Marketing e Negocios

If Altieri would ever spend any time with small farmers, he would be cured of such nonsense.

For my course which starts in two weeks, students read Altieri and Avery up front, and write a position paper.  The majority always goes with Altieri.   After the course-- and spending time with small farmers and doing some work themselves, they have to revise their original position paper.  The majority drop Altieri and side with Avery.

[...... Maintaining pools of genetic diversity, geographically isolated from any possibility of cross fertilisation or genetic pollution from uniform transgenic crops, will create 'islands' of intact germplasm which will act as extant safeguards against the potential ecological failure derived from the second green revolution increasingly being imposed with programmes such as the Gates-Rockefeller AGRA in Africa. These genetic sanctuary islands will serve as the only source of GMO-free seeds that will be needed to repopulate the organic farms in the North inevitably contaminated by the advance of transgenic agriculture. The small farmers and indigenous communities of the Global South, with the solidarious help of scientists and NGOs, can continue being the creators and guardians of a biological and genetic diversity that has enriched the food culture of the whole planet....]

I also understand Altieri considers land races to be the evolutionary climax of crop potential and a paragon of adaptability, but if he really thinks a land race can be plucked from the southern hemisphere and expected to do well in the north, organic or otherwise, he will be in for a big surprise.  Setting aside the issues of adaptation, without modern varieties bred for disease resistance, organic farmers would have an even tougher time.

XXXXX


On 5/3/2010 6:36 AM, XXXX wrote: 

http://www.twnside. org.sg/title/ end/pdf/end07. pdf

Raise your blood pressure by reading Section d. Small farms represent a sanctuary of GMO-free agrobiodiversity.

XXX