The World Economic Forum says the world faces a new crisis, “One-third of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions come from food production.” With the world’s population expected to reach 10 billion people by 2050, it is therefore “urgent” that we launch a “radical” and “comprehensive” transformation of the global food system – from “reinventing” farming to “reimagining” how food is produced, processed, distributed, consumed and disposed of.
Reinforcing this message, Stop Ecocide Now founder Jojo Mehta expanded on Greta Thunberg’s incendiary 2020 rant that “our house is on fire and you’re fueling the flames.” Farming is a “serious crime,” equal to “genocide,” Ms. Mehta told elites at the 2024 WEF meeting in Davos.
Their grasp of agriculture is epitomized by Michael Bloomberg’s suggestion that anybody can be a farmer: “You dig a hole, you put a seed in, you put dirt on top, you add water, up comes the corn.”
Modern farming and its supposedly dangerous greenhouse gas emissions are a tad more complicated.
Modern mechanized farming employs oil derivatives as fuel for equipment and feedstocks for herbicides and pesticides, natural gas to dry grain and make fertilizers, and livestock to provide protein.
Tractors, trucks, farmers, and livestock emit carbon dioxide, adding to the 0.04% of CO2 in Earth’s atmosphere (equivalent to $40 of $100,000). Cattle emissions add methane to the existing 0.0002% CH4 in the atmosphere (20¢ of $100,000). Nitrogen fertilizers add to the “dramatic” 200-year rise in atmospheric nitrous oxide (N2O), bringing it to a still minuscule 0.00003% (that’s 3¢ of $100,000).
These emissions allegedly drive “cataclysmic” climate change and extreme weather, endangering all life on Earth. But then what caused the five Ice Ages (including the Pleistocene Era and its mile-high glaciers, which ended 12,000 years ago), the Roman and Medieval Warm Periods, and the Little Ice Age (1350-1850) to come and go?
Of course, natural forces can’t drive climate hysteria and WEF-Gore-Biden anti-fossil-fuel agendas. Fear-mongering political, activist, media, and academic elites therefore ignore them.
In the Real World, the wondrous reality is that, after centuries of excruciatingly slow progress, agricultural advances over the past 75 years have been nothing short of astonishing. Dr. Norman Borlaug’s Green Revolution employed plant breeding techniques that multiplied yields of vital grain crops, saving hundreds of millions of lives.
Since 1950, American farmers increased per-acre corn yields by an incredible 500% and other crop yields by smaller but still amazing amounts – while using less land, water, and fuel ... and fewer fertilizers and pesticides per ton of produce. Their exports helped slash global hunger and malnutrition even further.
Meanwhile, despite the supposed impacts of manmade climate change, farmers in Brazil, India, and many other countries have also enjoyed record harvests.
Multiple miracle technologies contributed. Hybrid seeds combine valuable traits from different related plants. Biotech seeds protect crops against voracious insects and destructive viruses while reducing water and pesticide demand. Virus-resistant biotech cultivars have even replaced endangered papayas in Hawaii, cassava and bananas in Africa, and other crops.
Nitrogen (ammonia) fertilizers, synthesized from natural gas and atmospheric nitrogen, have joined phosphorus and potassium in supercharging soils. Increased atmospheric carbon dioxide spurs plant growth and reduces water demand even further.
Long-lasting herbicides control weeds that would otherwise steal moisture and nutrients from crops – and enable farmers to utilize no-till farming that avoids breaking up soils, reduces erosion, retains soil moisture, and preserves vital soil organisms.
Technologies developed in Israel make it possible to grow an amazing array of crops in the Negev and Arava Deserts, which receive a fraction of Arizona's annual rainfall. Desalination plants turn seawater into 80% of Israel’s drinking water, dramatically reducing pressure on the Sea of Galilee, manmade reservoirs, and groundwater supplies.
Israelis then recycle 90% of their home, business, school and hospital water – for use in agriculture, where drip irrigation delivers precise amounts of water precisely where crops and other plants need it, minimizing evaporation.
Huge high-tech tractors use GPS systems, sensors, and other equipment to steer precise courses across fields while constantly measuring soil composition and injecting just the right kinds and amounts of fertilizers and herbicides, along with seeds, to ensure optimal harvests.
Not all these technologies are available across the globe. However, farmers can access information about both the technologies and modern practices through online libraries and programs on cell phones.
Instead, this progress is under assault – by ill-advised or ill-intended but well-funded organizations that want to turn the Green Revolution into Green Tyranny, Eco-Imperialism, and global malnutrition.
Their hatred of biotech crops is intense and well-documented. But many also despise hybrid seeds. They want modern herbicides and insecticides banned in favor of “natural” alternatives – which are often toxic to bees, fish, other animals, and people and have not been tested for long-term harm to humans.
These agricultural anarchists also demand “natural” fertilizers, which typically provide a fraction of the nutrients that modern synthetic fertilizers do. At the very least, they want global organic farming, which would mean much lower crop yields per acre than conventional farming, and plowing many millions of additional acres of wildlife habitat and scenic land to get the exact amounts of food.
They say people in Africa, Asia, and Latin America should practice subsistence farming—which they prefer to call “traditional” farming, Agro-Ecology, “food sovereignty,” or the “right to choose” culturally appropriate food produced through “ecologically sound and sustainable methods,” based on “Indigenous agricultural knowledge and practices.”
In plain English, Agroecology is rabidly opposed to biotechnology, monoculture farming, non-organic fertilizers, chemical pesticides, and even mechanized equipment and hybrid seeds.
You can imagine how Agro-Ecologists would react if African farmers wanted to assert their food sovereignty, self-determination, and right to choose by planting biotech Bt corn, to get higher yields, reduce pesticide use, enjoy better living standards, and send their kids to school. The agro-anarchists would vilify them as vile supporters of violence against women, land-grabbing corporations, expropriation of Indigenous rights, genocide, and other “crimes against humanity.”
They also promote “alternative protein.” They say Africa would be “the perfect laboratory” for testing new foods – such as “crackers, muffins, meat loaves and sausages” made from lake flies. In fact, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), Popular Science magazine and many other outfits extol the virtues of “entomophagy” – the clever progressive term for eating bug burgers, instead of hamburgers.
They even offer recipes and techniques for processing “edible insects” into tasty, nutritious products that can improve diets and livelihoods, create thriving local businesses, and even promote inclusion of women. In fact, they say, bugs can have twice as much protein per pound as beef; grasshoppers, locusts, crickets, beetles, ants, and cicadas make great snacks, desserts, guacamole, and even entire meals; and mealworms have “an earthy flavor, similar to mushrooms,” making them excellent additions to brownies. Sautéed with a bit of salt, mealworms also make “protein-boosted potato chips.” Yummy!
Who are these guys – these agriculture and nutrition anarchists and revolutionaries? Stay tuned.
Paul Driessen is senior policy advisor for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org) and author of books and articles on energy, climate change, environmental policy and human rights.