So Shall We Reap

  • Colin Tudge
Allen Lane: 2003. 380 pp. £20 0713996404 | ISBN: 0-713-99640-4

A common method of political and religious persuasion is to dwell on the virtues of belief for the follower and damnation for the unbeliever. Science writer Colin Tudge uses the same approach in this book, which is devoted to what he calls ‘enlightened agriculture’. The prospects for humanity “are somewhere between glorious and dire”, we are told; glorious if you follow Tudge's proscriptions, hell if you don't. The book's subtitle hammers this home: “How everyone who is liable to be born in the next ten thousand years could eat very well indeed; and why, in practise, our immediate descendants are likely to be in serious trouble”. And as if to emphasize the religious origin of such dichotomous futures for humans, the book is liberally spiced with biblical quotations.

Tudge regards food production as something that should be above the ordinary, grubby business of economics. He regards capitalism as acceptable provided it doesn't involve competition! He sees a future in which most of us return to the rustic idyll, happily tilling the land — although he does not say who will generate the cash to pay for education or health, or the other trinkets we have got used to and that people enjoy. Whether any of us want to return to that way of life is not considered. And because it is generally agreed that there isn't much money to be made in farming, the prospects for most of us do not look good.

Antipathy to economics is common among those of Tudge's persuasion, but unless fine-sounding sentiments are properly underpinned with an understanding of economics, immense damage can result. It has been estimated that for every 1% increase in income, mortality is reduced by 0.05%. The converse is equally the case. Scepticism about the motives of large global agribusiness is reasonable, but assuming that they are populated with shadowy figures out to control the world's food supply is not. Most UK citizens (probably including Tudge) invest heavily in the success of such enterprises through pensions and other financial plans. From Malthus onwards, the history of agricultural prediction has been a history of failure. Tudge's poorly based views will probably fare no better.

In Western countries a few decades ago, agricultural policy was simple. Production was all that was needed, and objective knowledge (science) was wheeled in to ensure its success. But abundance has produced new problems. Food security is no longer an issue, although rapid global cooling could quickly push it up the agenda. Instead, agriculture and, in Britain at least, the inevitable intermingling with the environment, have become contentious moral affairs. These are now areas of subjective knowledge in which disagreement, which merely reflects individual taste, is inevitable. Tudge claims that biology is the basis of his book, but chapters covering such issues as morality, aesthetics, genetically modified (GM) organisms, cash and values belie the claim.

It is a pity that authors such as Tudge and most environmentalists do not talk to farmers, as a more realistic appraisal might then surface. Farmers could tell them about responsible farming based on integrated management, conservation agriculture and animal-welfare principles, but also about the necessary business of running the farm at a profit. For the public, competition produces cheap fruit and vegetables, and by thus encouraging consumption has produced a healthier population with lower cancer rates. Tudge is more objective on organic farming and sees the regulations of this movement as dogma rather than common sense.

Tudge reserves his venom for GM crops, condemning the scientists who produce such “monstrosities” as obviously corrupt, as well as mad, bad and dangerous. I found this chapter to be a muddle of politics and naturalism, failing to adequately distinguish objective scientific knowledge from subjective assessments of Western agribusiness and nature.

Vitamin A deficiency in developing countries results in the premature death of about a million children a year and leaves another five million permanently blind. The primary reason for this situation, according to the World Health Organization, is poverty and ignorance about vitamins and diet. But Tudge claims instead that recent Western agricultural influences are the cause, as if these deficiencies did not happen in much earlier times. GM rice enriched with vitamin A to help counter this deficiency is a humanitarian scientific endeavour that demonstrates how valuable GM technology can be in improving life expectancy in the face of ignorance.

Tudge also fails to mention that both India and China now have proven examples of the benefits of GM crops to poor farmers. Herbicide-tolerant GM crops (produced by agribusiness) lead naturally to no-till agriculture, which has enormous environmental advantages over any kind of ploughed agriculture, including organic farming. These benefits are likewise not mentioned. GM food vaccines? Guess what. Not mentioned. The list of omissions is very long. In a pluralist society you do not ban useful products.

Mad? Bad? Dangerous? The only real danger is those who use subjective ideology to corrupt good objective sense.