I was thinking about Avery’s argument that the world cannot feed itself without chemical agriculture.

Earlier I offered a counter-argument to Avery’s assertion that the population is growing quickly.

I argued that world fertility has halved in one generation to just 2.6 babies per woman.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20627550.100-the-shock-of-the-old-welcome-to-the-elderly-age.html?full=true

I now want to add that even if the population does grow (as predicted by the doomsayers) to nine billion, organic could STILL feed the world!

http://www.counterpunch.org/gray03102010.html

Add organic farming to other ecological approaches such as land restoration http://hopeinachangingclimate.org/press/index.html and bio-char http://www.treehugger.com/files/2008/03/biochar_an_answer.php …and we would be laughing all the way to a sustainable organic future with healthy soil, animals and people!

Sir John Krebs was criticised during his tenure at the Food Standards Agency (FSA) for his unobjective pro-GM stance

(http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2003/mar/14/research.foodanddrink)

The FSA’s own independent review showed that under Krebs’ tenure, the FSA was seen as having departed from its objective of relying on scientific evidence.

(http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2007/sep/10/thedoublestandardsagency)

Meanwhile Dennis Avery is considered an anti-organic spin-master
http://www.spinprofiles.org/index.php/Dennis_Avery

Avery’s doom-mongering population-explosion projections are out-of-date.

Statistics show world fertility has halved to just 2.6 babies per woman.

(http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20627550.100-the-shock-of-the-old-welcome-to-the-elderly-age.html?full=true)

So-called ‘conventional’ farming is a 50-year-old blip in agriculture – and by wheeling out Krebs and Avery, is clearly in its death throes.

Organic farming is tried-and-tested. This sustainable method has fed us for 10,000 years and – allied to the latest in biological and ecological sciences and clever low-tech solutions – is CLEARLY the farming of the future.