Heresy

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Robert Paarlberg argues against a sustainable food system - one that is local, organic and slow - as a way to attack hunger in the world. He asserts that Africa has such a system and it does not work. What is needed are better roads, better schools, better health care, electricity and - modern agriculture. In other words, we need to continue the Green Revolution of the 20th century, but be aware that it will not work everywhere, especially in countries that screw the local farmers.

Part of Paarlberg's argument is based on what he considers myths of organic farming. 

For example, "traditional food systems" usually don't rely too much on refrigeration and sanitary packaging, which he feels explains why a CDC survey found that our food supply has become safer. An interesting observation - 700,000 people in Africa die every year from food- and water-borne diseases, 5,000 die from the same causes here. Does this have anything to do with the open-air markets in Africa where food is usually "uninspected, unpackaged, unlabeled, unrefrigerated, unpasteurized and unwashed"?

He cites a study that appeared in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition which concluded that organic foods have no nutritional advantages over food grown in the regular way.

If we replaced the synthetic nitrogen fertilizer that is normally used in non-organic farming, we would need tons of composted animal manure, which would require the quintupling of our beef population subsisting on forage crops, which would require just about all the land that is in the continental U.S.