Hazards of agro-technology

From February 2005:

Miguel Altieri,  an agroecology expert from UC Berkeley,
has written some noteworthy pieces on the inappropriateness of applying
western/advanced agricultural approaches in developing countries, as
well as the inherently political and often ineffective nature of
agro-technology in any context:

We're losing 33 percent of our crops to pests before harvest, despite the fact that we are putting about 1 billion pounds of pesticides into the U.S. environment every year. That percentage is exactly the same as what was being lost in 1942 [before large-scale use of pesticides]. Exactly the same. Thus, the pesticide technology has failed. And the same actors that brought us the failed chemical-pesticide revolution are now bringing us what is going to be the failed biotechnology
revolution.

Full article


...and his latest book available from FoodFirst