You can’t feed the world
I was out last night at a Green Party meeting and I heard someone say “You can’t feed the world with organic farming.” I have heard this a few times. I do not believe it.
For starters, I do not want to feed the world I only want to feed Alberta. I think this is really important. The Green Party believes in local production for local consumption. In an economy run on full cost accounting shipping food is not economically viable. The costs in environmental and social impacts out weigh the benefits of low dollar cost production. If you do not believe me, just look at the huge social and environmental costs in Banana Republics.
Banana Republic is a term that I use and I realise that not a lot of people know what it means. A Banana Republic is a country that has exchanges rights to its resources for money and military support. On the face of it this does not seem so bad but in practice what happens is a corporation purchases the land of subsistence farmers. It then plants these areas with crops that have no local food value like bananas or coffee. These crops have a high market value in the first world. The company will then pay the local people less than subsistence wages to work in the fields. Usually with no concern for the pesticides and herbicides they use. The price of food in the local area rises because there is less farmland in production and the local people slowly starve in a serf type of condition they cannot climb out of. Usually the corporation is backed by the military of the country and will put down any complaints by the local people.
This is one of the things we are working against. How do we stop it. We grow food locally. We pay a fair price for it. If we trade for goods we cannot get we promote Fair Trade. For example Fair Trade Coffee
The second part of the argument I have heard is that we cannot produce enough food to feed us locally. I do know that Cuba went to organic farming almost overnight when the Soviet Union collapsed and stopped shipping them chemical fertilizers and pesticides. All the recent reports I have tell me that Cubans are not starving. I think that if it is possible for Cuba to feed itself then Alberta with a much thinner population should be able to do it too.
I was out last night at a Green Party meeting and I heard someone say “You can’t feed the world with organic farming.” I have heard this a few times. I do not believe it.
For starters, I do not want to feed the world I only want to feed Alberta. I think this is really important. The Green Party believes in local production for local consumption. In an economy run on full cost accounting shipping food is not economically viable. The costs in environmental and social impacts out weigh the benefits of low dollar cost production. If you do not believe me, just look at the huge social and environmental costs in Banana Republics.
Banana Republic is a term that I use and I realise that not a lot of people know what it means. A Banana Republic is a country that has exchanges rights to its resources for money and military support. On the face of it this does not seem so bad but in practice what happens is a corporation purchases the land of subsistence farmers. It then plants these areas with crops that have no local food value like bananas or coffee. These crops have a high market value in the first world. The company will then pay the local people less than subsistence wages to work in the fields. Usually with no concern for the pesticides and herbicides they use. The price of food in the local area rises because there is less farmland in production and the local people slowly starve in a serf type of condition they cannot climb out of. Usually the corporation is backed by the military of the country and will put down any complaints by the local people.
This is one of the things we are working against. How do we stop it. We grow food locally. We pay a fair price for it. If we trade for goods we cannot get we promote Fair Trade. For example Fair Trade Coffee
The second part of the argument I have heard is that we cannot produce enough food to feed us locally. I do know that Cuba went to organic farming almost overnight when the Soviet Union collapsed and stopped shipping them chemical fertilizers and pesticides. All the recent reports I have tell me that Cubans are not starving. I think that if it is possible for Cuba to feed itself then Alberta with a much thinner population should be able to do it too.
posted by George Read @ 10:13 PM
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