Summary: was there an original thought or opinion in the 45 mins lecture?
Reith lecturer created hardly a ripple
The BBC Reith Lectures have that revered slot in the annual programming which eclipses all else. Today we had the second in the series presented by Professor Martin Rees, President of the Royal Society and Astronomer Royal whose title was Surviving the Century.
Food and energy played a big part in his analysis, as well as population and pollution. His arguments have been spoken before, by the Government Chief Scientist Prof Beddington, and Lord Stern who, in a report published last year, said we should give up meat. This year's Reith lecturer clearly likes science, and GM crops, citing their benefits. He doesn't like populations that are expanding quickly, or the American way of life which if repeated across the globe would create untold damage. What was surprising was the lack of a call to action. Research, international cooperation, controlling fanatics who threaten scientists and research, but no mention of targets which need to be set.
No mention of biogas
His views on energy generation are very pro wind power and also tides, including a Severn barrage. He's quite pro nuclear. But not a mention of biogas, which in our view is the wasted resource of the modern era.
The role of farming across the globe was hardly touched on, despite the fact that it is farmers who have the task of producing most of the food needed for survival. So GM was applauded from a scientific viewpoint, rather than a practical and economic one. It would have been interesting to discover how he viewed the prospect of a farming industry being dominated by a few major companies, in much the same way as oil is today. Companies that provide the seed and the semen, the feed and fertiliser and also provide the marketing and the distribution. Creating food commodities that are traded and processed in much the same way as petrol, where big hitters at the top of the pile can skim off a useful percentage of profit for themselves.
These companies and those employed by them will be in a position of huge economic power, controlling the activities of millions of the world's poorer people, and being part responsible for the ecological balance of the planet. Farmers may well find themselves unable to operate outside this system, either because they need the essential inputs to make things grow, or because marketing privileges will be available to members of the club - ie customers of their seed and chemicals.
Professor Rees's future doesn't include such events, neither does it remark on the growth of giant distributors which effectively control the markets for food and other essential commodities. They too have a potential, and existing power which effects the actions and lives of thousands of farmers and growers.
We listened to the Reith Lecture with all the reverence required for the occasion, increased by Sue Lawley's deferential introduction and presentation. She was broking no argument and no criticism from her audience, who were there to adore and admire, not to probe and enquire.
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Even if there were no questions about the impact of GM on biodiversity, and there ARE huge issues, if GM foods and feeds were perfectly safe we must be very, very wary of multinationals on their way to gain world-wide control of everything to do with food and feed.
ReplyDeleteAs they are not philanthropists, despite their phony claims of wanting to feed the world etc. we must NEVER forget that they have only one purpose: to make profits for their shareholders.
Farmers world-wide must resist this creation of 21st.century serfdom.