Subject: RE: Food Biotechnology: Promising Havoc or Hope for the Poor? [was: Re: Rain]

[Brian James <hillbily@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Louis Proyect wrote:

>The problem is not one of technology, but class relations. Land in the
>third world is generally used to produce export commodities rather than
>food for domestic consumption.

This is indisputable. But also keep in mind that peasants who can look
back to a time when organic methods were better for them are remembering
a time when the world's population was about half what it is today.

I don't understand your persistent refusal to concede that emerging and
conventional methods of agriculture could be used differently under a
socialist guidance, and indeed would be necessary to it. On the one hand
you defend the standard views of the eco-movement allowing that
socialism would save it from its reactionary underpinnings, while
refusing to extend the same to science and technology--the "green
revolution," biotech, GMO, etc. The point of progressive socialism in
the face of the challenges of growing population and declining food
production is that we can use the wisdom of both the old and the new for
the benefit of humanity. Organic farming alone cannot make this promise.

Gordon Conway of the Rockefeller Foundation has written an excellent
book, The Doubly Green Revolution: Food for all in the 21st Century,
which should be required reading for anyone concerned about feeding the
world sustainably. He was a pioneer of integrated pest management (IPM)
during the original Green Revolution, and pioneered the concept of
sustainable agriculture in the 70s. His politics are thoroughly
bourgeois and his recommendations are couched within the structures of
imperialism (neoliberalism and IMF policies) but his agricultural
recommendations on their own--a mix of high tech science and traditional
ecofriendly wisdom--are the perfect solution socialists should envision
within a socialist program.

The polarisation between "organic" methods and modern agricultural
science is a product of the environmental movement and its own agenda
and shouldn't get in the way of Marxism!

Brian James