A Look At the World's Dwindling Food Supply 570
An anonymous reader writes "The UK's Government Office of Science has released a report titled 'The Future of Food and Farming' which takes a look at, among other related concerns, how to continue to feed a global population that is on pace to reach 9 billion by the year 2050. 'The report calls for more innovation to increase production. That means using the potential benefits of GM crops and other biotech approaches, although these won't be a cure-all. There's room for improvement on the consumption end, too, as 30 percent of food never makes it into a human stomach; in the developed world, we let produce slowly rot in the backs of our fridges, and the in developing world, farm wastage causes a similar problem. ... Rising energy prices influence food security, with a correlation between food price and oil price that has become stronger over time, first increasing food production costs, and later by encouraging the diversion of food stocks into biofuel production.'"
Why do we need more efficiency (Score:4, Insightful)
When 30% of our food doesn't even get eaten?
Re:Why do we need more efficiency (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Why do we need more efficiency (Score:4, Insightful)
No, we need GM seeds from Monsanto.
With them, we can save the world.
And Monsanto from not making their number's this quarter.
Re:Why do we need more efficiency (Score:5, Insightful)
By and large the developed world is _Not_ the ones who have a growing population. The numbers say it pretty clearly, but the poorer you are the more kids you have (which seems extremely backwards, but it's true). Which is why the problem is almost completely in the developing world. It's also why China created it's 1 child policy.
Your first several points target the developed world and won't do anything. The later points start going into your rant about abstinence being wrong headed. That you think taxes on multi-child births can even pay for contraceptives is rather messed up, remember what I just said about number of kids and poverty? I won't say that it's wrong to think about birth control, but abstinence is at least a free way to do something which may explain why it was first used (beside religious considerations).
I don't think we can realistically force developing nations to simply stop having kids. They don't want it and will resist if pushed. The far better way to deal with it is first to see about improving the education of women in the developing world (educated women typically have fewer kids). And improving their wealth potential thereby leading them into population growth reduction in the same pattern as the developed world. No coercion needed. They want more education and more money, which have all the benefits you want to achieve.
Re:Why do we need more efficiency (Score:4, Insightful)
I agree with most of what you wrote with one big exception.
[A]bstinence is at least a free way to do something which may explain why it was first used (beside religious considerations).
Abstinence only education is pretty much always a religiously motivated program. The reason it's abstinence only is because some religious leader decided that if you tell the youngsters about birth control they'll figure out a way to have sex without children. They don't really consider unwanted pregnancies to be a real problem, they see that as the just consequence of unwanted sex. That's why the fact that abstinence only programs are massive failures in every measurable way seems to have absolutely no effect on many of the people who support them.
As a note, according to the studies, children exposed to abstinence only education have sex earlier, have more sexual partners, have sex more often, have more pregnancies, have more abortions, and have more sexually transmitted diseases than children who received uncensored sex education.
Re:Why do we need more efficiency (Score:4)
Personally I wouldn't suggest abstinence _only_ anything, but importing condoms (contraceptive drugs, etc) into places without the industry to make them for themselves is not going to help. Alot of the religious cause for going to these places is missionaries. Who of course preach abstinence as the only method, it is effectively free for them to do. Which was my point.
The much bigger issue is making it so these places have infrastructure to create their own contraceptives. They also have to want it. Education and wealth historically always leads to lower birth rates. Correcting those can be the only moral solution.
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importing condoms (contraceptive drugs, etc) into places without the industry to make them for themselves is not going to help
Sure it will. And it's a heck of a lot cheaper than the humanitarian aid that will be needed to support the orphans when the next epidemic/famine/war hits.
Yes, there need to be cultural adjustments, and education, but there's no sane reason not to make contraceptives readily available in such areas right away.
And that includes certain areas in developed countries, because if the onl
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children exposed to abstinence only education have sex earlier, have more sexual partners, have sex more often, have more pregnancies, have more abortions, and have more sexually transmitted diseases than children who received uncensored sex education.
Be careful where you try to take that. People often point to extremely socially conservative policies that seem not to work especially well as evidence that said policies are inherently bad ideas. I've lived in the deep South my whole life, and what I've noticed is that while these ideas are not broadly effective at improving the life of the average poor person, they are profoundly effective in people who actually follow them. Incidents that would be a troubles to a middle class person - an unexpected preg
Re:Why do we need more efficiency (Score:4, Interesting)
The numbers say it pretty clearly, but the poorer you are the more kids you have (which seems extremely backwards, but it's true).
No, it's not extremely backwards. The poor are more likely to be bored and horny and have nothing to do but screw. And they're less likely to be educated about things like birth control and STD spread as well.
For fuck's sake, 40% of the male african population still thinks that raping a virgin can cure aids! [scienceinafrica.co.za]
I won't say that it's wrong to think about birth control, but abstinence is at least a free way to do something which may explain why it was first used (beside religious considerations).
