1. Kristof Nordin on research obsession with maize in Malawi
2. Peter Melchett on research neglect of sustainable ag methods in the UK
3. Peter Melchett on how organic systems are starved of new seed varieties by narrow focus on GM and chemical farming
NOTE: Some comments are published below from two experts on sustainable agriculture – the first based in Malawi, Africa, the second in the UK, which highlight the dangerous narrowing of the research agenda onto GM and single commodity crops at the expense of more productive and sustainable ways of feeding the world.
Item 1 below is a comment by a permaculture expert on the research obsession in Malawi with a single crop, maize, posted to the GM Free Africa listserv in response to the Earth Open Source report, GMO Myths and Truths, which can be downloaded from here:
http://earthopensource.org/index.php/reports/58-gmo-myths-and-truths
Item 2 is a comment by Peter Melchett of the Soil Association on the new GM debate forum Imascientist.org.uk (please visit it, register, and add your comments!) in response to a question from a member of the public who asked about yield gains from intercropping, an agroecological method that entails growing two or more crops in proximity, and why this method is not more widely practised. Les Firbank, one of the scientists selected by the forum to answer the public's questions, and who also ran the UK government's farm scale trials on GM crops, answered, "One of the problems about intercropping is that it takes a lot of labour, and a lot of thought. In Britain, not many people want to be farmers, and most people want to buy cheap food. Intercropping is hard to do on a large scale, with large tractors, and so you will find it on allotments and market gardens rather than on the big farms."
But Peter Melchett challenged Firbank's statement in a comment on the page.
Item 3 is a comment by Peter Melchett on the lack of research into new seed varieties for organic and low-input systems.
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1. Comment by Kristof Nordin on research obsession with maize in Malawi
GM Free Africa
Digest Number 2277
22/06/2012
There is a great deal of evidence coming out that is showing that GMOs are not the way to go in terms of sustaining a brighter future for humanity. This is a link to another research article that has been highlighted by the Organic Consumer's Association entitled, "Why Genetically Engineered Food is Dangerous".
http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_25655.cfm
Most critics of GMOs, including myself, are NOT anti-science nor anti-research... in fact I have personally been advocating for MORE research. My wife and I live at the Chitedze Agricultural Research Station, Malawi's largest institution dedicated to the research of agriculture, but when one really digs into the truth we find that for the past 60 years or so the great majority of time, energy, and money has gone into the researching of only one plant from America... maize.
And now when maize has reached its physical limits we want to change its genetic make-up to push it to even further extremes, and when a solely maize-based diet has resulted in 48% of Malawi's children presenting as nutritionally 'stunted', we want to genetically change maize to change the nation's nutrition.
Malawi is rich with natural resources. There are literally hundreds of traditional food crops that could incorporated into the research paradigm, doubling or even tripling the size of many research stations, creating value-added products, export markets, employment opportunities for the nation's youth who are graduating from colleges, and more. These resources could also be used to end the 'hungry season', reverse the country's dismal record of malnutrition, eliminate micronutrient deficiencies, and alleviate poverty (both by saving money and by creating new opportunities to make money)! We don't have to study our natural resources with a mindset of 'how do we change them'. We instead need the mindset of 'what do these resources already have to offer us?' This eliminates the need for GMOs and quickly places us into agricultural systems that are diverse, nutritious, organic, natural and sustainable.
Let's try to move forward together in a way that makes sense for the future... and hopefully leave the planet a better place than we found it in the process.
Kristof and Stacia Nordin, co-founders of Never Ending Food, have been living and working in Malawi, Africa since 1997 on issues of permaculture, nutrition, and public health. Stacia is a registered dietitian and Kristof is a social worker with an emphasis in community organizing. They both hold Diplomas in Permaculture Design. More information may be found at <http://www.neverendingfood.org/>
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2. Comment by Peter Melchett on research neglect of sustainable ag methods in the UK
Imascientist.org.uk
28 June 2012
http://bit.ly/MEfvGN
Member of the public: I'm interested in your intercropping data. Those yields sound fantastic. So why don't we farm like that more often? I assume we lose some of the crop due to difficulties in harvesting?... Or do you think there are other reasons?
Peter Melchett: There are lots of ways we could make modern low input farming more productive, and in countries where GM has not dominated the debate about the future of farming, as it sadly has here, lots of interesting things are being tried. For example, agro-forestry allows you to grow rows of apple trees, with space in between for arable crops like wheat and barley. Despite what Les [Firbank] says, these systems can be designed for large-scale farms and farm machinery, and they have three clear advantages. First, because trees access nutrients at deeper levels in the soil than crops, you make better use of available nutrients. Second, because the space between the trees is all used for crops, the apple trees are using far less land than they would in an orchard. Third, the trees provide shelter for crops, and a habitat for wildlife wonderful compared to an intensive farm with huge fields. Research into these systems and many others have been neglected in the UK as we have been obsessed with GM, and many other countries are getting ahead of us at least we can learn from their work.
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3. Comment by Peter Melchett on how organic systems are starved of new seed varieties by narrow focus on GM and chemical farming
Personal communication, 28 June 2012
As a farmer growing crops for seed (wheat, barley, fodder peas, vetch, rye grass and clover), I'm acutely aware how little has been done to develop new varieties suitable for organic and low input systems. We tend to get stuck with old varieties, or try to use newer varieties not bred for organic so for example, with wheats, the straw is too short, and disease resistance bad. There are some great organic trials being done in the UK, but overall the crop (and, for example, apple variety) breeding for organic is negligible.
Some other EU countries do much better, but it's a good example, I think, of where a redirection of scientific research away from GM could bring pretty quick and dramatic results.