Steve Ott’s Green Reality Check

[alan refail]

Reality is that we do not have enough land in the UK to feed 61M with any sort of growing. In the long term, we will not have enough oil to feed the population by "conventional" growing either.

Which is why big business is colonising the poor Ukrainians (yet again!)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/n ... 218104.stm

Of course, not just us and the Ukraine, but many rich countries colonising the poorest.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2 ... nvironment

[Johnboy]

Hi Alan,
Certainly I think that you are probably correct in what you say which really makes it worse to even attempt to waste land using organic methods.
Certainly it may mean that when oil stocks are depleted certain fertilizers may become obsolete but it will only be through true scientific research that a new breed of fertilizers could ever be found. The organic faction simply try to rely on outmoded forms of growing which are doomed before they start.
Certainly we may be facing a great dilemma but do you really think that organics is going to be the salvation of the nation. Because I do not.
Using twice as much land to not even stand still seems to me a more than strange way to try to solve our problems.
JB.

[Tony Hague]

Certainly we may be facing a great dilemma but do you really think that organics is going to be the salvation of the nation. Because I do not.

No, I don't believe organics will solve our problems. But neither will genetic mucking about, or new agrochemicals. The solution to our problems is obvious, and has little to do with agricultural methods. It should be clear that there are no sustainable solutions that can allow for unchecked population growth.

"I've never seen a problem that wouldn't be easier to solve with fewer people, or harder, and ultimately impossible, with more." - Sir David Attenborough.

[Johnboy]

Hi Tony,
The statement by David Attenborough is sadly very true but it is very easily said but infinitely more difficult to solve. The fact remains that we have 61 million people the are here now and they must be fed.
I am very glad to note that you realise organic methods will not solve the problem. The thing is that between us all we must find a path that will be acceptable to all without swingeing increases of food prices where it will be only the wealthy who can afford good wholesome food.
I do not know how old you are Tony but I can remember what is referred to as the "good old days" and I can assure you that those days were only good old days for the wealthy and many of the poor went hungry to bed.
You say that mucking about with genes will not solve the problem.
May I remind you that it is the mucking about with genes that has given us most of the agricultural and horticultural advances that we enjoy today and Genetic Modification is only an extension of what has been going on throughout history. The only difference is that these advancements have become very specific and not the hit and miss applications of yesteryear. It is called the advancement of science and it is only through true science that man will come out of the dilemma that we appear to be building for ourselves. I regret to say that I do not see organics playing any part of this recovery.
JB.

[Geoff]

I doubt it will be very incisive but John Craven is going to discuss GM on the next Countryfile.

[Tony Hague]

I am very glad to note that you realise organic methods will not solve the problem.

Was organics ever meant to solve that particular problem ?

You say that mucking about with genes will not solve the problem.
May I remind you that it is the mucking about with genes that has given us most of the agricultural and horticultural advances that we enjoy today and Genetic Modification is only an extension of what has been going on throughout history. The only difference is that these advancements have become very specific and not the hit and miss applications of yesteryear. It is called the advancement of science and it is only through true science that man will come out of the dilemma that we appear to be building for ourselves.
JB.

Please don't attempt to confuse the issue between conventional plant breeding and genetic manipulation. Yes, you can cut and paste DNA. And if living things had been designed by a good engineer, a change to one gene would affect one attribute of a plant in a well understood way, with no side effects. We do not live in such a world. Organisms are not designed by engineers, but by evolution - which is just trial and error on a grand scale. I worked as a research scientist in a BBSRC institute for a decade, so heard a bit about GM experiments. My favourite was one to produce a variety of rape with the end of the seedpod made tougher to make it less likely to spill seed before it was harvested. Trouble is that the same protein occurs elsewhere in the plant, and the result was a right old mess of a plant. In this case the unwanted side effects were obvious. Will it always be so ?

Setting all that aside, when I say neither GM, conventionally bred new varieties, organics, or new agrochemicals are the answer, I mean that even if they increase yeild, population growth is outstripping the rate we can increase yeilds. Only a fool or a politician believes that, in the long term, there can be such a thing as sustainable growth with only finite resources. Be it the economy or population.

[Cider Boys]

Now, now gentlemen, are you suggesting that this increase in our population could be a bad mistake? I’m sure your elected representatives would not agree with you. For years now I have been more than a little concerned about the tens of thousands of immigrants that flow into this little island each year but I have always been assured that immigration is good for us all. Virtually every time a Government spokesman appears on programmes such as the Today Programme they make a point in telling the Nation that immigration is very beneficial. So surely you must be wrong, recently a Government minister was asked if the staggering population increases forecast for us caused him any concern, not at all was his smug reply.

