Harvard Magazine (May-June 2018) has published our letter about microbe-based agriculture in lab-driven vs. nature-driven industry and commerce. Our unedited text is copied below, and appears at Harvard Magazine online. Our letter responds to their March 2018 article, A New Green Revolution?
“Your article on microbe-based agriculture is provocative and hopeful, invoking additional ideas around the cast of characters and topics discussed.
“We know, for example, that E.O. Wilson prompted Norman Borlaug and his colleague M.S. Swaminathan to consider environmental implications of their work in the 1960s, spurred in part by Rachel Carson’s new book Silent Spring. At the time, Mr. Swaminathan coined the idea an “Evergreen Revolution,” referenced by Mr. Wilson again in 2003 in The Future of Life, and reiterated in 2014 by Mr. Swaminathan at the Borlaug Dialogue. This discussion spans over 50 years!
“We know that the new lab approach you describe hopes to mimic the spectacular natural symbiosis between microbial systems in soils and quality food for people.
“We know that those same microbial systems in soils are also the essential workforce generating social goods such as terrestrial carbon retention, water absorption and ecological resilience in landscapes, biodiversity, nutrient bioavailability, and more.
“We know that local food systems, aside from industrial agriculture, feed billions of people, and that these systems can succeed nutritionally, economically, culturally, and entrepreneurially at large scale by working in symbiotic partnership with microbes in soils. For example, the company COMACO and its 170,000+ farmer-suppliers in Zambia produce popular food products (and related nutritional and environmental services) by deploying these techniques.
“What we need to know, for making smart decisions with big implications, is how the new laboratory microbe approach relates to these systemic issues. Does it support (or inhibit) whole environmental/economic/health systems as soil-based approaches can, or is it just more incremental in reducing some negative impacts of historical industrial farming approaches?”
David Strelneck, M.P.P. ’92