Michael Pollan, Knight professor of journalism at the University of California, Berkeley, and author, most recently, of “Cooked,” speaks about Miguel Altieri, an agronomist at Berkeley and one of the world’s leading proponents of agroecology. “Altieri has shown that casting the future of farming as either low-yield subsistence agriculture or export-oriented industrial farming is a false choice,” Pollan says. “Working with peasant farmers in Latin America, he has demonstrated that impressive increases in yield can be achieved by means of crop diversification, integrated pest management, and nutrient cycling. Small-holder farms currently produce half the world’s food, and Altieri’s work suggests that they could produce considerably more without shifting to capital-intensive export crops that often undermine rural economies and diminish food security. Altieri is also an eloquent advocate of ‘food sovereignty,’ the principle that localities and nations should be able to retain control of their food systems rather than leave them at the mercy of the global market.”
Posted on: Thu, 27 Jun 2013 03:27:42 +0000