I won't say it's wrong to think about abstinence, but time and again we've seen that abstinence doesn't happen. Abstinence-only education actually makes it MORE likely, not less, for kids to engage in early/promiscuous sex.
The far better way to deal with it is first to see about improving the education of women in the developing world (educated women typically have fewer kids). And improving their wealth potential thereby leading them into population growth reduction in the same pattern as the developed world.
The problem is, the more backwards a society is, the (generally) more backwards their attitude towards women. The status of women's rights in most of Africa, most of the Middle East/Asian Muslim nations, and non-"large city" area South American countries (to say nothing of those fucktards in the FLDS in America/Mexico/Canada) is the trend. Want to know where the largest population boom areas are in India? Yep, they're in the poor caste areas. Want to know where the population growth is in Afghanistan? Just follow the sound of wife-beating.
What is needed is a combination of steps. Yes, it's harsh to suggest to people that they shouldn't have kids. Yes, you'll have those who push back on you. The problem we are addressing, though, is that currently the way to "get by" for the poor is to have kids. In "developing" nations, kids = little workers for your farm. In "developed" nations with a nanny state, kids = government support check for those who are living on the dole. And I don't mean people who are temporarily unemployed here, I mean the women (because the dads run the fuck off first chance they get) who start having kids at 15-16 years old and who have multiple kids without ever knowing which of the guys she was fucking around with that year is the father.
Oh, and before someone screams "racist" at me... I'm talking about the trash that showed up on our doorstep after Katrina just as much as I'm talking about the white trailer park trash. Same patterns. Race doesn't enter into it.
Re:Why do we need more efficiency (Score:4, Interesting)
The whole point you offer of 40% of African men thinking that raping virgin women will cure aids is frankly I think the best example for why we need more education in those areas. Very few people turn down increased education. As much as some here on Slashdot may hate him, Bill Gates even realized this and has put schools into Africa.
As for poverty = increased kids, it's backwards because typically they have the least resources to care for the kids. Though biologically it's encouraged on the ideal that the more kids you have the better the chance some survive. Wealthy people don't worry to much about child survival rates.
Most of the areas you point out as 'backward' in fact would be less so if they had quality educations. Even in the US a increase in education lead to the women's rights movement. Their are even some feminist groups who work to raise awareness and desire for education in women in those very places. With very good success rates.
I still say that forcing people to not have kids as an outside agent on their culture is both morally wrong and a waste. If we don't educate them then we will simply create more hate for us and increase things like terrorism. You cannot force someone else to do something they don't want to without creating negative feelings. If you forced your neighbor to mow his yard (how you get him to do that matters little) he isn't going to like you very much for it. When it comes to a biological imperative like reproduction it will be worse.
China can do it because they are willing to declare you an enemy of the state and even hunt you down. Mostly rural peasants tried to defy the policy and would literally flee the country to have more kids, the military however would be sent to find and return them up until their borders. Your ideal would require at least an equal amount of effort and across all of the developing world. I cannot in any way see that as good or productive.
Re:Why do we need more efficiency (Score:4, Informative)
That's not the reason why when you're poor you have more kids in developing countries. It's because you need more hands to help around doing things, such as providing for the family. Or high infant mortality, and so on.
Remember in the last 100 years, here in just North America, we've gone from families having of 8 or more kids, to 1. Why? Because you know that you're not going to lose 4 kids by the time they're 5, or they won't have some debilitating illness like polio. My grandparents had 2 kids, my great grandparents had 16(half were dead by the time they were 5, 2 others ended up with serious disabilities from childhood diseases and polio), my great-great grandparents had 18 kids. If I look back through the family tree in europe and asia you see 8, 12, 8, 20 kids, and so on with a 50% mortality rate under 10yrs of age.
This leads to having kids as a necessity, not because you want to simply fuck.
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The solution is to get our population growth under control (i.e. population reduction, not growth).
Or we could sit back and let the problem take care of itself. Seriously, every country in history that has moved from agrarian/illiterate to industrial/educated has seen birth rates plunge on their own. There's no reason to believe that won't happen as the remaining third-world countries modernize.
Projecting from past trends, that would have world population peak at 12-14 billion. That's a lot of people, but it's actually not more than can be fed and otherwise supported by this planet.
Excuse me? (Score:3)
I am against the population reduction proposal, we should look ahead. It is time to send our colonies to outer space, history have proven, human are good at colonizing new world when resources run low back home.
That is unfeasible.
The population is going to grow by 2 BILLION in the next 40 years. We cannot send 2 billion people into space, even if we dedicated every resource we have to it. We would have to send 136,000 people into space every day, starting today.
No, I say we stick to plan A, and reduce population growth. Then we might look at space too, but for smaller groups of people.
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Unless I'm mistaken about how babies are made, abstinence IS the most effective way to not get a woman pregnant.
