RE: GMO corn that enables no-till planting.
My uncle works as a herbicide lobbyist and would make much the same argument. No till farming has some great advantages. It is highly productive and efficient and reduces soil erosion.
And it is a bad thing because the residue from that herbicide taints the soil and water and most importantly the products made with the corn. And of course we also see that the weeds are developing immunity to the Roundup they hose the fields down with and so then they have to use more and more and develop ever more powerful forms of Roundup. It also encourages monoculture which is more susceptible to widespread crop failure than polyculture. If you try to grow the non Monsanto corn then when the pollen or seed from that shit contaminates your field they sue you! Monoculture and monopoly.
New Flash...not every thing is perfect like the School System you worked for.
WHAT is a less destructive alternative?
Do NOTHING is NOT an option.
At this time organic no till farming is not possible but they have been integrating reduced tillage and rolling and mowing of cover crops. But of course it would be quite impossible to ever produce enough food for everyone on earth using organic farming techniques. I wouldn't describe either the school system or no till farming as "imperfect" I would describe them as seriously and systemically flawed.
(gasp)....but..but..but...
the school system was overseen by the school district, the state, AND the federal guberment..
PLUS the teachers union.
with that amount of supervision how COULD it be anything but perfect?
my bubble has burst.
but your raise a good point when you say it would be quite impossible to ever produce enough food for everyone on earth using organic farming techniques
would that mean that we continue to do what we are presently doing or people will die?
does that mean that those who are complaining are advocates of genocide?
Well we can either use fertilizers derived from fossil fuels or we can have half as many humans or less. Most people don't understand that.
lucky for us the human growth rate is declining.
Once the 'hump' has passed, if it hasn't already, the population will decline also.
If you believe the,estimated and projections from those estimations, numbers...which I don't.
I don't think that there are NEAR that many people alive today.
India and China are hard to fathom, I believe there are that many of them. I don't buy their growth rate projection, it will turn negative in a few decades or sooner but for it to get back down to the two billion or so the earth can sustain without utilizing the Haber process it would have to be a significant negative rate for a while. As a consequence of all those women in China and India and Africa learning to read because of cheap smart phones they will start to have fewer children like women do in developed countries. Pretty soon we will know exactly how many people are in India once they have to use eye scans to conduct business.
the growth rate turned negative in 1962
the population increase should turn negative in a few years (see above)
what's the problem with the Haber Process? Just makes amonia. I grew up near a plant that did that.
Not according to the chart you posted. If you look it does peak around that time but their projection never has it actually becoming negative.
I think that is probably wrong though because we already see countries and populations where they do have negative population growth, like Japan and white Northern Europeans.
The Haber process is great, without it there would only be a fraction of the number of people we have now.