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The man achieved great things, specifically the way in which he solved the problem is phenomenal. It reveals not a just a great mind, but a great character. Not

The man achieved great things, specifically the way in which he solved the problem is phenomenal. It reveals not a just a great mind, but a great character. Not to be glib, but you'd look for something like that in a founder. Except the he didn't create yet another web 2.0 site, he saved billions of lives. Having said that, lets keep in mind that the green revolution is not as often described a low risk/high yield deal. Low risk/high yield things often tend to be Utopian and are most often revealed to not be at least one of those things. The green revolutions is HIGH risk/high yield. It is high risk because it relies on very few, very genetically similar varieties. And those are at high risk for decimation due to disease. They themselves might not be more susceptible to any one disease, but their near universal use carries a high risk of unforeseen food shortages when some fungus wipes out a sufficiently large percentage of the global wheat crop. We should carry on Norman Borlaug's work and develop more genetically diverse strains which maintain similarly high yields. It would also be nice if we could find a way to fertilize without creating hardpan soils or fertilizer runoff into rivers/lakes/oceans.

zacechola 17y ago
You misstate the arguments of some green farming techniques. For example, rejecting monoculture on a patch of land is low risk/high yield. 15 different crops (not 15 varieties of one crop) is much less susceptible to total failure due to a single catastrophic event than a monoculture. Secondly, is high yield even a good thing? Many crops produce more yield but do not produce more (or produce very little more) nutritionally valuable product. Corn being the exemplary plant in this case. Germ size has barely increased, while starch has grown considerably. Which is great if you're feeding cattle, but biomass from starch doesn't necessarily mean protein-rich biomass, rather it becomes animal fat. Delicious animal fat, to be sure, but not necessarily a good yield/nutrition trade-off.
- biohacker42 17y ago
  is high yield even a good thing? It is if you want to feed more people, More people may not be a good thing, but it often just is an inescapable reality and if you want to keep them from death by starvation you need higher yield. And I'm not sure rejecting monoculture on a patch of land is high yield. Not if you want to harvest and distribute it all and do it before it spoils and the "patch" is large enough. Then you need machines, huge machines, and those demand monoculture. Or you could go with human labor but then you'd need a whole other patch of land, harvested with machines, to feed the laborers harvesting the first patch. Corn is a good example of high calorie/poor nutrition. But most other crops are not that bad.
  - zacechola 17y ago
    Methods of harvesting and distribution depend greatly on how far one wishes to distribute the crop from the source. Which is entirely another prong in the argument for green ag. I don't necessarily agree with the local food movement on all accounts, but the question of feeding the world ultimately comes down to how much total food is necessary to feed a population, not how many diverse crops can feed a population. I know that sounds like an argument for monoculture, but hear me out. High yield is important if you want to feed people outside your locale. It becomes less an issue of feeding the masses and more a vehicle for trade. Through modern techniques and distribution, oranges from Florida can be sold in North Dakota. However, I wonder if it's necessary that North Dakotan's need many cheap oranges. There are many examples. What is the actual value of Columbian asparagus in the fall vs. the residual costs of producing and distributing that asparagus? Et cetera. The labor issue you bring up is an important one, however, and it is a trade-off that many proponents of green agriculture too easily overlook.
    - biohacker42 17y ago
      Clearly there's no vital need for cheap asparagus. That's another problem. As the Irish say: God gave us the potato blight, the British gave us the famine. That is to say, whith great income disparity, even when millions of people can't get enough calories, we can be throwing away moldy oranges. Shortages of food will only make it more expensive for us, but people around the world will starve. And a lot of people are not eating specialty foods from far off, they are barely getting enough calories from high yield starchy local crops like rice, corn, wheat etc. I am not sure how you could provide a population center like say Kinshasa with enough calories, never mind trace nutrients, without machines. Manually harvesting wheat or corn is not a way to feed the world.
- jules 17y ago
  I find food from my garden consistently much tastier than food from the supermarket. Especially tomatoes, haricots verts, peas & lettuce. Tomatoes from the supermarket taste as if they injected 80% water. Haricots verts from the supermarket taste as if they're a month old. You wouldn't even recognize peas if you're used to frozen peas. I don't know if the difference is because of different species of plants or different light conditions or different soil. Whether it's better for your health I couldn't say.
  - biohacker42 17y ago
    The store varieties are absolutely bred for yield and looks but not taste. The most common tomato is called "bulletproof" and that's because of how well it ships without bruising, not how tasty it is.

