{"id":158365,"date":"2015-06-10T14:13:20","date_gmt":"2015-06-10T14:13:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/?p=158365"},"modified":"2015-06-10T14:13:20","modified_gmt":"2015-06-10T14:13:20","slug":"monstanto-vs-the-world-how-we-will-win-the-food-war","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/sicence-technology\/monstanto-vs-the-world-how-we-will-win-the-food-war\/","title":{"rendered":"Monstanto vs the world &#8211; How we will win the food war"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>By conventional wisdom it is excellent news. Researchers from Iowa have shown that organic\u00a0farming methods can <a href=\"http:\/\/civileats.com\/2014\/12\/10\/organic-nearly-as-productive-as-industrial-farming-new-study-says\/\">yield almost as highly<\/a> as pesticide-intensive methods. Other researchers, from Berkeley, California, have <a href=\"http:\/\/phys.org\/news\/2014-12-crops-industrial-agriculture.html\">reached a similar conclusion<\/a>. Indeed, both\u00a0findings met with a very enthusiastic reception. The enthusiasm is appropriate, but only if one misses a deep and fundamental point: that even to participate in such a conversation is to fall into a carefully laid trap<em>.<\/em><span id=\"more-1946\"><\/span><\/p>\n<p>The strategic centrepiece of Monsanto\u2019s PR, and also that of just about every major commercial participant in the industrialised food system, is to focus on the promotion of one single overarching idea. The big idea that industrial producers in the food system want you to believe is that only they can produce enough for the future population (<a href=\"http:\/\/ijoc.org\/index.php\/ijoc\/article\/viewFile\/901\/468\">Peekhaus 2010<\/a>). Thus non-industrial systems of farming, such as all those which use agroecological methods, or <a href=\"http:\/\/www.independentsciencenews.org\/un-sustainable-farming\/how-millions-of-farmers-are-advancing-agriculture-for-themselves\/\">SRI<\/a>,\u00a0or are localised and family-oriented, or which use organic methods, or non-GMO seeds, <i>cannot<\/i>\u00a0feed the world.<\/p>\n<p>To be sure, agribusiness has other PR strategies. Agribusiness is \u201cpro-science\u201d, its opponents are \u201canti-science\u201d, and so on. But the main plank has for decades been to create a cast-iron moral framing around the need to produce more food (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.artsci.wustl.edu\/~anthro\/research\/stone\/Stone_Glover_2011.pdf\">Stone and Glover<\/a> 2011).<\/p>\n<p>Therefore, if you go to the websites of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.monsanto.com\/pages\/default.aspx\">Monsanto<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cargill.com\/\">Cargill<\/a> and<a href=\"http:\/\/jobs.syngenta.com\/content\/about\/\">Syngenta<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cropscience.bayer.com\/en\/Company\/Our-Mission.aspx\">Bayer,<\/a> and their bedfellows: the <a href=\"http:\/\/fblog.fb.org\/2014\/12\/29\/support-all-farmers\/\">US Farm Bureau<\/a>, the UK <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nfuonline.com\/about-us\/nfu-whos-who\/meurig-raymond\/meurig-raymonds-blog\/food-for-thought\/\">National Farmers Union<\/a>, and the <a href=\"http:\/\/soygrowers.com\/about-asa\/vision-mission\/\">American Soybean Association<\/a>, and <a href=\"https:\/\/croplife.org\/\">CropLife International<\/a>, or The Bill and Melinda <a href=\"http:\/\/www.gatesfoundation.org\/\">Gates Foundation<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rockefellerfoundation.org\/\">The Rockefeller Foundation<\/a>,<a href=\"http:\/\/www.usaid.gov\/what-we-do\">USAID<\/a>, or the international research system <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cgiar.org\/\">(CGIAR<\/a>), and now even <a href=\"http:\/\/foodtank.com\/news\/2013\/08\/food-hero-molly-brown-nasa-research-scientist\">NASA<\/a>, they very early (if not instantaneously) raise the \u201curgent problem\u201d of who will feed the expected global population of 9 or 10 billion in 2050.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.independentsciencenews.org\/environment\/how-the-great-food-war-will-be-won\/\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By conventional wisdom it is excellent news. Researchers from Iowa have shown that organic\u00a0farming methods can yield almost as highly as pesticide-intensive methods. Other researchers, from Berkeley, California, have reached a similar conclusion. Indeed, both\u00a0findings met with a very enthusiastic reception. The enthusiasm is appropriate, but only if one misses a deep and fundamental point: [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":119856,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[487,13,18],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-158365","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-breaking-news","8":"category-sicence-technology","9":"category-latest-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/158365","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=158365"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/158365\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/119856"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=158365"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=158365"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=158365"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}