"Their technological achievements that have had an enormous role in the 'green revolution' increases in agricultural productivity allowing the human population to grow while malnourishment rates shrank."
The problem is we now have a food system that is:
- reliant on genetic monocultures
- quickly depleting our non-renewable water supplies
- heavily reliant on oil
- causing massive algal blooms and hypoxic zones
- destroying the thickness of the soil
- depleting the soil of micronutrients
- killing the mycorrhizae
The way we're going there is a very real possibility of 1 billion plus people dying in the next fifty years as part of a massive human dieback because of our current Monsanto-style food production.
Not to mention the fact that even today our food is largely devoid of any taste or real nutritional content, and is causing epidemic levels of obesity, diabetes, cancer, etc.
I'm sympathetic to this critique, although I think you've overstated it -- the risk of a 1 billion plus die-off is unlikely, and the distribution of tasty and nutritional food is likely better today than ever before. I would add, as well, the myriad of problems relating to rampant antibiotic use in food production. The fact is, however, that engaging with technology has risks and benefits, and disengagement often carries very serious tolls. This is true of a number of aspects of modern life and food is perhaps the most visibly ugly. None of this should preclude specific criticisms of Monsanto and its behavior, but it is nonetheless overly simplistic to portray the company as being singularly evil.
The problem is we now have a food system that is:
- reliant on genetic monocultures
- quickly depleting our non-renewable water supplies
- heavily reliant on oil
- causing massive algal blooms and hypoxic zones
- destroying the thickness of the soil
- depleting the soil of micronutrients
- killing the mycorrhizae
The way we're going there is a very real possibility of 1 billion plus people dying in the next fifty years as part of a massive human dieback because of our current Monsanto-style food production.
Not to mention the fact that even today our food is largely devoid of any taste or real nutritional content, and is causing epidemic levels of obesity, diabetes, cancer, etc.