Post by curiousgeorge on Oct 13, 2011 18:43:21 GMT
Borlaug conference: Not really a crop report, but is related.
Also being discussed at WUWT wattsupwiththat.com/2011/10/13/borlaug-2-0/
And for a counterpoint we have this OWL nonsense: www.foxnews.com/entertainment/2011/10/13/are-celebrities-supporting-occupy-wall-street-movements-heroes-or-hypocrites/
And a list of "demands", by the bums in the park. Also good for a laugh ;D
In a keynote speech before about 1,400 people at the World Food Prize Borlaug Dialogue, Buffett said that making 500 million to 700 million small-scale farmers in Africa more self-sufficient needs to start with improving soil fertility and not distributing new hybrids or seeds with biotech traits. Further, farmers simply can't improve the soil by piling on chemically based fertilizers, he said.
These small-scale farmers buy seeds from unknown sources and can't afford fertilizers. They don't know how much fertilizer to apply or the fertility of their ground, he said.
"That is why we have such as challenge in front of us and this is unlikely to change anytime soon," Buffett said.
Buffett built on his case made at last year's World Food Prize when he said African agriculture needs a "brown revolution" to rebuild soil fertility. At this year's speech, however, several presidents and CEOs of major agribusinesses were in the front row to hear Buffett's perspective that the perennial struggles of farming in Africa simply can't be solved by giving African farmers biotech corn and fertilizer.
The Howard G. Buffett Foundation provided a new book for everyone who attended the World Food Prize, "The Hungry Continent, African Agriculture and Food Insecurity." The book provides case studies on what fails and works in Africa. Buffett called it a policy paper for his foundation.
"The bottom line is, as we have learned over the last decade and a half of being involved in this business is that we can't really solve other people's problems no matter how much money we spend," Buffett said.
When smallholder farmers use improved seeds, and get short-term access with synthetic fertilizer, they may be initially successful. Then the farmers tend to convert their ground over to one variety, and lose diversity needed to feed their families.
"They actually put their families at greater risk because they sacrifice crop diversity for a monoculture environment," he said. "That crop diversity is critical to the survival of many of these farm families."
Buffett farms about 14,000 acres in the U.S. and South Africa and stresses he believes in technology. On his own farm, Buffett said he uses practically every available technology he can, including triple- and eight-stack corn traits. Still, Buffett added, a global positioning system on a tractor might cost as much as a farmer in Liberia would earn in two lifetimes.
"But I don't think advanced western technology is a universal solution or is appropriate in all situations," Buffett said.
The soil, however, is a finite resource. There are many places in Africa where the soil has no biological activity, or is "dead" as Buffett explains. "You can put all the synthetic fertilizer you want on that soil, but if you don't have biological activity, it's not going to work," Buffett said. "It's a little like putting an oxygen mask on a cadaver and expect to revive a person."
So Buffett is frustrated to hear agricultural technology is the only solution needed to feed agriculture. "Don't get me wrong, it's a very important contributor, but if viewed as a single solution, we're never going to succeed."
Even as a practiced American farmer, Buffett said his practices don't translate well sometimes. In his own South African farm, Buffett said fertilizer is 35% more expensive and neither the fertilizer nor pesticides arrive when needed.
More: www.dtnprogressivefarmer.com/dtnag/common/link.do;jsessionid=43435FF7C88BEA57ED1CFCDD45E01715.agfreejvm2?symbolicName=/free/news/template1&paneContentId=5&paneParentId=70104&product=/ag/news/topstories&vendorReference=0f4971e5-73db-4414-a3b8-39bac7e6ddf6
Also being discussed at WUWT wattsupwiththat.com/2011/10/13/borlaug-2-0/
And for a counterpoint we have this OWL nonsense: www.foxnews.com/entertainment/2011/10/13/are-celebrities-supporting-occupy-wall-street-movements-heroes-or-hypocrites/
And a list of "demands", by the bums in the park. Also good for a laugh ;D
Demand one: Restoration of the living wage. This demand can only be met by ending "Freetrade" by re-imposing trade tariffs on all imported goods entering the American market to level the playing field for domestic family farming and domestic manufacturing as most nations that are dumping cheap products onto the American market have radical wage and environmental regulation advantages. Another policy that must be instituted is raise the minimum wage to twenty dollars an hr.
Demand two: Institute a universal single payer healthcare system. To do this all private insurers must be banned from the healthcare market as their only effect on the health of patients is to take money away from doctors, nurses and hospitals preventing them from doing their jobs and hand that money to wall st. investors.
Demand three: Guaranteed living wage income regardless of employment.
Demand four: Free college education.
Demand five: Begin a fast track process to bring the fossil fuel economy to an end while at the same bringing the alternative energy economy up to energy demand.
Demand six: One trillion dollars in infrastructure (Water, Sewer, Rail, Roads and Bridges and Electrical Grid) spending now.
Demand seven: One trillion dollars in ecological restoration planting forests, reestablishing wetlands and the natural flow of river systems and decommissioning of all of America's nuclear power plants.
Demand eight: Racial and gender equal rights amendment.
Demand nine: Open borders migration. anyone can travel anywhere to work and live.
Demand ten: Bring American elections up to international standards of a paper ballot precinct counted and recounted in front of an independent and party observers system.
Demand eleven: Immediate across the board debt forgiveness for all. Debt forgiveness of sovereign debt, commercial loans, home mortgages, home equity loans, credit card debt, student loans and personal loans now! All debt must be stricken from the "Books." World Bank Loans to all Nations, Bank to Bank Debt and all Bonds and Margin Call Debt in the stock market including all Derivatives or Credit Default Swaps, all 65 trillion dollars of them must also be stricken from the "Books." And I don't mean debt that is in default, I mean all debt on the entire planet period.
Demand twelve: Outlaw all credit reporting agencies.
Demand thirteen: Allow all workers to sign a ballot at any time during a union organizing campaign or at any time that represents their yeah or nay to having a union represent them in collective bargaining or to form a union.
These demands will create so many jobs it will be completely impossible to fill them without an open borders policy.