As Andrew points out, there was almost unanimous disagreement with Prince Charles’ mad outburst against scientists, the modern world and GM crops in particular. But he warns us all not to be complacent; there is still a lot of fighting to be done against the forces of reaction.
I think Andrew gives Prince Chucklehead too much credit when he speculates that the crazy outburst may be part of a PR stunt to herald the entry of Duchy Originals into the Indian market. There was certainly outrage in India that Charles deemed the Green Revolution a failure – hundreds of millions of Indians are alive today because of the agricultural breakthroughs 40 years ago. But, just as in the west, there are also reactionary forces in India – like the ludicrous figure of Vendana Shiva (never knowingly missed a banquet) – who think it is spiritually enriching to starve.
Why on Earth Indian’s would want to buy Duchy Originals organic crap is beyond me – even Sainsbury’s won’t take Charles’ shrivelled, overpriced carrots any more.
From the Independent:
The Prince is entitled to his views - but not his ignorance
It's shocking to hear this millionaire Gloucestershire farmer denounce the 'Green Revolution' in India
- Dominic Lawson, Aug. 15, 2008
There are any number of reasons why someone such as His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales should be passionately opposed to genetically modified crops. For a start, his own position - and future one as head of state - is based entirely on genetic purity (formerly known as "royal blood").
One characteristic he might have inherited from his grandfather, King George VI, is a propensity for sudden, almost incoherent, rage. This week, that excellent journalist Jeff Randall gently suggested to the heir to the throne that the future of farming might be with industrial-scale production, rather than the sort of methods he practises. "What?" exploded the Prince. "All run by gigantic corporations? That would be the absolute destruction of everything!" Randall went on to report that "bouncing in his chair", the Prince set out a nightmarish vision in which millions of small farmers "are driven off their land into unsustainable, unmanageable, degraded and dysfunctional conurbations of unmentionable awfulness".
The Prince, predictably, continued his rant by attacking GM technology - although Randall had never raised it - which he said was: "Guaranteed to cause the biggest disaster environmentally of all time. Snakes, some of them thousands of miles long, will roam the countryside." Well, I made that last sentence up, but you get the gist: the world as we know it will come to an end if wicked big business is allowed to introduce GM crops on an industrial scale. The main empirical problem for this argument is that GM crops have already been grown for more than a decade across the globe, providing trillions of meals, with no observable malign consequences for humanity or the environment. Quite the reverse, in fact: many types of GM crops have been designed to produce high yield with minimal soil tillage; others require much lower use of pesticide than conventional crops, thus saving vast amounts in agricultural fuel use.
Now that the area covered by GM crops has reached more than 100 million hectares, involving farmers in countries as varied as China, Uruguay, South Africa and Iran, it is possible to assess the truth of the various "Frankenfood" scare stories promulgated by the likes of the Daily Mail (which yesterday was alone in publishing a leading article endorsing every word of the Prince of Wales's outburst).
Such a study has recently been published by the European Commission. This is especially significant because the member countries of the EU have been more nervous about the consequences of GM technology than any other developed nations. The report, ominously titled "Economic Impact of Dominant GM Crops Worldwide", gives the lie to the notion that GM is somehow only designed for large-scale agribusiness. It states that "analyses show that adoption of dominant GM crops and on-farm economic gains have benefited both small and large farmers... Moreover, detailed analyses show that increases in gross margin are comparatively larger for small and lower-income farmers than for larger and higher income farmers." In other words, Prince Charles's notion that such methods will in themselves cause the extinction of small farmers is simply refuted by the experiences of real people in the real world.
Read on at the Independent website:
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