Lomborg: Sri Lanka crisis exposes urgency to feed world

The Sri Lankan crisis exposes the urgency to feed the world and how fashionable green prescriptions can be detrimental to food security, said Bjorn Lomborg, president of the Copenhagen Consensus and author of False Alarm.

Lomborg pointed out that some extreme environmental activists have long been promoting the beguiling idea that only organic farming can solve food problems, but research shows organic farming produces much less food than conventional farming per hectare.

“Switching to organics would mean destroying large swathes of nature for less effective production,” he said. “Sri Lanka provides a sobering lesson.”

Lomborg added that to sustainably feed the world, there is a need to produce food that is both better and cheaper.