities (and we also need to make sure these facilities are well funded and properly staffed), we also need to ensure that any herbicides used do not have any serious ill effects. As Moridin has pointed out, the agents used in herbicides are not as deadly as they are sometimes perceived as. The fact remains that no foodstuff ‘organic’ or ‘in-organic’ can be ratified as completely safe. A popular example is the humble potato, which is only a few genes away from Deadly Nightshade! As to how these precautions can be implemented in places such as Asia, I am at a loss.

I do not believe that science can solve all of our problems in this, far from it. I do believe, however, that it is a very useful tool that, wielded correctly, could save us from the disaster that is perhaps approaching.

All this does not alter the fact that sooner or later we’re going to have to make some tough decisions on how to tackle this problem, and I hope that our world leaders act responsibly in this matter.

We're a funny old species, as they go, with intelligence and ability that may well give us power beyond our wisdom. We've tested the limits of growth and development like no other species on earth and we're still testing to this day. Perhaps this little experiment will end in disaster, but I sincerely hope it does not.

Moridin: I've scanned through the GATS thread and found it very interesting but I don't have time to throw in my 2 cents right now. I've lots of stuff to do preparing for uni and this thread has taken up a fair bit of time

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"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.

Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure."


[This message has been edited by Sharpedge (edited 08-31-2001).]