Corona times -2020 ....28. Hope the 'covid lessons' leads us to better times in the future.
"Molecular biology transformed medicine, agriculture, and nearly every other scientific discipline. But it has also prompted a rancorous debate over the consequences ... Genetically modified products have often been advertised as the best way to slow the impact of climate change, produce greater yields, provide more nutrients in food, and feed the world’s poorest people. Most of the transgenic crops on the market today, however, have been designed to meet the needs of industrial farmers and their customers in the West."
"Shiva and other opponents of agricultural biotechnology argue that the higher cost of patented seeds, produced by giant corporations, prevents poor farmers from sowing them in their fields. And they worry that pollen from genetically engineered crops will drift into the wild, altering plant ecosystems forever.
Many people, however, raise an even more fundamental objection: crossing varieties and growing them in fields is one thing, but using a gene gun to fire a bacterium into seeds seems like a violation of the rules of life.".
"In contrast to most agricultural ecologists, Shiva remains committed to the idea that organic farming can feed the world. Owing almost wholly to the efforts of Shiva and other activists, India has not approved a single genetically modified food crop for human consumption."
"Like Gandhi, whom she reveres, Shiva questions many of the goals of contemporary civilization. Last year, Prince Charles, who keeps a bust of Shiva on display at Highgrove, his family house, visited her at the Navdanya farm, in Dehradun, about a hundred and fifty miles north of New Delhi. Charles, perhaps the world’s best-known critic of modern life, has for years denounced transgenic crops."
"The British environmentalist Mark Lynas, for example, stood strongly against the use of biotechnology in agriculture for more than a decade. But last year, after careful study of the scientific data on which his assumptions were based, he reversed his position. 'I apologize for having spent several years ripping up G.M. crops,' he said. 'I am also sorry that I assisted in demonizing an important technological option which can be used to benefit the environment.' Lynas now regards the assumption that the world could be fed solely with organic food as 'simplistic nonsense.”
There is more to read. The article goes on to examine many controversies, like who are responsible for the suicides of farmers. The functioning style of Dr. Shiva and so on. It does gets confusing as there seems to be no possibility of a dialogue between the two diverse points of view. It is a stand-off!
However I will end with the last para of this article.
"Genetically modified crops will not solve the problem of the hundreds of millions of people who go to bed hungry every night. It would be far better if the world’s foods contained an adequate supply of vitamins. It would also help the people of many poverty-stricken countries if their governments were less corrupt. Working roads would do more to reduce nutritional deficits than any G.M.O. possibly could, and so would a more equitable distribution of the Earth’s dwindling supply of freshwater. No single crop or approach to farming can possibly feed the world. To prevent billions of people from living in hunger, we will need to use every one of them."
I strongly feel that with all the challenges that are facing us, the Covid 19, the troublesome neighbors and our own internal conflicts, also the need to ramp up our economy, the self-reliance targets and what have you, we need to work on reducing our population growth. Let's not say China have a larger population and they are getting to be number one in the world!
Curious about the latest situation, I googled and the article below came up!
This is a report made in 1986! ( I do hope to find more encouraging articles as I continue my search !)
- PMID: 12315281
PIP: Thus far, India's efforts to curtail population growth have consistently failed to meet official targets. The crude birthrate (per 1000 population per year) is highest in the belt of 6 Hindi-speaking states, which include Rajasthan (40), Madhya Pradesh (38.5), Uttar Pradesh (38.4), Bihar (37.2), and Haryana (35.9). The rates are slightly lower in the other large North Indian States. The rate is 33.6 for India as a whole according to 1983 data. 3 of the South Indian states have the lowest crude birthrates: Kamataka (28.7), Tamil Nadu (27.8), and Kerata (24.9). Each of India's successive Five Year Plans gave increasingly more emphasis to population control, but the key tactical features have stayed the same. Population control comes under the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, with family planning services provided through the free health delivery system. The main strategy continues to be to persuade people on an individual basis to accept the small family norm by a wide range of advertising and educational efforts. As of 1986, the family planning establishment had grown to gigantic proportions, employing half a million people in the family planning and health services. The Five Year Plan initiated in July 1985 continues the same approach but with added features. "Green cards" are given to those who accept sterilization after 2 children, allowing them a wide range of benefits such as low interest housing loans, preference in getting housing plots and enterprise loans, and salary increases for government employees. Health workers and other government employees have quotas of persons to motivate for contraceptive acceptance. They receive a small monetary incentive, which they often give to the acceptors so they can maintain their quotas and keep their jobs. The 1986 Revised Strategy for Family Planning is essentially more of the same with family planning more integrated with the health delivery system. Foreign and international donor agencies frequently have placed contradictory pressures on the Indian government, according to their own ideological tendencies. The family planning program is essential despite its faults, which are: bypassing of the natural community; and excessive medicalization and linkage with the health delivery system. In India there is an increasing realization that the achievements of the rural development and family planning programs are marginal relative to the amount of resources committed to them. This is because of the bureaucratic, from-the-top-down bias in which the physical community is neglected.
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