by David Tribe on 30 March 2011 From GMO Pundit.
Patrick Moore – Rex Weyler Exchange about Confessions of a Greenpeace Dropout: The Making of a Sensible Environmentalist
Rex Weyler announces to Patrick Moore that he is about to come out publicly with a critique of Patrick’s new book, Confessions of a Greenpeace Dropout: The Making of a Sensible Environmentalist. Here is Patrick’s response:
RW: You make claims that have been refuted by the people you reference. This may be okay over a beer, but seems reckless in print. You say DDT was “discontinued for use in malaria control by the World Health Organization and USAID.” But surely you know that WHO and USAID representatives have already told George Monbiot that they never stopped using DDT for malaria control. (A Charming Falsehood, The Guardian). Why would you restate this, knowing that WHO and USAID have refuted it?
PM: I have provided you with a link to the UN media release titled, “Reversing Its Policy, UN Agency Promotes DDT to Combat the Scourge of Malaria,” UN News Center, September 15, 2006.” Here is the link again where the WHO announces that it is reversing its policy to discontinue the use of DDT after nearly 30 years.
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by David Tribe on 25 February 2011 From GMO Pundit.
(go to link for full details)
Glyphosate’s Impact on Field Crop Production and Disease Development
The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s recent decision to approve Roundup Ready alfalfa renewed a debate about the safety of genetically modified crops and the use of glyphosate in the environment.
This is not a new controversy, but many statements released in recent weeks by groups opposed to the use of genetically modified (GM) crops have claimed that glyphosate use and Roundup Ready® technology will be disastrous and that glyphosate has damaged crop production by decreasing nutrient availability to plants, reducing nutrient content of food and livestock feed, and increasing plant susceptibility to disease (Zerbe, 2011). There also are claims that glyphosate is contributing to an increase in more than 40 plant diseases that may also affect human and animal health (Smith, 2011; Zerbe, 2011). However, evidence to support these claims has neither been presented to nor evaluated by the scientific community
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by David Tribe on 24 January 2011 From GMO Pundit.
The Future of Food and Farming: Challenges and choices for global sustainability
UK Government Office for Science 2011
Executive Summary
From the Introduction
Project aim: to explore the pressures on the global food system between now and 2050 and identify the decisions that policy makers need to take today, and in the years ahead, to ensure that a global population rising to nine billion or more can be fed sustainably and equitably.
The global food system will experience an unprecedented confluence of pressures over the next 40 years. On the demand side, global population size will increase from nearly seven billion today to eight billion by 2030, and probably to over nine billion by 2050; many people are likely to be wealthier, creating demand for a more varied, high-quality diet requiring additional resources to produce. On the production side, competition for land, water and energy will intensify, while the effects of climate change will become increasingly apparent. The need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and adapt to a changing climate will become imperative. Over this period globalisation will continue, exposing the food system to novel economic and political pressures.
Any one of these pressures (‘drivers of change’) would present substantial challenges to food security; together they constitute a major threat that requires a strategic reappraisal of how the world is fed. Overall, the Project has identified and analysed five key challenges for the future.
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by David Tribe on 22 January 2011 From GMO Pundit.
2.4 billion extra people, no more land: how will we feed the world in 2050?
Steve Connor reveals how scientists propose a major policy shift to tackle one of the great challenges of the 21st century
The Independent, UK
Saturday, 22 January 2011
The finite resources of the Earth will be be stretched as never before in the coming 40 years because of the unprecedented challenge of feeding the world in 2050, leading scientists have concluded in a report to be published next week.
Food production will have to increase by between 70 and 100 per cent, while the area of land given over to agriculture will remain static, or even decrease as a result of land degradation and climate change. Meanwhile the global population is expected to rise from 6.8 billion at present to about 9.2 billion by mid-century.
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by David Tribe on 12 January 2011 From GMO Pundit.
Peruvian Biologist’s Defamation Conviction Overturned
- Lucas Laursen, Nature, January 12, 2011
A defamation case that hinges on a dispute over the presence of genetic modification in Peruvian maize crops, and that has attracted international attention, has moved back to square one – with a twist.
Biologist Ernesto Bustamante Donayre was last April found guilty of defamation – a criminal offence in Peru – for publicly criticizing a report published by a fellow biologist. Last month, however, the conviction was overturned: the appeal judge found that a lower court had not demonstrated that Bustamante had sufficient motivation to harm or defame his alleged victim. SNIP
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