Food and ideology don’t mix: There’s not one way to feed world

D EFB A D EA C A C

There’s an unbreachable divide between advocates of modern conventional agriculture and, essentially, everyone else, from the mainstream (organic, local, anti-GMO) to the less-so (biodynamics, permaculture, agroforestry). The parties are entrenched, the tone is partisan.

Food is a constant tug-of-war between people and planet. We can’t feed ourselves without doing environmental harm. “Agriculture costs us no matter what,” says Rattan Lal, director of the Carbon Management and Sequestration Center at Ohio State University. “Every option has trade-offs.”

No one principle can reliably tell us how to make those trade-offs, because every situation is different.

For example, the Anti-GMO position doesn’t have much on the plus side. The most serious problem associated with GMOs is the weeds that have developed a resistance to the herbicide glyphosate, and the anti-GMO movement prefers to fixate on that and ignore the many beneficial genetic modifications, such as disease resistance, which is hugely advantageous for papayas and, potentially, for other plants.

Bottom line: There’s no one way to feed the world.

The best way to tackle the tug-of-war between people and planet is to aim to improve agriculture in ways that benefit both. “There are ways to grow more food, mitigate climate change and improve the environment,” says Lal. “They’re win-win-win strategies.”

Take cover cropping, the practice of planting a field with a crop that won’t be harvested but whose job is to decrease erosion and runoff, and to help boost soil quality. Cover-cropped fields that are then planted with corn and soy often have higher yields than their non-cover-cropped counterparts.

The GLP aggregated and excerpted this blog/article to reflect the diversity of news, opinion and analysis. Read full, original post: Why everyone who is sure about a food philosophy is wrong

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