Sir, - What Mr Raftery fails to state (May 12th) is as important as the claims he makes.
The "miserably poor Asians", he refers to were sold the new varieties of grain as well as vast quantities of pesticides and fertilisers to make these totally unsuitable, high yielding varieties survive in "hostile" environments. These same lands are today so depleted of organic matter that they can no longer yield anything like the production figures obtained in the 1960s and 1970s from land which had been carefully nourished for thousands of years by organic methods.
The resultant explosion in population brought about by this cheap, plentiful food is now in need of a new artificial "fix". - Yours, etc.,
Michael Hickey, New Inn, Co Tipperary.