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News Release Widespread Organic Farming - A danger to the Planet "The biggest danger facing world wildlife is neither pesticides nor population growth. Naturalists agree that the biggest threat to wildlife in the 21st century is the potential loss of its habitat," said Mr Dennis Avery, Director of Global Food Resources at the Hudson Institute, Indianapolis, USA. Mr Avery was speaking at the British Crop Production Council’s (BCPC) international conference in Brighton on 18 November. "Thus, the biggest threat to biodiversity is the potential ploughing down of much of the world’s remaining forests to produce low yield crops and livestock," he continued. Given the fact that by 2040, the world must be prepared to feed a peak population of 8.5 billion affluent people he went on: "It is difficult to imagine how a world facing the biggest surge in food demand in history needs more research on low-yielding farming. Yet the environmental movement continues to recommend organic and traditional farming methods which have sharply lower yields than today’s mainstream farms. The public has been told that the organic approach to farming is kinder to the environment. The public has not been told that its low yields would force us to destroy millions of square miles of additional wildlands." Quoting figures from the Rodale Institute, he maintained that organic farming methods would result in a 21% cut in grain yields. If the whole world were to accept such a cut it would take an extra 558,000 square miles of land to grow our current level of crops. That is an area nearly equivalent to the whole of Great Britain, Germany, France, Denmark, the Netherlands, Belgium and Italy. "Put in these terms, Mr Avery’s argument is very compelling," commented Mr John Finney, chairman of BCPC. "Within BCPC we are exploring all the issues concerning the feeding of a growing and increasingly affluent world population." Mr Avery had much more to say. He pointed out that whilst the Green Revolution has been honoured for preventing massive Third World famine it’s vital role in protecting wildlife has scarcely been recognised by the public. He said that thanks to hybrid seeds, chemical fertilisers and pesticides the world has managed to feed 80% more people from the same 6 million square miles of farm land, tripling output since 1960. He explained that high-yield farming has not only saved land, it has saved land with the most biodiversity. "Researchers are finding more bird and butterfly species in a few square miles of tropical forest than exist in the whole of North America," he said. "For years, the environmental movement has been complaining about the gaps in our environmental accounting. It is now clear however that the most glaring gap has been the failure to credit modern farming with the millions of square miles of wildlands preserved from the plough. It is also clear that the eco-activists know so little about farming that their agricultural recommendations to adopt wide-scale organic and traditional farming systems - are a danger to the environment," he concluded. For further information contact: |
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