Letter: `Efficient' farms

Sir: Nuclear power would give us so much energy that we would not need a meter in the house; the Titanic was unsinkable; and DDT was the new wonder chemical that would wipe out nasty insects for good.

You would have thought, at the end of the century of technological innovation, that our scientists would have learned to be more cautious. Not one bit. Clever at chemistry and biology they might be, but history was clearly a subject they dropped at a very early age.

ADRIAN FOSTER-FLETCHER

Newbury, Berkshire