Energy Efficiency

Several days ago in Meet the Press (ABC TV) the federal Labor Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries, Forestry Tony Burke added weight to the saying ‘he’s a right Burke’.

What started as a informative perspective of whomever had written his presentation soon turned into plan and simple bullshit; even a student with poor mathematics skills could see the implausible that journalists seems to so easily swallow, small wonder we are in the pickle we are in, when those paid to ask the right questions are caught up in the thrill of perhaps 15 seconds of fame on top of a free meal at the Press Club. (Press Gang Club more like it).

So why would anyone try to peddle GM foods when all around the world there are problems with lower crop yields and even soil ‘sterilization’, leaving aside the fact that just about every person asked if they would accept GM food say NO and all citizens – at least in Australia – want food packaging marked so they can avoid the product?

Why would politicians act against the interests and legitimate fears of the people they were elected to represent and the answer is simple, to line their own pockets.

Right Burke suggested that food production – after climate change considerations – would fall somewhere between 2% and 6% world wide and 9% to 10% in Australia yet our food productivity would grow – one would assume exponentially – to address the 10% fall in production in addition to our growing population while drought stricken soil and water shortages grows daily.

He then went on to defend food miles and genetically modified foods and suggested that many of crops grown here were not natural to Australia, so what is the problem with GM?

So how does one educate someone who has such a contorted understanding of thermodynamics, where energy in has an end result of heat out; that to grow food here and then fly it there has no compounding effect on the environment ?

But before we start examining the massive holes in ‘Right Burke’s’ fanciful proposal, we have to understand that ‘carrying capacity’ applies to everything, from the amount of force that will break the strongest rope, how much weight a vehicle or road surface can cope to ‘the straw that broke the camels back’; so when we talk about the carrying capacity of the land, it’s the available arable soil, the quantity and quality of water and the weather that puts a cap on whatever the crop production, be it wheat, vegetable and fruit or meat.

As the ABS (Australian Bureau of Statistics) was not about, there are only guesstimates as to the Aboriginal populations in Australia, which where anywhere from 300,000 to 1,500,000. When I was a child, white ‘documentaries’ (theories of whites) proposed that Aboriginals were blight on the country, particularly demonstrated by burn-backs (now part of ‘land management’ these days). More recently, we have seen that Aboriginals actually ‘farmed’ the land in many ways, but never with the devastation that we whites have perpetrated. So after some 40,000 years, one could say that the land’s carrying capacity was in the order of (say) one million five thousand people; given advances in water storage and a wider variety of food growing practices, I would hazard a guess that Australia’s ‘carrying capacity’ would be about *3 million.

*[9 out of every food energy calories we eat represent the fossil fuels coal, gas and oil; as these diminish and therefore become more expensive, less people will be able to be fed, leading to mass starvation which is already happening increasingly around the world, with poorer nations – when having to compete with rich nations for food – being the first affected]

So let’s consider the – foolish – suggestion that food productivity will grow at a faster rate than Australia’s ability to produce assuming a loss of 9%. We know there are water shortages throughout Australia. The total gross value of irrigated agricultural production in 2004-05 was $9,076 million compared to $AUD 9,618 million in 2000-01, about a 6% drop in productivity. [Irrigated crops are highly dependant on irrigation as opposed to ‘dry cropping’ which relies on seasonal rainfall. Rivers, water-tables and catchment areas are obviously dependant on a regular and minimium rainfall otherwise crop production is not possible. Example: Dalby (Queensland) which has now run out of water; where food production and human and livestock now have to compete with an ethanol plant that uses 25% of the areas captured water]

The Australian Bureau of Statistics 1901 census counted 3,773,801 people; in 2001 the national census tallied 18,972,350 people and the estimated population mid-2004 was 20,111,300 (footprint of about 2.4 people per square kilometre). So if we look at these two statistics, a 6% population increase and (above) a 6% decrease in production; this is a variance of 12% in just 4 years and in excess of the 10% nominated by ‘Right Burke’.

Then there’s ‘Right Burke’s GM solution. Laboratory tests are carried out on mice, rats, pigs and monkeys because we share much of their genetic make up (pigs hearts have been transplanted into humans) and many tests find out what may or may not work. One of the many problems with GM genetically modified crops is that certain splicing of ‘pest resistance’ actually kill friendly insects that otherwise would assist farmers in their battle to save crops. [The Americans are renowned for loss of life and casualties in their ‘friendly fire’ and collateral damage philosophies – the end justifies the means]

One has to remember that GM food is not about the nobility of addressing world starvation, its about profiteering and monopolising the market. The USA has flooded markets everywhere with GM food to close down local farming and make people dependant on their products. GM companies want to be the only ones who control the supply of seed; in Iraq that actually banned local farmers from storing their own seed to replant, forcing them to use GM seeds.

The main issue is over population / exceeding the land’s carrying capacity. Why doesn’t Tony Burke have 10 or more children ? Most probably because his income is insufficient to support that many kids, so why should governments be more focused on stabilizing the population and meet the needs of those already here; why not have the necessary infrastructure in place … the nurses, teachers, doctors and hospitals and schools and public transport in place before encouraging growth ?

The engineering of herbicide-tolerant crops, as well as crops that produce their own insecticides, is all about finding ways to maintain and expand large-scale chemical intensive, monoculture farming systems, rather than about ways of shifting to ecologically sustainable farming practices such as organic and traditional agricultural forms.

Apart from one crop seeds (the off-spring carry no seeds to replant, more have to be bought from the GM companies), in Canada, modified genes from GM crops have transferred into local wild plants, creating herbicide resistant super-weeds; this had been considered impossible by GM ‘scientists’ only two years into a three year program; and farm scale trials provided scientific evidence that herbicide tolerant GM oilseed rape and sugar beet were bad for biodiversity because the herbicide used to kill weeds around the GM crops wiped out most natural organisms and wildlife compared to conventional crops.

Burke also stated we are now a net importer of sea foods (and we are surrounded by sea ?); why not address run-off from farming and the practice of wiping out mangrove that is crucial to the formation of all marine life instead of the well off having all important water views ? What about warming seas killing off whole species of various food chains ?

Tackling the salary’s of CEO’s of companies who provided ‘support’ to Australian framers may sound productive, but at the end of the day, pissing in one’s own pocket and other peoples does not address the real issue/s.