Robert Paarlberg
Advisory Board Member, Agricultural Innovation in Africa Project; Former Research Fellow, Science, Technology, and Globalization Project/Science, Technology, and Public Policy Program, 2007–2008
April 22, 2008
"It's Not the Price That Causes Hunger"
Op-Ed, International Herald Tribune
By Robert Paarlberg, Advisory Board Member, Agricultural Innovation in Africa Project; Former Research Fellow, Science, Technology, and Globalization Project/Science, Technology, and Public Policy Program, 2007–2008
"Africa's food crisis grows primarily out of the low productivity, year in and year out, of the 60 percent of all Africans who plant crops and graze animals for a living. The average African smallholder farmer is a woman who has no improved seeds, no nitrogen fertilizers, no irrigation and no veterinary medicine for her animals. Her crop yields are only one third as high as in the developing countries of Asia, and her average income is only $1 a day."
February 29, 2008
"Africa's Organic Farms"
Op-Ed, International Herald Tribune
By Robert Paarlberg, Advisory Board Member, Agricultural Innovation in Africa Project; Former Research Fellow, Science, Technology, and Globalization Project/Science, Technology, and Public Policy Program, 2007–2008
"In Europe, meanwhile, some official donors and nongovernmental agencies are working to block farm modernization in Africa. Despite Africa's worsening soil nutrient deficits, European donors like to promote costly organic farming techniques as the alternative to chemical fertilizer use. This is not how European farmers escaped poverty....European governments and NGOs also promote regulatory systems that block the use of genetically engineered crops, including crops capable of resisting insects without pesticide sprays. Europe's own science academies have found no new risks to human health or the environment from any of the genetically engineered crops placed on the market so far, but since overfed Europe can do without this technology, underfed Africa is told to do the same."
