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James Goldsmith, the former food magnate and international financier,
this week lambasted the worldwide intensification of farming and the ‘new
tools of the technological revolution’ which could be taking the world on
‘an accelerating merry-go-round to hell’.

Goldsmith’s address – which covered everything from alleged suppression
of information on the potential hazards of the bovine growth hormone BST,
to international trade negotiations and the growth of ‘megacities’ in the
Third World – was delivered at the Royal Society on Wednesday.

He blamed the decline of genetic diversity in farming and the rise of
monoculture for the growing vulnerability of crops to pests. ‘In the US,’
he said, ‘despite a tenfold increase in the use of insecticides, annual
crop losses to insects have nearly doubled.’

Goldsmith, who announced his conversion to green causes a year ago,
questioned the role of scientists in advising the Codex Alimentarius, a
committee of the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization. According to current
proposals for liberalising trade in agricultural products under the General
Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), this committee will soon have the
exclusive right to set safety and quality standards in international food
trade. It is ‘biased in favour of intensive farming and its industrial and
pharmaceutical suppliers’, he said.

The former champion of free trade reserved his greatest anger for the
current GATT proposals for opening up world trade in agriculture. If adopted,
he said, they would force Third World farmers to industrialise their production
or be ‘washed away as if by a catastrophic flood’.