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Comment by Surio | Hacker News Reader

That article is more than a decade old! Much water has flown under the bridge since then. Fast forward to 2012, the "developed world" itself is conceding there are also many problems with this "green revolution" approach, that it is no longer appropriate to continue with this monocultural, faddish fixation of "technological, scientific solution always saves the world". For e.g:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1029447...

/rant

Meanwhile all aspects of food and water, both of which are a fundamental human need, has been heavily commoditised and abstracted out of our view all the way to reductio ad absurdum levels in modern discourse. It is going to take several unmitigated disasters before nuanced views around this topic will even gain traction.

/rant

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It's incorrect to treat "technological, scientific solutions" as a single entity. There's many entities performing science and creating technology, and some of them pay more attention to side-effects and long-term effects than others.

Ultimately it's more of an economic question -- what can society do to encourage long-term thinking and careful risk-management instead of focusing on the short-term immediate rewards? If we focus on short-term rewards, we end up selecting for profits that are immediately realizable while ignoring the long-term costs.

Yes, because what are the saved lives of hundreds of millions in the Third World in comparison with vague, unverifiable prophecies of "unmitigated disasters". If nothing else, be happy that the Green Revolution has effectively prevented further warfare between India and Pakistan, both nuclear armed countries.

From what I previously read on india:

Farmers often waste water because water is "free", and the majority of the food often rot. This exacerbate the problem of farming enough for everyone eat.

We'll need technological solution, in addition to taking a variety of non-technological measures in order to protect our harvest and the local environment, such as encouraging farmers to use only as much water necessary to grow their crops.

We already have that technology.

It is called capitalism and it has worked wonders in the west (how many people are starving in the UK?). Start by charging whatever the water cost to produce and see the changes that makes.

I keep being surprised by people who hate capitalism so much that they would rather see people starve.

You can't charge what the water 'cost', it was thousands of years of filtering into the underground aquifers. And it is too late, the water has been used. Same problem with any non- or slow replenishing natural resource that we've been boosting off of at accelerated rates. When they run out dependent systems have the potential for rapid failure, much more rapid than we are likely to come up with solutions for, and people will die. Supply and demand work, but people will die in the process.

Who hates capitalism?

India does not hate it, they've embraced it. Of course, not everywhere. Why? because the situation is not the same. Having > 500 million people subsisting on agriculture is not the same. Different situations warrant different solutions.

Charge for water you say? Who will collect the charges? A bureaucrat. If the price is too steep, perhaps the farmers will bribe him. If it isn't, he'll probably keep x% of the collections anyway.

The infrastructure to distribute all the food that will soon rot in warehouses....is present, or can be easily acquired. The corruption, inefficiency and laziness... not much can be done about that

India's recent economic model is largely capitalist.[201] India has been a member of WTO since 1 January 1995.[203]

source: wikipedia

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