Nonsense. Viable alternatives to abstinence include oral sex, anal sex, same-sex sex (one reason why same-sex marriage should be legal everywhere).
And no, that story about the woman who got pregnant from her vibrator because the batteries leaked is an urban legend.
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If you are so worried about the population, perhaps you should remove yourself from it. You are clearly not the sort of person we need if we are to move forward in this world and universe.
Quite the opposite. It is actually a real problem that people who are cognizant enough and have a well controlled enough ego to reduce the number of children they have will select themselves out of the gene pool. Moreover, unless they adopt, they will also fail to pass on their cultural values. So what's left are the pe
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When 30% of our food doesn't even get eaten?
Or when you can drive for something like 6 hours through Nevada and see nothing but empty land that could be used for farming...
Re:Why do we need more efficiency (Score:5, Informative)
I have never seen any land on nevada that can be used for farming. Remember for farming you need (1) cheap and plentiful water and (2) high quality soil.
Re:Why do we need more efficiency (Score:5, Insightful)
That's assuming a traditional means of farming.
If you were to build advanced green houses out in the middle of nowhere with plentiful sunlight (Nevada) you could lose very little water (high efficiency) and grow some crops year round. Not to mention that pests are far more manageable inside green houses (segregation of units) and you don't get seed piracy (Monsanto contaminating your crops then claiming you stole from them). That and some crops can be grown hydroponically to great heights which does not require high quality soil at all. Just shipments of chemicals. Considering the railways that go through Nevada there isn't a reason to not put something like that out there.
Ohhh.. and we don't have to limit it to food either. Some really good biofuel technologies using algae could be grown vertically several hundred feet up in the air in greenhouses. We could generate a buttload of fuel and energy.
It's technology. We have it.
We lack the political will power to do so. It's far easier just to keep subsidizing the farmers (popular activity to get votes) and destroy food then it is to really really really think about how to grow food intelligently.
Of course.... it's also far far cheaper in the case of herbs (which was popular for a minute to grow in greenhouses) to just import it from other countries no differently then we import cheap crap from China.
The thing that kills me is how much space we have with plentiful water and access to high quality soil that we NEVER use. It's called our backyards. Even the apartment I am living in right now has a 10x10 foot patio on the 2nd floor. I plan on setting up a small greenhouse and growing some herbs and vegetables.
We all have (with the exception of really high density cities) the ability to grow some of our own food. This would benefit us in so many ways:
- Increased seed diversity. Fight against companies like Monsanto that want to own all the seed in the world.
- Increased self sufficiency. Actually know how to grow some shit other than potheads growing pot. That ain't farming considering it grows like a "weed".
- Healthier food. None of that evil GMO shit or vegetables that are sprayed with chemicals and grown in bad crap.
- Healthier lifestyles. If you are actually growing those herbs and vegetables you are more than likely going to be EATING them. That means we are putting less processed food and crappy chemicals into our bodies. That can't be a bad thing.
- Stronger nation through stronger and more resilient citizenry. If we are all growing a little bit of food we are far more able to adapt to natural/unnatural disasters. Sure it might suck not being able to get your favorite curry sauce or a bottle of ketchup... but you can actually live off vegetables and a bowl or rice a day. Billions of people prove that every single day.
No offense, but your thinking just illustrates why we so dependent on centralized processes that we don't understand and how our entire country from the ground up is built on a house of cards.
We are so weak right now it's scary and we can't talk about it. We are progressively more ignorant, violent, and unable to think. If the shit hit the fan tomorrow 90% of the US population would FUBAR. Unable to maintenance anything, unable to grow food, unable to survive without the fragile infrastructure we have.
Sorry.. I have to laugh hysterically right now. Just a few weeks ago I saw a study that showed the US is 23rd in the % of GNP put toward infrastructure. We are 50% below average.
Of course you would think we can't grow food out in the middle of Nevada. We can't even find the money to fix the fucking roads and bridges and railways that actually made this country what it is.
No. No. No. All that stuff is expensive and costs too much money. It's too hard. We don't know how and can't figure out how.
Meanwhile we spend trillions on bailing out the Military Industrial Complex, paying Blackwater mercs billions to murder people in o
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ENERGY ENERGY ENERGY ENERGY ENERGY (Score:3)
The food we eat is oil.
Farming is hugely energy intensive, you think it's just the sun?
Fertilisers, machinery use large amounts of oil and gas. Never mind the amount of water that is required.
The reason Malthus was wrong, is cheap energy. It has allowed us to expand our agriculture in line with exponentially growing population. Well, oil peaked in 2005. Which means less energy in the future. It's possible that means fewer people.
Nuclear has the promise to provide large amounts of cheap energy, i.e. large en
How much does glass cost? (Score:3, Insightful)
If you were to build advanced green houses out in the middle of nowhere with plentiful sunlight (Nevada) you could lose very little water (high efficiency) and grow some crops year round
Back to reality now: how much would it cost to cover Nevada with glass, or whatever material you use in your greenhouses?
