You're right. Maybe his NYTimes article was a fluke or a fraud trying to get his moral capital back. Or maybe it's just the tendency to destroy the mind with a deliberate misuse of the language.
REH From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of D & N Sent: Tuesday, April 02, 2013 12:27 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [Futurework] Some sane talk, especially the structure thing. Interesting. All this from a guy who sat on Monsanto's Board of Directors, has worked with them to promote wide-spread permanence of GM death seeds. Like everyone else with influence, he can parrot some sensible ideas, but his pocket book is lined with some mighty dirty money. So, like David Stockman, he can be appreciated for what you may agree with, while you are free to remain skeptical of his beliefs that have been nurtured by greed. Natalia http://www.businessweek.com/investing/green_business/archives/2008/06/jeff_s achs_why.html Jeff Sachs: Why we need GM seeds tool help fight food shortages Posted by: Adam Aston on June 12, 2008 In this week's issue, my colleague Brian Hindo talked with Jeff Sachs, an expert on the interplay between global development and the environment at Columbia University. Here are his comments on the role of genetically modified seed strains and crops in the context of rising food shortages and question over the use of converting food to fuel. === In reporting this week's story about Monsanto's goals to boost global food production, I spoke with Jeffrey Sachs, the director of Columbia's Earth Institute and one of the leading public voices on global poverty. He's a backer of genetically modified seeds, and is especially keen on drought-tolerance technology that Monsanto and others have in their research pipelines. He's worked with Monsanto on projects in Malawi and is excited by the potential for biotech to help poor farmers. "I think there are clearly some really great possibilities - so far unproven - but with high potential," Sachs says. "Not only is drought one of the great killers and big source of crises, but it's only going to get worse." Sachs is definitely aware of the controversy that tends to swirl around Monsanto - as the market and technological leader in biotech seeds, it's most often associated with criticism about the safety and efficacy of GMOs. "The human safety concerns really have not been shown to be so significant. Of course they need to continue to be monitored, there's no doubt about it. But so far the record is clear and encouraging," Sachs says. "Then there are the environmental questions. They also require a lot of attention and care." For instance, scientists are only just beginning to build a body of work on the impact of planting acres of GMOs on other plants, insects, and other non-GMOs. Intellectual property is another thorny issue. Biotech seeds are patent-protected. Farmers who buy Monsanto's biotech seeds are charged a premium for the genetic technology baked into them (resistance to herbicide, for instance). And they must sign "technology agreements" asserting the farmer will respect Monsanto's intellectual property. How this plays out in Africa is unclear. Monsanto says patents (on drought-tolerance, for example) will be licensed to aid groups, which will then sublicense them to local seed companies for "royalty-free" distribution to farmers. (snip) http://www.thenation.com/blog/166804/opinionnation-should-jeffrey-sachs-be-n ext-world-bank-president# <http://www.thenation.com/blog/166804/opinionnation-should-jeffrey-sachs-be- next-world-bank-president> Today, Sachs's approach to development remains, at its core, top-down and formulaic. Elsewhere, we have critiqued <http://www.ifg.org/pdf/Broad%20Cavanagh.pdf> Sachs's book The End of Poverty for overemphasizing the power of trade and new technologies to put the poorest on a ladder to modernization. (He once famously said <http://www.nytimes.com/1997/06/22/weekinreview/in-principle-a-case-for-more -sweatshops.html> , "My concern is not that there are too many sweatshops but that there are too few.") Sachs has applied this approach in his well-publicized Millennium Villages in Africa. African colleagues have relayed criticisms that mesh with our own. Through these villages, Sachs has been a promoter of outside money to pay for (among other things) chemical-dependent "green revolution" farming. One village alone is reported to have had a $50,000 a year fertilizer bill <http://www.wilsonquarterly.com/article.cfm?aid=969> . While this undoubtedly can lead to an initial boost in agricultural yields, it is hardly sustainable <http://www.earthisland.org/journal/index.php/eij/article/can_danilo_atilano _feed_the_world> in the longer run economically (yields dwindle as soils get compacted from chemical inputs), socially (farmers drown in debts), or environmentally (fossil fuel-based chemical fertilizers contribute to climate change). The reality of the villages' chemical-dependent agriculture undermines Sachs's reputation as an expert on climate change and other environmental issues. UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food Olivier de Schutter <http://www.srfood.org/images/stories/pdf/officialreports/20110308_a-hrc-16- 49_agroecology_en.pdf> has pulled together years of evidence to show that small-scale farmers can grow ample food and can reduce fossil-fuel emissions by shifting from chemical to "agro-ecological" farming. The international small-scale farmer-led Via Campesina <http://viacampesina.org/en/> movement has embraced such an environmentally sustainable "food sovereignty" approach. The next World Bank president should support this shift. Farmers and the poor need more control over natural resources, not a transfer of aid-dependent inappropriate technologies which serve neither farmers, nor consumers, nor the planet. On 01/04/2013 12:55 PM, Ray Harrell wrote: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/01/opinion/on-the-economy-think-long-term.htm l?hp <http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/01/opinion/on-the-economy-think-long-term.ht ml?hp&_r=0> &_r=0 REH _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [email protected] https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
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