Comment from Health Impact News editor: Fred Pearce of MailOnline in the UK has written an excellent piece today looking at the current food crisis. He makes a good claim that the last thing we need is more food. His article does a good job of pitting the biotech solution to world hunger against small-scale farming. Please click through and read the article. Some quotes:

“The world’s population will reach seven billion this year and may peak at nine billion by mid-century. There are plenty of things wrong with the world’s food system. But the amount of food it produces isn’t one of them. ”

“The truth is that the world’s farmers could probably double the amount of food they grow  –  using GM crops and other technologies  –  and still people would go hungry. This is ultimately not about production or about human numbers, it is about poverty.”

“Beddington’s planned revolution stands a good chance of making the poor poorer. It could mean we have both more food and more famines. This is because most of the methods he suggests to increase food production are about big farms and big investment. Beddington wants to plough up vast tracts of African cattle pastures and amalgamate the smallholdings of millions of peasant farmers to create giant, high-tech farms. His blueprint will take land away from the rural poor. ”

“Watson reached rather different conclusions from Beddington. He said African smallholder farmers should be backed, not stripped of their land; that local knowledge of crops would often work better than high-tech methods; and that fighting poverty was the key to feeding the world. ”

Read the entire article here: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-1353810/Beddingtons-perfect-storm-Last-thing-hungry-world-needs-food.html#ixzz1DCdmBUtv