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Sun, 12 Oct 2008

Prince Charles' PDG, KB* Speech Against GMO Crops

*pretty darn good, kick butt

HRH Prince Charles gave a tough anti-gmo speech Oct 2 2008. Besides being Britain's heir to the throne, The Prince is also an organic farmer, and environmentalist. He was invited to speak by Dr. Vandana Shiva, international environmental activist, and founder of Navdanya, the Indian pressure group for agricultural reform.

Prince Charles' speech (the Sir Albert Howard Memorial Lecture) has been pretty much blacked out in the U.S. press, but was covered by The Independent, UK. Geoffrey Lean reports: In a provocative address to an Indian audience, the Prince echoes Gandhi with a stinging attack on 'commerce without morality'.
Video of the full speech is available on YouTube

Although he is one of the richest men in Britain, and has been accused of agitating for personal gain, Prince Charles remains committed to battling GMO crops. "The reason I keep sticking my 60-year-old head above an increasingly dangerous parapet is not because it is good for my health," he said "but precisely because I believe fundamentally that unless we work with nature, we will fail to restore the equilibrium we need in order to survive on this planet."

According to the report in The Independent: The Prince attacked the contention that "GM food is now essential to feed the world", saying that the evidence showed that modified crops' yields were "generally lower than their conventional counterparts". He called them "a wrong turning on the route to feeding the world in a sustainable or durable manner" and "a risky and expensive distraction, diverting attention and resources away from those real, long-term solutions such as crop varieties which respond well to low input systems that, in turn, do not rely on fossil fuels." There was substantial evidence "to show that a growing world population can be fed most successfully in the long term by agricultural systems that manage the land within environmental limits".

Read The Independent's report on Prince Charles' speech

Get Prince Charles' full speech on YouTube