Bountiful Harvest: Technology, Food Safety, and the Environment.

• Author: Marxsen, Craig S.
• Position: Book Review

By Thomas R. DeGregori Washington, D.C.: Cato Institute, 2002. Pp. xiii, 262. $12.95.

Thomas R. DeGregori, an economist who specializes in the study of economic development, has traveled to Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Caribbean more times than he can recall. His most recent books chop at the roots of obstructionist efforts of nongovernmental organizations that seek to prevent modern development in poorer countries. Certain organizations resist, for example, the distribution of genetically modified corn to the starving and prevent the construction of hydroelectric dams where people desperately need electricity. DeGregori wars against an antitechnology movement that oppresses poor people he evidently cares about--people he has devoted his life to helping. Indeed, he seems driven by compulsions nobler than those of the organizations that deliberately obstruct development in poor countries just as they also sponsor antigrowth oppressions through our domestic regulatory system.

The devil-and-Dr. Faust view has pervaded the twentieth century, keeping modern technology under fire from media bias that sensationalizes every hint of technological risks or hidden harm. Organizations have found exploitation of fears of technology to be a fruitful source of donations, and industries promoting natural or organic products have found lucrative markets among ignorant people driven by technophobia. DeGregori argues a contrary view of technology and notes some of the pitfalls in misguided efforts to back away from modern technology, especially from technology's capacity to provide bountiful food. He boasts of advancing a politically incorrect view that technology is not the seducing destroyer of humans but rather their defining and distinguishing virtue.

DeGregori begins by describing humans as creatures distinguished by their acquisition and maintenance of tools. Humans are inherently creative, and technology consists of art executed through complex tools requiring specialization, social organization, and systematic learning and transmission of knowledge. Technology manifests a unique expressiveness that otherwise does not exist in nature. Technology defines the core of human capability rather than a peripheral extension. It is more than the foundation of human sustenance; it distinguishes human perception. By the use of technology, we peruse the heavens above the Hubble telescope and the microcosm below an electron microscope. Through technology...