Feeding the world: oh not organic

Daring talk by agriculture expert Louise Fresco, who has the guts to break the organic trance of the fashionably-natural-farmers-market people at TED.

During her talk she is holding up two loaves, one in each hand: Wonder Bread, and artisian whole meal bread. Fresco says that we feel whole meal bread is more real, more honest, more authentic.

"Why do we feel that whole meal bread has these attributes? Because we connect it to a mythical agricultural past, of Tuscan farms. We have mythical image of how life was in rural areas in the past. The reality is quite different. These poor farmers had hard lives."

"200 years ago we had industrial revolution. It brought us power, mechanization, fertilizer, drove up yields. Horrible things like picking beans by hand is automated. All this is a great improvement. We've enveloped world in dense chain of supermarkets with global trade, we can eat food from around the world. "

"You may prefer the artisanal bread, but don't despise the white bread. Bread and food have become plentiful and affordable to all. It has changed the world."

"As food became plentiful it also meant we were able to decrease the number of people working in agriculture. Only 1% of people are farmers. It frees us up to do other things and not worry about food. Never before have so few people been responsible for feeding the rest of the world. And we are oblivious."

Via BoingBoing. Related post: Organic Coke.