Greenhouses are for luxury items, an alternative to transportation from distant lands. They will not solve mass starvation problems.
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I have never seen any land on nevada that can be used for farming. Remember for farming you need (1) cheap and plentiful water and (2) high quality soil.
If they can turn desert into golf courses, there is enough water and soil to grow something edible.
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I have never seen any land on nevada that can be used for farming. Remember for farming you need (1) cheap and plentiful water and (2) high quality soil.
There's more to Nevada than Las Vegas. The entire upper half of the state leading into the Sierras are farms and ranches.
Yes, the leading industry in the rest of Nevada is agriculture, but that is dependent on water - which is in short supply. The soil in a lot of places is alkaline but can be very productive given water. It all goes back to the water.
And when you talk about water in rural Nevada, you talk about the fear that your irrigation water is in the future going to end up in Vegas or Reno to fill pools and mix casino drinks. In Nevada, many water sources are under federal regional compacts, but otherwise, the State En
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> Why do we need more efficiency
Because 30% is currently wasted.
Re:Why do we need more efficiency (Score:5, Informative)
The other big wastage is "bycatch": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bycatch [wikipedia.org]
Shrimp trawl fisheries catch 2% of the world total catch of all fish by weight, but produce more than one-third of the world total bycatch. American shrimp trawlers produce bycatch ratios between 3:1 (3 bycatch:1 shrimp) and 15:1(15 bycatch:1 shrimp).[6]
They found discard rates (bycatch to catch ratios) as high as 20:1 with a world average of 5.7:1.[5]
Basically for every ton of shrimp caught worldwide, 5.7 tons of other stuff caught is discarded (and usually dead or good as dead by that time).
And the sad thing is it's scientifically proven that humans thrive on diets that contain certain oceanic fish. We won't do so well if they go extinct.
Stories about "dwindling food supply" and GM the "saviour" are mostly propaganda by GM companies to serve their agenda (to make them rich, get them favourable laws etc). There is still clearly enough food in the world. The number 1 reason people starve is politics.
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There is still clearly enough food in the world.
With 9 billion people in 2050 the state of the food supply in 2011 will not be particularly relevant.
GM hybrid rice promises to increase 15% beyond the best variety currently available. The modification is pretty benign, the male flower is sterile so self pollination does not occur, and a hybrid can be generated. GM does not automatically mean bad, but there are a number of transgenic ones that are dubious value.
Re:Why do we need more efficiency (Score:4, Interesting)
GM hybrid rice promises to increase 15% beyond the best variety currently available. The modification is pretty benign, the male flower is sterile so self pollination does not occur, and a hybrid can be generated. GM does not automatically mean bad, but there are a number of transgenic ones that are dubious value.
I never got this fascination with rice. All in all its a pretty poor staple foodstuff. What you want are potatoes, which contain most of the vitamins and minerals you need to stay alive. Indeed, people have thrived on just potatoes and milk, maybe with an odd egg or fish thrown in. Also the volume of food produced per area planted is enormous, and there should be zero problem with blight in this day and age. Then there's the way they are actually tasty - mashed potatoes, french fries, potato salad, waffles, its a neverending cascade of deliciousness. :D
Re:Why do we need more efficiency (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Why do we need more efficiency (Score:5, Insightful)
Fully 50% of the world's population depends on rice as their primary source of calories. They do not do it because they are stupid or they are fascinated by it.
In Vietnam [fao.org] they get 6.14 tonnes/hectare for potatoes and only 3.9 tonnes/hectare with rice
Rice has 4.8 times as many calories as potatoes by weight so it produces 3 times as many calories from the same piece of land. So they could plant 2/3 of their cropland with other crops to makeup for the nutritional deficiencies of rice and still have more calories and a more varied diet than if they planted only potatoes. Potatoes are great in the Andes where rice wouldn't grow, but otherwise rice or another grain win handily.
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Did you see the part about 2/3 of the cropland being available for other crops compared to potatoes? If you do not get enough calories you die of starvation long before vitamin deficiencies become an issue. Caloric intake is second only to water as the most fundamental nutritional requirement. If vitamins and minerals were all that mattered, you could eat celery, seashells, and vitamin tablets, but you would starve to death. The big issue one hears about with rice is its lack of vitamin A, but guess wh
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Ask yourself what shrimp feed on, then consider the motivation for shrimp farmers to throw back large numbers of dead fish right on top of their favorite locations.
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Because that's not enough, and also not so severe in the places that are growing the fastest. The Economist also ran a special report on this recently. There are other factors such as yields not rising fast enough, destruction of habitats, increasing dependence on poor soils, or diets become more meat heavy (requires more energy and water to produce). And as demand closes on supply, we become less able to cope with a crop failure in a major producer of a staple, which will cause price shocks. Increasing
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Of course I didn't RTFA, but of that 30% that doesn't reach our stomaches, how much is being diverted to keep things like our cars running (e.g. converted to ethanol)?