zacechola 17y ago

You misstate the arguments of some green farming techniques. For example, rejecting monoculture on a patch of land is low risk/high yield. 15 different crops (not 15 varieties of one crop) is much less susceptible to total failure due to a single catastrophic event than a monoculture. Secondly, is high yield even a good thing? Many crops produce more yield but do not produce more (or produce very little more) nutritionally valuable product. Corn being the exemplary plant in this case. Germ size has barely increased, while starch has grown considerably. Which is great if you're feeding cattle, but biomass from starch doesn't necessarily mean protein-rich biomass, rather it becomes animal fat. Delicious animal fat, to be sure, but not necessarily a good yield/nutrition trade-off.

biohacker42 17y ago
is high yield even a good thing? It is if you want to feed more people, More people may not be a good thing, but it often just is an inescapable reality and if you want to keep them from death by starvation you need higher yield. And I'm not sure rejecting monoculture on a patch of land is high yield. Not if you want to harvest and distribute it all and do it before it spoils and the "patch" is large enough. Then you need machines, huge machines, and those demand monoculture. Or you could go with human labor but then you'd need a whole other patch of land, harvested with machines, to feed the laborers harvesting the first patch. Corn is a good example of high calorie/poor nutrition. But most other crops are not that bad.
- zacechola 17y ago
  Methods of harvesting and distribution depend greatly on how far one wishes to distribute the crop from the source. Which is entirely another prong in the argument for green ag. I don't necessarily agree with the local food movement on all accounts, but the question of feeding the world ultimately comes down to how much total food is necessary to feed a population, not how many diverse crops can feed a population. I know that sounds like an argument for monoculture, but hear me out. High yield is important if you want to feed people outside your locale. It becomes less an issue of feeding the masses and more a vehicle for trade. Through modern techniques and distribution, oranges from Florida can be sold in North Dakota. However, I wonder if it's necessary that North Dakotan's need many cheap oranges. There are many examples. What is the actual value of Columbian asparagus in the fall vs. the residual costs of producing and distributing that asparagus? Et cetera. The labor issue you bring up is an important one, however, and it is a trade-off that many proponents of green agriculture too easily overlook.
  - biohacker42 17y ago
    Clearly there's no vital need for cheap asparagus. That's another problem. As the Irish say: God gave us the potato blight, the British gave us the famine. That is to say, whith great income disparity, even when millions of people can't get enough calories, we can be throwing away moldy oranges. Shortages of food will only make it more expensive for us, but people around the world will starve. And a lot of people are not eating specialty foods from far off, they are barely getting enough calories from high yield starchy local crops like rice, corn, wheat etc. I am not sure how you could provide a population center like say Kinshasa with enough calories, never mind trace nutrients, without machines. Manually harvesting wheat or corn is not a way to feed the world.
jules 17y ago
I find food from my garden consistently much tastier than food from the supermarket. Especially tomatoes, haricots verts, peas & lettuce. Tomatoes from the supermarket taste as if they injected 80% water. Haricots verts from the supermarket taste as if they're a month old. You wouldn't even recognize peas if you're used to frozen peas. I don't know if the difference is because of different species of plants or different light conditions or different soil. Whether it's better for your health I couldn't say.
- biohacker42 17y ago
  The store varieties are absolutely bred for yield and looks but not taste. The most common tomato is called "bulletproof" and that's because of how well it ships without bruising, not how tasty it is.