blindpig
04-13-2010, 08:02 AM
[div class="excerpt"]Biodiversity and Capitalism
For anyone who can pluck up the courage to read the newspapers - apart from just flicking through the crime headlines and sports pages - they are bound to feel rather uneasy when bombarded with all the daily reports of impending catastrophes of various types. Certainly the bourgeoisie would prefer it if the newspapers kept quiet about all the various problems that arise in the course of its frantic pursuit of profits, but, as everyone knows, so-called globalisation has made sure that anything that happens in one part of the world is of interest everywhere else: and that, combined with the fact that the sale of news is itself a business, means that plenty of news still gets out; even if usually it is a bit late in the day and the facts are inevitably distorted. Since it is in the bourgeoisie's interests to play everything down, we can safely assume that whatever bad news is reported about the environment, in reality, with few exceptions, it is a lot worse.
One of the most longstanding worries of our present epoch has been fear of a nuclear catastrophe, whether through war or an accident; another more recent concern is about global warming and the greenhouse effect radically transforming our planet. However, if you really turn your mind to it, it isn't difficult to find plenty of other things to worry about; such as cheap fuel coming to an end, the population explosion, lack of water, AIDs, cancer, chemical and bacteriological war, and so on and so forth.
Not many people know what biodiversity means exactly, and even fewer grasp its significance as a potential source of calamity for the human race: a calamity as serious as it is unfortunately inevitable unless the necessary steps are taken to avoid it. The loss of biodiversity in agriculture is a time bomb that is slowly ticking away towards ecological and alimentary disaster; and when it finally explodes it will probably be too late. We are on the brink of an abyss.
Maize rust disease was first recorded in the Philippines in 1961; soon afterwards it was reported in Mexico. The first signs that it had got into the United States appeared in 1968. In the Spring of 1970 it hit the maize crop in Florida (although this wasn't known until August... because of price rises on the Chicago stock exchange!). In the end, 15% of the harvest was lost, an enormous disaster.
The winter of 1972-72 in the Ukraine was particularly cold, and there wasn't enough snow. In the following Spring it didn't rain. More than 40 million hectares had been sown with a variety of high yield wheat which was susceptible to drought (Besostaja). It isn't known for certain the full extent of the drought but it was serious; so much so that in July the Russians purchased 27 million tons of wheat, a fact entirely without precedent. However, it wasn't so much the Russians who lost out as the poorer countries who depended on wheat imports: with cereal prices rising by 50% on the international markets, the cost of satisfying the hunger of Russian cattle meant starvation for millions of human beings.
In both cases it was genetic uniformity which was to blame. The most popular varieties, the proud product of modern genetic improvements, are potentially vulnerable to any number of environmental factors, and when they do become so affected, disaster inevitably follows because it is generally one, identical variety which is planted over vast areas.
In the period following the 2nd World War, research into the so-called High Yield Varieties (HYVs) led to the so-called 'Green Revolution'. This resulted in a steady impoverishment of the genetic pool needed to ensure healthy crops and the extinction of a larger number of old varieties.
In the early 70s, this problem prompted a reawakening of interest within the big seed companies of the North in the genetic resources of the South: the South, rich in climates and micro-climates, and never having been affected by the glaciations which in the North reduced the process of diversification, was able to develop an exceptional variety of forms of life. Thus a new phenomenon has developed, that of research into new genes and genotypes, an enormous business ripe for exploitation and one of the new frontiers of profit that has now acquired international political importance. But not even this new focus, rich in potential successes and discoveries though it may be, can hope to find a permanent solution to the problem.
To see how we arrived at this present state of affairs, it might help to get our bearings if we retrace our steps back to when biodiversity existed in its natural state, that is, before human beings got their hands on it.
http://www.sinistra.net/lib/upt/comlef/coua/coualducee.html[/quote]
more....
For anyone who can pluck up the courage to read the newspapers - apart from just flicking through the crime headlines and sports pages - they are bound to feel rather uneasy when bombarded with all the daily reports of impending catastrophes of various types. Certainly the bourgeoisie would prefer it if the newspapers kept quiet about all the various problems that arise in the course of its frantic pursuit of profits, but, as everyone knows, so-called globalisation has made sure that anything that happens in one part of the world is of interest everywhere else: and that, combined with the fact that the sale of news is itself a business, means that plenty of news still gets out; even if usually it is a bit late in the day and the facts are inevitably distorted. Since it is in the bourgeoisie's interests to play everything down, we can safely assume that whatever bad news is reported about the environment, in reality, with few exceptions, it is a lot worse.
One of the most longstanding worries of our present epoch has been fear of a nuclear catastrophe, whether through war or an accident; another more recent concern is about global warming and the greenhouse effect radically transforming our planet. However, if you really turn your mind to it, it isn't difficult to find plenty of other things to worry about; such as cheap fuel coming to an end, the population explosion, lack of water, AIDs, cancer, chemical and bacteriological war, and so on and so forth.
Not many people know what biodiversity means exactly, and even fewer grasp its significance as a potential source of calamity for the human race: a calamity as serious as it is unfortunately inevitable unless the necessary steps are taken to avoid it. The loss of biodiversity in agriculture is a time bomb that is slowly ticking away towards ecological and alimentary disaster; and when it finally explodes it will probably be too late. We are on the brink of an abyss.
Maize rust disease was first recorded in the Philippines in 1961; soon afterwards it was reported in Mexico. The first signs that it had got into the United States appeared in 1968. In the Spring of 1970 it hit the maize crop in Florida (although this wasn't known until August... because of price rises on the Chicago stock exchange!). In the end, 15% of the harvest was lost, an enormous disaster.
The winter of 1972-72 in the Ukraine was particularly cold, and there wasn't enough snow. In the following Spring it didn't rain. More than 40 million hectares had been sown with a variety of high yield wheat which was susceptible to drought (Besostaja). It isn't known for certain the full extent of the drought but it was serious; so much so that in July the Russians purchased 27 million tons of wheat, a fact entirely without precedent. However, it wasn't so much the Russians who lost out as the poorer countries who depended on wheat imports: with cereal prices rising by 50% on the international markets, the cost of satisfying the hunger of Russian cattle meant starvation for millions of human beings.
In both cases it was genetic uniformity which was to blame. The most popular varieties, the proud product of modern genetic improvements, are potentially vulnerable to any number of environmental factors, and when they do become so affected, disaster inevitably follows because it is generally one, identical variety which is planted over vast areas.
In the period following the 2nd World War, research into the so-called High Yield Varieties (HYVs) led to the so-called 'Green Revolution'. This resulted in a steady impoverishment of the genetic pool needed to ensure healthy crops and the extinction of a larger number of old varieties.
In the early 70s, this problem prompted a reawakening of interest within the big seed companies of the North in the genetic resources of the South: the South, rich in climates and micro-climates, and never having been affected by the glaciations which in the North reduced the process of diversification, was able to develop an exceptional variety of forms of life. Thus a new phenomenon has developed, that of research into new genes and genotypes, an enormous business ripe for exploitation and one of the new frontiers of profit that has now acquired international political importance. But not even this new focus, rich in potential successes and discoveries though it may be, can hope to find a permanent solution to the problem.
To see how we arrived at this present state of affairs, it might help to get our bearings if we retrace our steps back to when biodiversity existed in its natural state, that is, before human beings got their hands on it.
http://www.sinistra.net/lib/upt/comlef/coua/coualducee.html[/quote]
more....