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Because 70% efficiency isn't very good.
What we need is a PirateBay for grain (Score:4, Interesting)
Poor underpaid biologists in Russia and other countries working to restore reproduction capabilities of GM grains.
Or, if you will, jailbreaking the grains, unlocking the genes, replacing them with the original version.
It should be much easier than research at Monsanto _adding_ new functions to genes.
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How about the waste during PRODUCTION? (Score:2)
Take a look at any documentary about food production. You will see a sizable portion of the food go to waste. Ever watched how corn gets stripped from the cob? I'd wager a good 10-20% of waste here alone (and we're not even talking about any other point of the production process, just the part where the corn grain gets stripped from the cob, nothing else. You will notice something similar during flour production.
Sure, quite some of it will be recycled and used for something else. Still, we're talking about
Re:How about the waste during PRODUCTION? (Score:5, Informative)
Particularly since there is no problem in the industrial world. Countries with a stable political system, modern infrastructure and so on do not have problems producing enough food. I'm not saying every nation stands as an island and produces everything it consumes, but collectively they can produce not just enough food, but far more than is needed. No problem at all.
The problem is in less developed nations. Particularly it is a problem in ones with unstable and/or inefficient governments. Zimbabwe is a wonderful example. Used to produce plenty for export, now requires food aid. There was no ecological disaster, just a dictator who doesn't care or understand.
So if you are talking about food problems where they actually exist on a global scale, which is what this seems to be talking about, the the problem is not one of "How can we grow enough food?" it is "How can we get people to stop killing each other and destroying the infrastructure used to grow food?"
If we had a world where all nations were doing a reasonably efficient job of this, and we still had shortages, or were coming up on shortages, then it would be a different problem. But that is not the case at all.
So unless this report is talking about coming problems for developed countries, if it is saying that in the US and Europe shortages are going to start developing unless there's new technology, then I'm calling BS and like you thinking there is an ulterior motive.
Now none of that is to say that more efficiency is a bad thing. Use less, have more, it is a basic principle of life. However let's be real about what the problem is we are talking about and thus what would need to be done to solve it.
Re:How about the waste during PRODUCTION? (Score:4, Interesting)
A quick search would've provided you with links to back up your data, or to refute it. For example: [tennessee.edu]
Mentioned elsewhere in the article, ideal efficiency is 3% loss, with averages "closer to" 10% (implying the range is probably more like 5-15% loss rather than 10-20% loss). And don't think farmers aren't keenly aware of this and will do just about anything to increase their yields. These are machines that cost the equivalent of a nice house in most places ($250,000 on average) and if there's a newer model with higher efficiency then most farmers will trade up to the latest and greatest. Even a small increase in efficiency over several years could cover the cost of the equipment.
I've said it before and I'll say it again -- farming is one of the most advanced areas for technology, biology, chemistry, etc. These are not slack-jawed yokels trotting behind horses. Even the average family farmer works > 1000 acres with only 1 or 2 people and has technology the rest of us have only dreamed of. GPS when it was otherwise only available to military and government applications, satellite maps, sophisticated data collection sensors to track yields, self-driving vehicles, market tracking tools that rival anything wall street brokers can think up, etc. Of course it's also a metric pantload of physical labor, long hours, and a livelihood that is directly affected and threatened by "acts of god" the rest of us would completely ignore (a hail shower might dent your car and cost you $500 in repairs, but it could ruin a farmer's entire crop and cost him $100,000 or more).
what is "food" anyway? (Score:2)
I suspect the entire corn plant is edible. Seeing as most of us need more fiber and less sugar/starch, the leaves may well be the better part to eat.
All of a broccoli plant is edible. All of a carrot or beet plant is edible, both leaves and root. Grape leaves, banana leaves, sweet potato leaves...
If I don't eat the whole plant, am I wasting food?
If I pick the insects out of my vegetables, am I wasting food? The insects are high in protein. How about a blood-filled mosquito that I swat?
If I don't eat the bon
obvious (Score:3, Interesting)
desalination..
All the problems are political. There are no technical obstacles that haven't been overcome.
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Sure, that will get you fresh water to setup additional farms with. But where do you get the energy to run the desalinization plant, given that desalinization requires oodles of power?
Ultimately all the world's resource shortages can be solved by the application of energy in some manner. But to get there you first need cheap, limitless energy. Until then, the resources we have to work with are a function of the amount of energy we have and how much we're willing to pay for the resulting product. Which is on
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But where do you get the energy to run the desalinization plant, given that desalinization requires oodles of power?
1) Look up..
