The strategic drivers affecting the future development of
agriculture can be summarised as follows: increasing world population; growing
demand for calories and protein in developing countries; limited or decreasing
resources (arable land, water, energy); sustainability, particularly reducing
energy intensity and greenhouse gas emissions and reversing loss of habits and
the decline in biodiversity (including the decline in soil biodiversity);
increasing food quality awareness in developed nations; protection and
preservation of water resources; and dealing with problems of soil compaction,
erosion, loss of soil organic matter, salinisation, and desertification.
Many of the problems listed above are the result of the
application of reductionist scientific methods and industrial engineering
thinking. It is quite surprising therefore, possibly an act of insanity, that,
just as people are waking up to the damaging consequences of industrial scale
intensive farming, and all the scientific and technological paraphernalia that
has to go with it to keep those very large agricultural technology businesses
happy, people are talking about applying more of the science, engineering and
technology that is so evidently part of the problem.
It has been said, by people with vested interests in
maintaining the status quo, and in a most condescending way, that it would take
two planets to feed the world using organic farming methods. But what they will
not tell you is how many planets worth of oil and natural gas it will take to
feed the world if humanity listens to this nonsense, and does not develop a
completely different way of growing its food.
I have been examining and investigating these matters since
2007, observing and analysing the conventional thinking and research that is
being disingenuously presented as innovation, but which is if fact holding back
the development of a new and sustainable system of agriculture. And this is yet
another way in which human behaviour needs to change, for it is important to
understand that when it comes to matters of agricultural policy, it is not at
all based on reason, facts and evidence, but on values, beliefs, and the selective
use of information that leads to the results that people are looking for. And
it is nothing but a delusion, and a very dangerous one, that this is not so.
This is the nature of science, engineering and technology
development, and we need to make this reality more widely known, so that we can
not only change science, engineering and technology, but also policymaking. And
the nature and consequences of these delusions are explored in my novel Moments in Time, which has just been
published, and will be available on Amazon web sites in the coming days. Here in
this most unusual of novels, you will encounter the uncomfortable statement
that science, engineering and technology, as we currently know them, are a bag
of bones and entrails dressed up with a little good meat. Once more I am back
to the story of Prometheus, which is recounted in the prologue of Moments in Time, for the whole book,
using a technique called caricature, seeks to highlight the bag of bones issue by dealing with the
dangerous delusions of an engineer, and the consequences of his (yes a male
figure, because these are gender related values) rather peculiar and very
European perspectives.
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