Broadcaster David Attenborough is wrong to say repeated
famines in East Africa are caused by high birth rates, wrote Clive Aslet in
Britain’s Daily Telegraph today.
The Country Life editor-at-large argued that the problem is not of the world failing to produce enough food, but “the absence of it in the right places”.
The Country Life editor-at-large argued that the problem is not of the world failing to produce enough food, but “the absence of it in the right places”.
Admitting in his column that Attenborough’s concerns are
shared by many experts, Aslet was emphatic that the challenge of feeding nine
billion people by the middle of the century could be met by scientists,
industry and farmers, and even drive world economic growth.
The advances in mechanization and information technology now
common in British farms, not to mention developments in GM crops, ‘would fill
the breadbaskets of the world to overflowing’ if exported to India, Africa and
South America. Aslet went on to quote a 2011 Oxfam report
arguing that a wholesale rejection of technological improvements in favour of
small-scale “peasant” agriculture could “lock farmers into poverty”.
He ended with a note of warning to British readers. The UK
is not isolated from worldwide migration, and populations suffering from food
shortages “will come knocking at our door”.
While The Global Miller prefers to strike a less parochial tone, we share Aslet’s feeling
that agricultural science and technology can and must prove David
Attenborough’s concerns to be unfounded.
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| Children have walked for weeks across the desert to get to Dadaab, and many perish on the way. Others have died shortly after arrival. On the edge of the camp, a young girl stands amid the freshly made graves of 70 children, many of whom died of malnutrition. Photo: Andy Hall/Oxfam (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