2) We don't need to run a plant. The planet does it for us. All we have to do is gather it up and transport it wherever we want. Some novel ideas are needed for the gathering process out in the oceans, but pipelines aren't an issue. And neither is a small amount of leakage.
The problem remains strictly a matter of choice. Resources and tech are there. But the speculators have other
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All we have to do...
Words which invariably precede ill-conceived ideas. Pipelines consume materials and energy to construct and maintain, energy to operate and, as you say, you haven't actually worked out the collection issue or addressed the environmental issues created.
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Population Control FUD (Score:5, Insightful)
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Please remember that most people reporting something have something to gain. You, in other words, the commodity that they sell to advertisers. That's why most news stories tend towards the maudlin or sensational. It's how they get most people to watch the ads.
The point being made is that the prediction has been made many times, since at least the 19th century. The rate of population increase is decreasing, this means that if trends continue as they are and we don't run out of food and water before 2050,
Should be saving.... (Score:3)
Its called Cooking (Score:3)
EU's agricultural support (Score:3)
Ten years ago critics were worried that EU's agricultural support forced African farmers to give up on farming. Now we are worried that the rising food prices force African farmers to buy food from abroad. That confuses me.
Perhaps the problem is price fluctuations. A poor farmer cannot afford to invest in better production methods, because he cannot afford to risk bankrupcy. If the prices were more stable then the risks would be lower.
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Ten years ago critics were worried that EU's agricultural support forced African farmers to give up on farming. Now we are worried that the rising food prices force African farmers to buy food from abroad. That confuses me.
The EU subsidies allowed EU farmers to export produce to Africa at dumping prices, putting local food farmers out of business. Those farmers then had to switch to economically more interesting products, such as coffee and tobacco. This kind of farming is often also practiced in an exhaustive way and at much larger scales (it doesn't make sense to produce much more food that you can locally sell, but if you can get a larger share of the world tobacco/coffee/tea/cotton/... market, you can make more profit --
GM foods (Score:5, Insightful)
Your model is too simple (Score:4, Interesting)
Greed is a retarded concept, and can be more accurately replaced by fear.
You fear losing a job, you fear being reliant on your neighbouring countries/states/etc, so you pressure your politicians.
Your politicians fear losing their job, politicians fear being seen negatively, so they enact measures which "protect" your jobs and food sources.
Then the price of food goes up for you, and your neighbour.
Here's where it gets tricky.
If you're in a poor country:
This price increase hurts, you yell louder at your politicians, they enact more policies, they appeal to the greater international community, and you get aide, subsidized food, etc.
These policies/subsidies/aide drive the price of food down, and reduces the local incentive to produce.
The result is a feedback loop, until you've destroyed your economy, and created immense famine.
If you're in a rich country:
This price increase annoys, you yell louder at your politicians, they enact more policies, and you get subsidies and tariffs.
These policies/subsidies/tariffs drive the price of food down, and reduces the local incentive to produce.
The result is a feedback loop, but since this is such a small sector of your economy, you likely won't feel it, you just watch the prices go up, and get annoyed at "big fat greedy corporations".
Your price rises, are more likely to have an affect on the poorer countries which rely on you.
The further you go, and the higher this pseudo equilibrium price becomes, the more sensitive your economy is to shocks in associated markets, so as the price of oil goes up, the price of food will also go up, and this relationship will become stronger over time.
While this is an extreme generalization, and of course there are other factors (global warming, disasters, etc) which could be solved technologically, we know that a large proportion of the "food shortage" is structural in nature. Every time I read a well researched paper on this, it always comes to the same conclusions, and shows that this simple axiomatic break down is correct.
I'm more than happy to pursue various food security strategies (including GM), but the first step has to be dealing with the structural problem (which I see as more of a nationalism problem), which literally could happen over night, before dealing with technical problems. Because if you don't address the structural problems, the technical solutions won't do shit.
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The elephant in the room (Score:3)
Of course, the elephant in the room is, if we raise to the challenge of feeding 9 billion people by 2050, we'll have to feed 20 billion by 2100. If we continue like that, Earth will resemble some hellish place, overpopulated, over-harvested, polluted and war-torn. (There won't be any elephants left, for that matter, in our outside of rooms.)
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Evolution hasn't caught up with big changes in society. Wait a couple of more generations, and population in Europe will start to grow again.
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Evolution hasn't caught up with big changes in society.
Quite possibly true.
Wait a couple of more generations, and population in Europe will start to grow again.
Non sequitur.
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Oh internet, how short your memory. Hans Rosling has already comprehensively debunked fears of a population explosion, all we need to do is elevate the third world out of poverty and the population will stabilise permanently at 9-12 billion.
http://www.gapminder.org/videos/hans-rosling-ted-2006-debunking-myths-about-the-third-world/ [gapminder.org]
Hm... (Score:2)
"...in the developed world, we let produce slowly rot in the backs of our fridges..."
