New Report Links Food, Climate and Agricultural Policies

Jonathan Latham and Allison Wilson

Understanding of the ‘problem’ of agriculture took a giant step forward in 2007 with publication of the UN IAASTD report. This report, which was as important for agriculture as the IPCC reports have been for the climate, pinpointed a move to ecology-based agriculture as the key to meeting many other fundamental needs such as clean water, safe food and sustainability. What the IAASTD didn’t do, at least directly however, was to focus on politics, especially the obstacles to progress in improving agriculture.

A new report, The Wheel of Life:  Food, Climate, Human Rights and the Economy (Sept. 2011), released by the Center for Food Safety (CFS) and the Heinrich Böll Stiftung Foundation, usefully complements this deficit. … Continue Reading

US Crop Yield Increases Owe Little to Biotechnology

Jonathan Latham and Allison Wilson

The latest advertising campaign from Monsanto claims that already its “advanced seeds… significantly increase crop yields…”, while since the mid-1990s the biotechnology industry has consistently proposed that higher yielding genetically engineered crops will be necessary to feed the world.
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How the Science Media Failed the IAASTD

Jonathan Latham and Allison Wilson

Note: An excellent complementary piece, from one of the IAASTD authors, is:
The IAASTD report and some of its fallout – a personal note By Dr. Angelika Hilbeck, ETH Zurich, Institute of Integrative Biology, Zurich, Switzerland

You may not have heard of it, but a potential landmark document in the fields of development and agriculture (called by some the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) of agriculture) is currently in the late stages of reaching fruition.

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What is Nature Biotechnology good for?

Jonathan Latham and Allison Wilson

The case of Irina Ermakova

Quite likely it surprised many regular readers of Nature Biotechnology that for the September (2007) issue their journal had invented a new article format specifically in order to describe, and then extensively criticise, the work of a researcher that most of them had never heard of before (1). That surprise will only increase if they read the translation, featured on our website, of a Nov 1st article (The excommunication of a heretic) in the Swiss Newspaper WOZ. Readers who thought this new format was simply a curious, if rather aggressive, literary innovation, can now see that this was a story with a disturbing history. Even more interesting however than the ethical shenanigans behind the publication of the interview with Dr Ermakova, is a point not raised by the Swiss newspaper article.

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Does the Bio-Economy Add Up?

Jonathan Latham and Allison Wilson

Experts do not have an entirely unblemished record of predicting the future of agriculture. In the 1950s it was envisioned that agriculture would be irrigated with water from icecaps that had been melted by nuclear explosions, this water (naturally) would be stored in ponds, also ‘dug’ by nuclear explosions. In the 1970s another generation of experts was predicting an era of remote control tractors and multi-story farms. Electromagnetic ploughing would prepare the soil for crops that would require only half an inch of recycled water per year and specially coated seeds would be blasted from pipes into crop-specific patterns channelled by underground magnetism (1).

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FOE Report Criticises EU Biotechnology Strategy as ill-focussed and not evidence-based

Jonathan Latham and Allison Wilson

A major stated goal of the European Union is to integrate and support ecological sustainability, job creation and competitiveness as stated in the form of the Lisbon objectives. These goals are supposed to be reached by means of research programmes and incentives, including programmes on biotechnology, but how plausibly does research in fact support these objectives? The EU biotech strategy is due for review in 2007, and to coincide with this Friends of The Earth (FOE Europe) has published a new report: The EU’s Biotechnology Strategy: mid-term review or mid-life crisis? which questions the likely contribution of EU biotech programmes to the Lisbon objectives.
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