Food or Environment?

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Food or Environment

Even as most of the modern world has become very developed , there still some countries that are near the brink of famine . Parts of Africa , for instance , are facing serious food shortages , brought about by decreasing land productivity as nutrients are stripped away from the soil with each harvest , a problem that is easily answered by the use of fertilizers and modern farming methods . But the use of fertilizers itself poses

a different , though equally serious , problem . In his article Stumbling in the Race to Feed Africa 's Million ' John Collins Rudolf writes about a debate people who want to help these communities face : on one side is the use of industrial agriculture techniques , which uses fertilizers pesticides , irrigation and genetic engineering to increase crop yields though at the cost of polluting the environment on the other side are organic farming methods which , proponents claim , can improve yield without a heavy toll on the environment . In my opinion , industrial agriculture and genetic engineering should not be introduced to underfed regions of Africa , in favor of organic methods that increase food yields and does not destroy the environment in the process

Let us consider the facts . Organic methods of comparable effectiveness to industrial methods exist at present . One example of this is biochar which is made carbon-based materials and wastes burnt in the absence of air and buried under the soil as...