February Book Club

Thanks again to Rachelle for a wonderful book club discussion! We missed all who were unable to attend. Next month we will be meeting on February 28 at Kathy Gillmore's home. The book we chose is Dark Enough to See the Stars in a Jamestown Sky. This book can be purchased at the above link for $19.95. I was unable to find it at the library and I Google searched for a lower price and found no luck. If anyone comes across this book for cheaper let us all know. Once a few get purchased maybe we can pass them around!

For anyone interested the other two books up for vote were A Train to Potevka and Saboteur. Both looked very good as well!!

Happy reading...see you in February!

Thanks Rachelle!

The Family Tree was a fun book and you did a fabulous job leading the discussion. Thank you for introducing me to that book!

Here is the information I promised regarding the overpopulation / organic foods debate, as discussed by 1970 Nobel Peace Prize winner Dr. Norman Borlaug. Check out the Wikipedia info on Borlaug. It also contains several links where the debate is elaborated on further.

My favorite part in the Wikipedia description:

"Borlaug hypothesis

Borlaug has continually advocated increasing crop yields as a means to curb deforestation. The large role he has played in both increasing crop yields and promoting this view has led to this methodology being called by agricultural economists the "Borlaug hypothesis", namely that increasing the productivity of agriculture on the best farmland can help control deforestation by reducing the demand for new farmland. According to this view, assuming that global food demand is on the rise, restricting crop usage to traditional low-yield methods such as organic farming would also require at least one of the following: the world population to decrease, either voluntarily or as a result of mass starvations; or the conversion of forest land into crop land. It is thus argued that high-yield techniques are ultimately saving ecosystems from destruction. On a global scale, this view holds strictly true ceteris paribus, if all land either consists of forests or is used for agriculture. But other land uses exist, such as urban areas, pasture, or fallow, so further research is necessary to ascertain what land has been converted for what purposes, in order to determine how true this view remains. Increased profits from high-yield production may also induce cropland expansion in any case, although as world food needs decrease, this expansion may decrease as well.^[21]"

Here is a quote from a recent Reason Magazine Interview: (the majority of interview had to do with his life's work, but the last several questions pertain to our discussion about overpopulation and the potential for mass famine.)

"Reason: What do you think of organic farming? A lot of people claim it's better for human health and the environment.

Borlaug: That's ridiculous. This shouldn't even be a debate. Even if you could use all the organic material that you have--the animal manures, the human waste, the plant residues--and get them back on the soil, you couldn't feed more than 4 billion people. In addition, if all agriculture were organic, you would have to increase cropland area dramatically, spreading out into marginal areas and cutting down millions of acres of forests.

At the present time, approximately 80 million tons of nitrogen nutrients are utilized each year. If you tried to produce this nitrogen organically, you would require an additional 5 or 6 billion head of cattle to supply the manure. How much wild land would you have to sacrifice just to produce the forage for these cows? There's a lot of nonsense going on here.

If people want to believe that the organic food has better nutritive value, it's up to them to make that foolish decision. But there's absolutely no research that shows that organic foods provide better nutrition. As far as plants are concerned, they can't tell whether that nitrate ion comes from artificial chemicals or from decomposed organic matter. If some consumers believe that it's better from the point of view of their health to have organic food, God bless them. Let them buy it. Let them pay a bit more. It's a free society. But don't tell the world that we can feed the present population without chemical fertilizer. That's when this misinformation becomes destructive."

Here Borlaug addresses some of his critics, arguably the 'pro-organic' types, who say his work with pesticides, genetically engineered crops, and his efforts to urbanize some rural African villages are damaging the environment (also from the Wikipedia article):

"Other concerns of his critics and critics of biotechnology in general include: that the construction of roads in populated third-world areas could lead to the destruction of wilderness; the crossing of genetic barriers; the inability of crops to fulfill all nutritional requirements; the decreased biodiversity from planting a small number of varieties; the environmental and economic effects of inorganic fertilizer and pesticides; the amount of herbicide sprayed on fields of herbicide-resistant crops.^[26]

Borlaug has dismissed most claims of critics, but does take certain concerns seriously. He states that his work has been "a change in the right direction, but it has not transformed the world into a Utopia".^[27] Of environmental lobbyists he has stated, "some of the environmental lobbyists of the Western nations are the salt of the earth, but many of them are elitists. They've never experienced the physical sensation of hunger. They do their lobbying from comfortable office suites in Washington or Brussels. If they lived just one month amid the misery of the developing world, as I have for fifty years, they'd be crying out for tractors and fertilizer and irrigation canals and be outraged that fashionable elitists back home were trying to deny them these things".^[28]"