"Romantic notions about the environment and technology are harmful; their implementation can lower the quality of life and worsen the problems implementation was meant to solve."
In the current issue of Priorities, published by the American Council on Science and Health, Economics Professor Thomas DeGregori of the University of Houston charges that "the ideas espoused by some environmental and conservation groups have had adverse effects on agriculture, food supplies, and human health in developing countries. The difficulties these organizations create originate in their anti-science, anti-technology worldview," DeGregori contends. "They deluge us with figures on soil loss, pesticide-related deaths, and alleged failed attempts at using pesticides to reduce infestation -- but their figures are too often unverifiable."
Noting that "certain groups claim a monopoly on the concept of sustainability," DeGregori points out that the concept itself has universal support. There is disagreement, however, over the question of "which purported sustainable techniques work. In agriculture," he observes, "the intellectual position on sustainability is too often romantic and anti-technological. 'Back to nature' enthusiasts who favor so-called organic agriculture -- farming supposedly without the use of manufactured fertilizers, growth stimulants, antibiotics, or pesticides -- represent an extreme of this position." Such enthusiasts quite often display limited knowledge of "etymology, chemistry, biology, soil science, or field-crop production."
Technology, the great bugaboo of neo-Luddites, is "simply the tangible application of knowledge," DeGregori explains. "All forms of agriculture are technological, and agriculture always interferes with ecology. Resources are made, not 'born,'" he continues. "Land, ores, petroleum, etc. are not inherently resources; they do not inherently further human purposes. . . . We determine what is useful and how to use it."
What kind of track record do these all-natural know-it-alls actually have? "In the 1970s, 'small-is-beautiful, back-to-nature' types told us that we could sustain resources only if they were 'renewable,'" DeGregori recalls. "Two decades later, the 'nonrenewable' resources we allegedly were exhausting are generally abundant and often available at historically low real prices -- while the 'renewable' biological resources, such as rain forests, are in danger. Organic agriculture does not pass the first test of sustainability," DeGregori continues. "It cannot sustain the existing population of the world. Actions that under-cut agronomy -- the science of field-crop production -- are detriments to the poor and to the environment," he concludes. "Such actions lead to the bringing of marginal lands into cultivation."
What person in his right mind would willingly abandon the improvements in transportation, commerce, and health care that technology has made possible? Why, then, reject the obvious advances in agriculture? "The sustainability of agricultural techniques is an important, valid concern, but such concerns do not legitimize technological and sociocultural regression," Professor DeGregori argues. "Over the past two centuries technology has been creating resources more rapidly than humans have been consuming them," he contends. "By every measure of price and availability, resources have become more abundant." DeGregori urges us to recognize and remember that "science and technology are our only means of developing sustainable techniques."
