Michael Duffy interviewed James Smith from the BBC, on ABC radio earlier this week, about his documentary 'Battle for the Amazon', which will be will be screen on SBS TV tomorrow, Sunday 23 April at 8.30pm.
Duffy remarks at his website:
"In the 1970s and 1980s, environmental campaigners sounded the alarm about deforestation in the Amazon and the impact it would have on the planet's ecoystem and climate. We were told an area of the rainforest the size of Belgium was being destroyed every year. By now you might expect there'd be no trees left.
But the documentary ... reveals that 87 percent of the rainforest remains untouched. Deforested areas have not turned to desert, but productive farm land. So, has the scale of environmental threat caused by the logging of the rainforest been overstated?"
I'll be watching the documentary tomorrow night.
You can hear the interview by clicking here.
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Update Monday. The doucumentary referred to 83 percent, not 87 percent, of the rainforest being intact.
PS. Possibly you're thinking of Norman Borlaug, who is associated with several developmental organisations.":
“Growing more crops and trees per acre leaves more land for Nature,” says Dr.
Norman Borlaug, the famed plant breeder who’s credited with saving a billion
people from starvation. “We cannot choose between feeding malnourished children
and saving endangered wild species. Without higher yields, peasant farmers will
destroy the wildlands and species to keep their children from starving.
Sustainably higher yields of crops and trees are the only visible way to save
both.”
He's the kind of "activist" I'm proud to publicise.
I recognise both the issues that you're talking about here thinksy, and in my judgement, they are both confused and jumbled by many activists. I see my comments as relating to both the issues you number 1 and 2: I don't agree that I am discussing one issue to make a point about another, as in several sense my comments relate to both the ideas you describe as separate issues.
If you want to take them one at a time, fine.
But lets be factually accurate about those issues.
"whether informed activists generally hold that agricultural yield improvements arent needed"
is your construction, not mine.
You misrepresent my view by use of the words "generally" and "informed", unintentionally, I'm sure, stating something I did not say in my original post, but on which I have already at least once in this thread bought my dissent to your wording to your attention.
As you say, that would be "Making blanket arguments otherwise is misinformed, naughty, or wooden-thinking", but it would be just plain outrageous for you to represent me as saying something that I did't. It puzzles me why you seem jump to such a conclusion in the absence of me saying it.
My statements refer to "some" activists, and I regard those that I'm am refering to as either uninformed, dopey, careless or duplicious, which I don't know (I can't read their minds).
Re issue 2: I also don't usually make statements in terms of lack of food; I would tend to talk more in terms of local productivity and incomes, food prices and poverty elimination, so the framing of the second issue needs to be carefully done too.
You seem confident that there are many "activist" organisations who are pleased to promote better agricultural productivity and who understand the role of it in poverty reduction. That's good. I'd like to hear names of them, and probably I may agree with you if you tell me who they are. Greenpeace and Oxfam, plus the ACF in Australia are not on the list.
I can name good organisations that do - IFPRI, FAO, The Rockefeller Foundation are three. I'm not criticising them though , but I don't think they are "activists" either.
In short, please say explicitly who are these activist organisations that are fully informed on this issue and whom have also spoken about the foolishness of not using American soy, when there is a probability that shift of demand for Brazilian soy will excacerbate problems with rainforest clearing, which is the issue we started taking about.
I'm even interested to hear more about those "activists" who air general arguments along these lines about land use, so I can contact them and encourage them (may even joint them in activism). The scientists/economists who do so include Tony Trewavas and Indur Goklany so its not diffult to recognise this activity-it does exist.