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Thu Apr 02, 2009 at 13:34:17 PM PDT
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It might be the biggest report you've never heard about. Over 400 scientists and 30 governments came together as the International Assessment of Agricultural Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD) to write a report on the global food system. The director of IAASTD, Robert Watson, won a Nobel prize. Why hasn't anyone heard of this? Well... my guess is two-fold: 1) the report employed scientists not PR strategists and marketers and 2) the companies that have the big money to put into PR and marketing didn't like the results. (In fact, biotech companies CropLife International and Syngenta resigned from the study mid-way through when their arguments for GMOs were not accepted.)
"We tried to assess the implications of agricultural knowledge, science and technology both past, present and future on a series of very critical issues," explained IAASTD director Robert Watson.
"These issues are hunger and poverty; rural livelihoods; nutrition and human health.
"The key point is how do we address these issues in a way that is environmentally, socially and economically sustainable?"
Environmentally, socially, and economically sustainable? What, did they forget to make their findings also "profitable to large multinational corporations"?
Here's a link to the IAASTD website (which includes the reports). More below. |
| Jill Richardson :: What Do 400 Scientists and 30 Governments Say About World Hunger? |
If you've been reading this blog, here are some ideas that should look familiar. And now you don't have to take it from me - you can get it from a Nobel prize winner!
Professor Watson said advances over the past 50 years had seen total food production grow faster than the human population had increased.
"The price of food, in real terms, has also gone down. Even today, many food commodities are comparable to the early 1990s; so what's the problem?
"Well, we still have over 800 million people going to bed hungry every night. There have been some successes but if we look at it on a region-by-region basis, there have been uneven results."
He added that the study identified other consequences: "We have lost some of our environmental sustainability.
Perhaps the most beautiful quote from the article is this one:
He warned that agriculture could no longer be approached as a single issue.
"We need to consider the environmental issues of biodiversity and water; the economic issues of marketing and trade, and the social concerns of gender and culture.
"How do we pay farmers to not only produce food, but to value the environmental services?
"Agriculture is far more than just production of food, and that is what we have to recognise."
This is definitely a topic I will write more about in the near future - especially in light of Sen. Lugar's bill S.384 that will mandate research on GMOs for developing nations. |
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