I don't dispute the logic of this...my own fridge, unfortunately, is a case-in-point. I wouldn't say that's where a majority of the waste is coming from, however, in more densely populated areas, it could be a significant amount (a million pennies is still ten thousand dollars, no?).
I just pray that things don't come down to, 'Now Timmy, eat your veggies, or the Men in Black Suits are going to come and assassinate Mommy and Daddy...you wouldn't want that, now would you?', to try and curtail consumer waste
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'Now Timmy, eat your veggies, or the Men in Black Suits are going to come and assassinate Mommy and Daddy...you wouldn't want that, now would you?'.
Yeah. 'Cause I know that little fucker, Timmy. He'd just say "No biggie," and toss the rest of the plate on the floor just to watch it happen. Kids these days...
One way to help..... (Score:2)
....Is to stop putting corn in our gas tanks. We could resume drilling for oil in the US to make up the difference.
Eliminating poverty (Score:5, Interesting)
not in the long term (Score:4, Interesting)
In this supposedly non-growing population of richer people, not everybody will have 2 kids. Some will have none, and some will have a dozen.
If family size is even slightly inheritable, natural selection takes care of the rest. Let's consider why people might have huge families.
The mothering instinct is a big reason. It's clearly way stronger in some people than in others. It's entirely reasonable that this is an inheritable brain trait.
Religion is another reason. The inheritable thing here is spirituality, magic thinking, and so on. The choice of religion itself is subject to some sort of "meme inheritance", with choices that demand followers to "go forth and multiply" being more successful.
Stupidity is certainly inheritable. If you can't manage to properly use birth control...
See where this goes? Natural selection can trivially defeat birth control. All creatures naturally are in a state of squalor, barely able to survive. Consider yourself fortunate to live during an anomaly for your species.
Hello Corn Subsidies. (Score:2)
It also really doesn't help that we have vast acreage diverted to non-essential crops as well. You have corn being grown for Ethanol, and various other crops that aren't going to food or clothing or medicine.
This when we're talking about a world population in excess of 6 billion people and increasing at roughly 10% a year.
I'm not saying some of these research crops aren't important, or that some of the products coming off these crops aren't necessary. But when it comes down to "eat and recycle your plasti
Ok, I'm going straight scripture on this one. (Score:3)
The Bible says there is enough food for all, but because of greed and bad distribution of resources, that is why people go hungry.
We should be looking at all answers for this. It is my own personal goal in life to make money so I can redistribute it to investing at farming in poor places. It is a net loss, but I see the plight of the people dying because of malnutrition. When I went to Carnegie Mellon, my goal was to learn how to cure diseases by helping write software, but I never got a chance to. So since I can't be helping cure diseases on my life, I see people who die to malnutrition as a group of people who can benefit right now without discovering a new cure. At the rawest form, you can buy someone food directly so they don't die to malnutrition, but not many of us are wealthy enough to help them all. There are more advanced solutions to helping them in the long term such as buying fruit trees for them, or micro loans to start a farm,etc,etc. It is complex, but it should be everyone's fight.
pointless article. (Score:3)
Fortunately, we will have nuclear winter before 2050.
Although much of the land will no longer be arable, the remaining few chosen ones who get to survive the apocalypse will have plenty of canned goods to go around.
As a side curiosity, when you have a can of beans that says: "EXP JUL 2016", what condition will it be in a year past that? 5 years past that? 10?
Perhaps we need to focus on the real issue here, developing more foods that are shelf stable for a century or two. Not feeding nine billion people.
Population control (Score:2)
I dont know how, but we need to control the human population because resources are finite.
Earth can only support so much.
Where have I seen this before... (Score:2)
"Population, when unchecked, increases in a geometrical ratio. Subsistence only increases in an arithmetical ratio. A slight acquaintance with numbers will show the immensity of the first power compared to the second" - Thomas Malthus, 1978 in his "An Essay on the Principle of Population"
"The battle to feed humanity is over. In the 1970s, the world will undergo famines. Hundreds
Stop breeding. (Score:3)
Seriously. Just stop. All too often I hear things such as people wanting to have kids (why not adopt?) or people who have kids in poorer countries because of their poor living conditions (which is no excuse). I don't see how their wants should somehow override the importance of keeping population growth in check. I'd say that education is the key. Even in 'developed' countries, there are many, many people who need to be educated in this subject (it's not something that takes years to learn, either).
Alternatives for the future (Score:5, Interesting)
Read this with a scientific and practical view, just as I did writing it.
- Soybeans can produce at least twice as much protein per acre as any other major vegetable or grain crop, [1]
- 5 to 10 times more protein per acre than land set aside for grazing animals to make milk, [1]
- and up to *15 times* more protein per acre than land set aside for meat production. [1]
- soy farms _has_ encouraged Amazon deforestation [3]
- Ninety-eight percent of soy grown in the U.S. is used for livestock feed. [2]
Although soy has encouraged deforestation, a sad fact, this may have been avoided if consideration was given to the fact that fifteen fold more food could have been produced, if processed for human consumption, and not for cattle.
