No new technology will be the final, silver-bullet, answer to farming
challenges is my way of summarizing the fourth and final instalment in Al
Mussell’s series about common fallacies about agriculture.
He offers examples of technologies once thought to be great answers to
challenges, but proved to have unexpected side effects – atrazine weed killer
to grow corn, summerfallowing to preserve Prairie moisture for growing wheat
and using feed additives in poultry rations to eliminate parasites.
Weeds with resistance to atrazine multiplied, summerfallowing increased
wind erosion and parasites developed resistance to the chemical feed additives.
Mussell could have added that all plant breeding designed to provide
disease resistance proved to be only temporary relief, triggering a renewed
search for resistance genes. Rust-resistant wheat varieties for the Canadian
Prairies are a prime example.
And so Mussell, who is senior policy analyst at the George Morris Centre
at Guelph, has words of caution for those who support either extreme on the
technology issue.
“The mainstream agricultural community needs to acknowledge that
failures and unintended consequences can occur with agricultural technologies,”
Mussell writes in a news release about his final paper.
“The sustainable agriculture movement must acknowledge that the solution
to technological failures they highlight is not to restrict new technologies,
but to accelerate the ongoing development of new, improved technologies.
“Food marketers should appreciate the importance of technological
innovation in agriculture, and understand how food marketing initiatives that
restrict agricultural technologies inhibit this process”.
That’s an apparent reference to current retailer bans on pork from sows
housed in gestation crates and laying hens housed in cages.
He says the concerns that are being raised “play out across a range of parameters,
including carbon footprint, water use, pesticides, fertilizers, antibiotics,
hormones and growth promotants, animal welfare, labour standards, as well as
others.
“In some cases, specific
technologies or techniques related to the above have been targeted, such as
genetically modified, specific pesticides, specific animal health products,
certain livestock housing systems, etc.”
Mussell calls for a
broader understanding of agriculture and the environment in which crops,
livestock and poultry are farmed.
“important aspects of this movement are simplistic,
misguided, or simply wrongheaded, and following these through to their logical
extent presents the prospect of pitfalls for the agri-food system.
“The sustainable agriculture movement must acknowledge that
the solution to technological failures it highlights is not to restrict new
technologies, but rather to accelerate the development of new, improved
technologies,” Mussell writes.
“Food marketers should appreciate the importance of
technological development in agriculture, and understand how food marketing
initiatives that restrict agricultural technologies inhibit this process.”
