The WorldWatch Institute recently released its 19th State of the World Report — that has to be some sort of record for continuous publication of apocalyptic literature. Somehow the famines and other calamities that WorldWatch predicted never seemed to come true, but it keeps plugging away like some failed prophet who re-examines his tea leaves and proclaims he’s made a mistake — the end of the world will come next year.
Ronald Bailey reviewed their latest tome for Reason. He takes them to task on a number of issues, but the most bizarre part of the latest State of the World report is that apparently WorldWatch is openly advocating the world switch to organic agriculture (intensive agriculture relying on pesticides and other chemicals causing cancer and other problems according to WorldWatch).
This is downright insane. As Bailey points out, organic agriculture is not as productive as intensive agriculture. To produce the same amount of food as the world now produces using only organic methods would require increasing the amount of land used for farming by as much as 50 percent. One of the most important trends in the Green Revolution and other advances in farming over the last 40 years has been that the amount of food available has dramatically increased while the amount of land used for agriculture has stayed roughly the same. Who in their right mind would wan to reverse that trend. Oh, right, WorldWatch would.
Bailey unearths an excellent quote from the Hudson Institute’s Dennis Avery who said, “One continent, Africa, practices organic farming and it is the only continent in which hunger is increasing.” Of course Africa is largely prevented from using intensive farming due to government instability, poverty and other problems — all of which tends to prevent them from adopting intensive agriculture and ensures difficulties in producing enough food.
Source:
Still wrong after all these years. Ronald Bailey, Reason, January 16, 2002.
The Nineteen Years After the Apocalypse, WorldWatch Keeps Going and Going by Brian Carnell, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License.
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