I am still feeling disappointed in Delia.
Claiming to eschew the “politics of food”, she makes this sweeping political statement:
“If the whole world goes organic then the state of the Third World will really be twice as bad as it is at the moment and I’m much more interested in people getting enough to eat.”
Get your facts right, Delia. (And spare me the sanctimony).
Farming organically actually improves the food security of poor countries. It also means farmers in the two-thirds world are not reliant on agrochemicals – which are bad for their health and purse and environment.
The only ‘Delia effect’ I am getting right now is intense irritation at her misinformation.
Real Food Lover 
Right on Elizabeth. Such a good moment, though, for me to make my point.
If the whole world goes Vegan, we have plenty of food. Without needing petro-chemical fertilisers or pesticides; without needing to genetically modify our crops.
Unfortunately it doesn’t work like that. China has always had a problem feeding its massive population. The problem now gets worse, as the middle and upper classes want to eat animals rather than the traditional (almost) vegan diet of their ancestors. So now China is growing more than 20 times as much beef, more than 50 times as much chicken (possibly causing our present bird flu scare) as it was 20 years ago. Which means that they have to produce more food – not just for the expanding population but also to feed the cows to feed the poeple who prefer beef to rice.
Yes, Delia is out of order. The “Green Revolution” in the end made far more difference to the profits of bio-tech firms than it did to the lives of those it was supposed to help. And – hey – almost all the crap we use to grow stuff non-organically relies on fossil fuels. They won’t last forever – we mine or drill them, it would take a million years to replace them; we are using them up.
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