I’m perplexed, one minister will state that climate change is one of the most damaging problems that we face as a nation but sees no link between it and an uncontrolled ever increasing population.

We at present still live in a relatively free democracy so the state can have little control on the number of children born each year and in a free society nor should they. However I consider it the heights of irresponsibility to allow our population to increase by the one factor that a Government can control namely immigration.

This Government has had little understanding or sympathy with any form of rural life and that includes agriculture, it is hell bent on social engineering to satisfy its own doctrine with scant regard for the real concerns of the people they are meant to represent.

Let us hope we are never required to feed ourselves in the future for the sake of all our nation’s children.

I foresee troubled times ahead, let's hope I am wrong.

Barney

[Johnboy]

Hi Tony,
I heard a saying on the radio the other night.
"You do not have to see eye to eye to walk hand in hand" What a pity that the organic faction cannot adopt this!
You say that I should not confuse Gene manipulation with conventional plant breeding. Conventional plant breeding is but gene manipulation blindfolded! Conventional breeding is very hit and miss by comparison to GM but whichever method is used you are manipulating genes.
So you have a good laugh at an experiment in GM that went wrong and then jump to the conclusion that all GM experiments are the same and that they are all wrong. Was the result of that experiment ever released for general use? I suspect that it went into the incinerator quite quickly.
When you worked for BBSRC as a scientist I take it, from your qualifications, that you were not involved directly with biology but with computers and engineering. Please correct me if I am wrong.
By the way I looked at your website this afternoon and what a fantastic set-up you have. I have always been intrigued with agricultural equipment
and the new breeds are a constant source of amazement at the ingenuity of the engineers involved. However this is moving off the point.
Now I am neither a fool or a politician but even I can see that what you are saying is very true with regards to population. Wise old Geoff wrote about this some time ago but the fact remains that population increase
is something that we should all view with grave concern.
You a so right in saying that whatever is to come in the future the population will increase and wipe out whatever gains we make.
How to combat this ever rising population is something that I am not prepared to make any comments about. The only thing I will say is that we do not have any politicians brave enough to even take the first step!
Again I point to the fact that growing by organic means has to be totally wrong for this given situation.
JB.

[Tony Hague]

Hi Tony,
I heard a saying on the radio the other night.
"You do not have to see eye to eye to walk hand in hand" What a pity that the organic faction cannot adopt this!

I wonder that perhaps you have an out of date view of organic production. I see a fair bit of it. No sandals or woolly hats here; more often the organic produce comes from the same big growers that produce the conventional crops. So there are plenty of people out there who can see both sides, and have a foot in both camps.

You say that I should not confuse Gene manipulation with conventional plant breeding. Conventional plant breeding is but gene manipulation blindfolded! Conventional breeding is very hit and miss by comparison to GM but whichever method is used you are manipulating genes.
So you have a good laugh at an experiment in GM that went wrong and then jump to the conclusion that all GM experiments are the same and that they are all wrong. Was the result of that experiment ever released for general use? I suspect that it went into the incinerator quite quickly.

Perhaps I didn't make the point clearly. I'm not just enjoying scoffing at a failed experiment. My point was that a modification can have unexpected effects; in this case it was quickly obvious, but it concerns me that adverse side effects could occur which are not easily spotted. As I understand it government policy on GMOs is not that they are banned, but that each GM variety would have to be trialled and approved individually - which is to my view a very wise stance, but one which makes it uneconomical to the GM industry.

When you worked for BBSRC as a scientist I take it, from your qualifications, that you were not involved directly with biology but with computers and engineering.

Of course, I did not mean to imply otherwise, my biology knowledge is tad more than a layman's, but it did give me the opportunity to hear of trials like the one I described.

BTW, Thanks for you kind comments on our work

[Geoff]

I was also impressed with your cultivation kit. I was also educated by being shown that some organic growers are equally mechanised as conventional growers. Regrettably I had the impression they weeded their crops using immigrant labour with hoes or not at all. It does reinforce my query as to why bother about the source of your NPK, if carbon footprint is the reason surely you can't justify high mechanisation either?
The difficulty of the GM debate is that there are two forms of GM - the academic concept and the Monsanto concept. Monsanto are a successful commercial company who have developed GMOs that have some benefits but the main beneficiary not surprisingly is Monsanto through the relationship between the GMOs and their herbicides. This narrow view has worried campaigners and clouded the whole debate resulting in insufficient non-commercial investment in the technology. If the GMOs were developed within public funded organisations that we all imagine should be possible like disease resistance without chemicals and made generally available it would be a different debate.

