Having partially recovered from the annual Thanksgiving Saturnalia, I noticed two disparate views on how to feed the planet going forward. In the Freakonomics blog, an economist (who I daresay has never pulled a weed or planted a seedling in his lifetime) says the only way to feed the planet's exploding population is to double down on the legacy of the green revolution. In other words, more chemical fertilizers, more industrial agriculture and more concentration of the power in fewer and fewer hands. He makes it sound inevitable, with the implication, sure to be appreciated by rapists everywhere that we should relax and enjoy it. Certainly, we should not be trying to remake the system to encourage countries to grow as much of their own food as possible. Let ConAgra, Monsanto, et. al. handle the production and distribution.
The contervailing viewpoint, as expressed by Anna Lappe, says we should all grow in our local area what works there and not necessarily expect to eat sweet corn and mangoes with dinner every night all year long. It means local growers like your's truly need to grow what does well in our areas for as long as possible for the benefit of the population in the immediate area. Also, the industrial agriculture which consumes non renewable resources to grow corn and soybeans at the price of environmental armageddon must be reigned in and converted to a sustainable system which will reduce it's carbon footprint and prioritize crops which feed humans directly instead of through animals which waste a good bit of the input. Of course this will not happen overnight, but it must happen, one cucumber and one potato at a time, or there will be a reckoning at some Thanksgiving in the not so distant future.
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