| Just the title of this alone has me seething: A Race to Introduce GM Corn Before Africa's Climate Worsens. What?!?
Let me summarize the article for you: Bla bla bla... drought-tolerant corn... global warming... Africa really fucked... feed 9 billion people... bla bla bla... Gates Foundation.
There. Now you don't have to read it. It says nothing new and contains zero critical thinking or alternate viewpoints. There was one section of the piece that was right on:
Charles Godfray, a professor at the Department of Zoology at Oxford University who recently co-authored a paper in the journal Science about the challenges of feeding 9 billion people, said that the impact of climate change on agriculture will be negative. Although warming will open up lands in cooler regions for cultivation, it will not compensate for the loss of water and land in areas near the tropics, he said.
"The current system of agriculture is not sustainable," he said. "Water is arterial. We will run out of water in parts of the world."
Yep. The Africa-is-fucked-if-things-don't-change meme is correct. And the African-corn-production-is-in-trouble idea is also correct:
But the continent is drought-prone, with millions of farmers relying on rainfall for their crops grown in small land holdings. Corn is most widely grown, with almost 300 million people in sub-Saharan Africa using it as the main source of food. And it is grown in rain-fed regions prone to crop failures.
Riiight. So how about we grow something other than corn? I'm very disappointed at the New York Times failure to only present one side - a side that is opposed by scientists world wide - on this matter. |
