The Economist on ‘Fair Trade’
By DAN MITCHELL
New York Times
Published: December 16, 2006"BUY organic, destroy the rainforest,” The Economist said last week, eliciting howls of protest from food-activist bloggers (economist.com).
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Organic farming uses “several times as much land as is currently cultivated,” which is a net loss for the environment, the article states. If the world’s farms all switched to organic production, there “wouldn’t be much room left for the rainforest.”
“Nonsense,” wrote Parke Wilde, a food economist at Tufts University who writes the blog U.S. Food Policy. Mr. Wilde was less than convinced by the scant evidence the magazine offered for its conclusion that organic farming destroys rain forests (usfoodpolicy.blogspot.com).
“This is a recycled version of the argument the agro-business-funded Hudson Institute has been making for years,” wrote Samuel Fromartz in the comments section of Gristmill, a blog about the environment (gristmill.grist.org).
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http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/16/business/16online.html?_r=1&th&emc=th&oref=slogin