The WSJ has it mostly wrong today re the Green Revolution on their editorial page … and the PBS Norman Borlaug documentary is on the right track.
It should be common knowledge by now that:
1. Dr. Borlaug et al. didn’t abide by the Precautionary Principle,
2. there were better routes toward quality life for all (including other species) back in the 1950s/60s … and
3. Dr. Borlaug and those of the Green Revolution made many big mistakes, among them:
• tremendous colonizer arrogance after the Allies “won” WW II and lack of listening to & working with local agriculturalists, campesinos, and local governments & communities to address local food and resource issues profoundly & holistically for the short AND long term,
• too much dependence on fossil energy and materials (including “synthetic” fertilizers as well as biocides) … and
• treatment of the plant breeders as Gods during this period of agricultural research, … and neglect of truly identifying the real root problems and approaching the challenges in an interdisciplinary/transdisciplinary way.
This was changing somewhat in the 1970s with a farming systems and sustainable livelihoods approach, but then the appropriate winds of change were misdirected again worldwide with the right-wing wave of Thatcher & Reagan et al. in the 1980s. This right-wing colonizer, neo-liberal capitalistic, transnational corporation, authoritarian, strong-arm approach began to soften somewhat toward the end of the George W. Bush years and into the Obama administration.
But now the world has really tended to go over-board with deplorable right-wing and authoritarian administrations.
(Of course, the COVID-19 pandemic IS revealing big problems with our industrial big ag systems/agrilogistics. But will it truly wake up a world which has grown used to masking the terrible effects of neglect of a dynamic homeostatic symbioses/”nature” with fossil energy and rampant artificialization?)
https://www.wsj.com/articles/battering-norman-borlaug-11587769611
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/man-who-tried-to-feed-the-world/
https://borlaug.tamu.edu/
……………………………………….
(I’m tagging via Facebook some folk who have studied this Green Revolution/sustainable community history much more thoroughly than I and would have a much more in-depth and accurate assessment and conclusions)
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pbm 4/25/2020
[ 7 S’s / VV->^^]
