On population: Hillel correctly notes that the stability of a
population (growth/decline) results from the net of birth/death, and
that historic population levels reflected high rates of both birth
and death (esp. infant mortality). Improvements in access to health
care have temporarily relieved the death rate, but without
concomitant decreases in birth rate, population is soaring (3% per
year in Africa). However, he also correctly points out that
developing societies eventually get beyond this out-of-phase state,
to where changes to living standards and life goals reduce birth rate
back to a new equilibrium with death, yielding a more stable (albeit
higher) population level.
From this broader perspective, it seems reasonable to ask how
Avery's vision (capital- and resource-intensive paradigm) will
promote/discourage evolution to this equilibrium state in Africa
and elsewhere in the developing world? Anything that retards the
progression toward reduced birth rates should be viewed as a net
negative, no matter how superficially attractive it may seem in
the short run. It is counterproductive to feed people, if the
means by which this is done alienates them from producing their
own food and obstructs the process of improving living standards,
from which, as a natural consequence, birth rate declines.
On land mismanagement: to a revealing degree, Hillel explores the
ways in which modern technology (and Western value systems?) have
displaced traditional, often ecologically sustainable approaches to
soil and water management in Africa and elsewhere. The presumption
that high yield is attainable, desirable, and sustainable is
challenged by a review of the ecological disasters unfolding in some
regions which have been the recipient of contemporary intensive
approaches. High tech means of crop production are shown to have
degraded the productive potential of large regions (including
irrigated regions of North America), and/or to have diminished the
incentive to produce locally (e.g. dumping of subsidized grain in
developing countries), creating the very dependence which Avery and
others now decry.
From this background, one may ask just who is it that is
expected to benefit from the "high yield" paradigm that Avery and
others are promoting?
*Not much doubt that there is demand, great and growing demand,
for food, although the money to pay for it is distributed somewhat
disuniformly among the world's people.
*Not much doubt that the high yield approach has fed us (and our
livestock) very well indeed, particularly if one doesn't count the
societal and environmental side effects.
What seems worthy of question, however, is the degree to which the
high yield paradigm that has worked so well for us (at least during
this 50 year blip of artificially cheap energy) is, in fact, the
historic cause or the future solution of hunger, particularly in the
Third World? Ann
ACLARK@crop.uoguelph.ca
Dr. E. Ann Clark
Associate Professor
Crop Science
University of Guelph
Guelph, ON N1G 2W1
Phone: 519-824-4120 Ext. 2508
FAX: 519 763-8933