Let Nature Take its Course
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Recently, Canada’s Globe & Mail published a strong response by our Executive Director, Susan Walsh, to a suggestion that biotech crops offer a solution to the global food crisis. Quite to the contrary, she exposes the misplaced trust in biotech solutions and points to the compelling success of farmer seed varieties and organic agricultural practices, led by local rural communities around the world.
February 16, 2009 – Ottawa - The looming tragic scale of the world food crisis desperately needs attention (Feeding The World – letters, Feb.13). But biotech crops offer no sustainable solution. Most of the world’s vulnerable people – the rural communities of Asia, Africa, and Latin America – depend on free seed and food grown from their own hands and on their own lands. However, these farmers are bombarded with designer packages of engineered seed stock and chemical fertilizers. These expensive laboratory solutions erode crop diversity and kill soil fertility. They drive small producers into debt.
Meanwhile, local practices that consider the broader ecosystem are undervalued or neglected. Farmer seed varieties, nurtured over generations and shared among rural communities, hold infinite keys to pest and disease resistance and a host of adaptive traits best suited to changing and increasingly extreme climates.
Evidence, including a major World Bank and UN-sponsored report last October, shows that local organic practices, without costly technological inputs, are providing sustainable high yields and a chance to break Africa’s cycle of poverty and malnutrition. It’s high time we look beyond the tecno-fixes and take a serious look at these kinds of local solutions.
Susan Walsh
Executive Director, USC Canada
3 Responses to “Let Nature Take its Course”
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USC Canada
was founded by
Dr Lotta Hitschmanova in 1945. Our award-winning Seeds of Survival program promotes vibrant family farms, strong rural communities, and healthy ecosystems around the world.
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Bravo Ms Walsh,……I am glad to see that someone of position and influence is taking this point of view regarding ‘designer’ seeds. I will be looking to see if there is anyway I may support you.
Caroline
Thanks so very much, Caroline. North American’s preference for designer seeds makes this kind of campaign in support of small-scale farmers sometimes feel like such an uphill battle. So words of encouragement are much appreciated.
Susie Walsh
Hello Susie… good work! Jennifer