| > Norman Bourlag's life work was to develop and distribute high-yield crops. Borlaug's work was via selective breeding. He helped countries produce unpatented food at massive scale in order to feed a billion people. These crops also were productive because they were planted in areas that had not yet been subject to intensive farming methods. The major obstacle with modern farming is NOT the crops, but the soil quality, and depletion of topsoil is a major problem which is only exacerbated by more productive crops. There's no free lunch -- in order to have a more productive crop, i.e. more output, it has to come from somewhere, and that somewhere is the agricultural inputs. Monsanto's attempts to control and patent food, were an IP regime put in place to actually enforce that, would simply instigate a food crisis. You can't have Big Pharma profits without severe controls on availability. "Feeding the poor" is a complete smokescreen that is fundamentally incompatible with their business model. |