[Geoff]

Well have we had the debate Steve was looking for - I notice he hasn't chipped in! He did say he'd love to hear our comments on whichever side of the fence we stand, the few of us that have responded have certainly shown we are on different sides of the fence and aren't thinking of climbing it. Is it partly that we aren't really consumers?

Would I be fair to say as a summary we would like consumers to be given sufficient information to make a choice, inevitably this means labels, and we seem to want to tell them quite a lot. The list might be:
British Organic Produce - Soil Association Certified
Other Organic Produce - imported, are we sure about the standard?
British Certified Produce - Food Standards Agency Certified (definitions required)
Unlabelled - produced anyhow, anywhere
In all cases we would like to know where grown and when harvested.

Whichever side of the fence we are on we don't believe we can increase production to meet demand and that with an organic approach the crunch would come sooner.
We want the Government to develop a population policy - could involve immigration control, could involve population control (eg why is fertility treatment still on the NHS?) - perhaps set a target for a maximum population, otherwise one day starvation will do it for us.

[Mike Vogel]

On my walks this summer I observed the changing fields. One week they were planting out brassicas which had been sprayed against the cabbage whites. The plants looked fine and sturdy and week by week I saw little sign of their having been eaten by caterpillars.

If these farmers had grown organically they might perhaps have achieved the same effect by other means but these would have been far more labour-intensive. Without investigating it, I would lay a fair wager that the production on the Duchy Original estates is more labour-intensive than on most farms here.

The farmers have to farm profitably, which means fewer employees and as much produce as possible. Hence the use of chemicals. Most people in this country can afford this produce. Organic farmers cater for a different market and have probably been hammered by the recession.

But for growing one's own, the calculations are different. You can probably grow twice as much as you need and lose 50% without worrying. If organic, you get better-tasing products because you are probably using less water [especially if you mulch your beds sfter watering] and you feel satisfied that you are not poisoning yourself or the environment.

I personally agree that NPK in chemical form doesn't necessarily do much harm, but I am far less sanguine about the use of poisons. This sort of thing wasn't in the remit of the study, which anyhow didn't use up-to-date information. So I'll avoid the chemicals and share my brassicas with whatever gets through my mwethods of protection or deterrence.

[KG Steve]

Hi guys and girls. Sorry it has taken me so long to respond - sidetracked as usual!
I've been watching your debate and have been heartened by the comments. Commonsense can prevail!
I think what gets me down is not so much whether organic methods are right or wrong - I think ultimately we need to take the best from organic and chemical methods - it is the lack of anyone giving an opposing view in this very important issue that worries me. As usual the loudest voice wins and with somehting as crucial as feeding an ever-growing population, that is clearly wrong.
Of course it must be desirable to grow crops without resorting to any chemicals and on a UK allotment of veg plot where, let's face it, few gardeners are growing as a matter of life and death, it is perfectly possible. I sympathise with many of the views espoused by the organic lobby, but can it solve the impending world food crisis? We need to question that before just blindly accepting it. We need a debate and the discussion needs to be balanced and based on scientific evidence and not simply highjacked by those prepared to lobby harder than anyone else.
In the next issue of KG some organic growers put the case as to why they believe organic IS the answer. I'd love to have someone from the farming community put the opposing view. I'm still looking for someone who is prepared to put pen to paper.
Perhaps 'conventional' growers prefer to keep tehir heads down and carry on, but if they do they'll be swamped and those making the rules will I fear, continue to bypass them with the result that as more and more pesticides disappear there will be no option but to go organic - whether or not organic techniques can ultimately feed the world's population as a whole.
I also agree with comments here and recently by David Attenborough, that we need to start talking about population control and not continue to treat it as a taboo subject or whatever we do we are sunk! Sorry to be so cheery!

[Geoff]

Does this story have any relevance here?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8272022.stm

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8272988.stm

http://www.defra.gov.uk/environment/qua ... /index.htm

I have difficulty with the idea that you don't want organic matter to break down in the soil, surely it has to break down to release its nutrients to the plants?

[Tony Hague]

Do I hear an almighty chorus of "I told you so" from the organic movement ?

So much for the assumption that it doesn't matter where your NP & K come from. If you rely on soluble salts alone for quick and easy NPK, organic matter in the soil doesn't get replaced.

Yes, you might want some organic matter to break down and release it's nutrients, but I think the links above are more about the problems of fenland peat soils, which are basically all organic matter (albeit quite ancient). When that breaks down it releases carbon as carbon dioxide, and not a lot is left. Presumably adding N in the form of ammonium nitrate - a powerful oxidising agent - only speeds up the process.