This is a _huge_ ratio. For sake of our example, and in a most extreme case, producing meat for 9 billion people (estimated for 2050), we could be effectively be substituting that with plant protein at 9 billion mouths x 15 fold = 135 billion people fed.
Keep in mind, scientifically, what our bodies need and don't need. I don't want a debate of morality.
That's one extreme. For the other, even if we figure in a huge gap for the sake of example, that value halved to 67 million, is still huge. Heck, even a tenth of the possible output would able us to provide more consumable protein than we need in 2050.
From a practical, scientific view, does this make sense?
Naturally there are issues like infrastructure, bureaucracy, fingers-in-pies and control over industry that won't make this possible yet, but I'd like to hear your thoughts!
[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soybean#cite_ref-NSRL_4-0 [wikipedia.org]
[2]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soybean#cite_ref-britannica_26-1 [wikipedia.org]
[3]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soybean#cite_ref-23 [wikipedia.org]
Bullshit. (Score:3)
oh but why should we take the freedom of the big players away, even if it is at the expense of world hunger and accompanying death
Ethiopia (Score:5, Insightful)
what we need is less people (Score:3)
Re:9,000,000,000 (Score:4, Insightful)
You willing to kill yourself and your family?
If not then why would you expect anyone else to? If so then then there's little point in my replying since you aren't here anymore, right?
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You willing to kill yourself and your family?
If not then why would you expect anyone else to? If so then then there's little point in my replying since you aren't here anymore, right?
I believe his question is valid, and your response is trolling.
We will over populate the world, no doubt. In fact, I believe it already is.
What will come of this will be famine, death, and of course war.
So, it will even itself out, right? Sure, but would it not be more humane to attempt to control the population before it gets to this point?
After all, what separates Humans from Animals, but our own humanity?
Go away Malthusians (Score:3)
http://overpopulationisamyth.com/ [overpopula...samyth.com]
Malthus wanted to kill the poor so the rich could remain rich. Seriously.
Re:9,000,000,000 (Score:5, Insightful)
We don't need to kill people to control population, you just have to stop making new people. I'm not sure why this is so hard for people to understand. Is it really that complicated of an equation? I'm serious. I don't get it.
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I'm willing to not breed.
Fun fact: According to surveys, the happiest marriages are childless.
And when you think about it, that makes sense, because all the time, energy, and money that parents spend on their children can instead be directed towards one's spouse.
Re:9,000,000,000 (Score:5, Insightful)
Here is one explanation I've heard.
Because not every country has pension system. If you don't get pension there's two choice for you: die miserably or have children who look up after you when you are old.
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In countries without America's socialist labor laws and social security, children are income earners, disability insurance, and retirement plan.
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require license to procreate.
reduce situations like... parents on welfare +5kids.
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The problem is not whether we can feed nine billion humans, it is whether we can feed ten billion humans, then twenty billion, then fifty billion.
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IMHO, yes, we do, because a large proportion of the growth in world population over the next few years will come not from increases in birth rates but from longer lifespans for those already in the world. You need enough younger, stronger people to look after your older, wiser people effectively. In short, the practical alternative to rising population over the next few years isn't birth control, it's euthanasia on a global scale. I suspect I'm not the only one who has a problem with that.
Fortunately, we ca
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We can colonize space and fuck up other planets too.
This eliminates the need for needless suffering, both by way of starvation and lack of fucking. Thus, it's the optimal solution.
Re:Food and Freeways (Score:5, Informative)
Not true. Countries with stable food supplies and secure, healthy, well educated societies have very low birth rates. And besides, our entire raison d'etre is procreation, until we infest the entire universe, and beyond...
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If you build a new freeway, or expand the number of lanes in an existing one, it will NOT reduce the amount of traffic,
Well, when you start out with an incorrect statement, it's hard to listen to anything else. When you build a new freeway, you will reduce traffic. Whether it fills up later is irrelevant to the actual effect of building it. Also, I've seen that asserted many times by illogical greens (the kind who support public transport, but hate roads in places without trains - which makes it very difficult to have buses run). But I've never seen any of them string together two sensible sentences, let alone have the
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When you build a new freeway, you will reduce traffic.
No, you will only increase traffic flow and road area. Which is a separate thing entirely from traffic - the integral of traffic flow over time and the road area. Traffic engineering is enineering and you have to understand what the terms mean if you're going to discuss it with any effectiveness.
In fact, the GP was correct - in general, increasing the numbers of freeways will tend to increase traffic because there is an increased flow over a wider ar
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Just wanted to point out the simplest argument against building new roads:
1) If you reduce the cost of using roads (congestion)
then
2) You increase usage of the roads
It's a simple argument and that part is correct. However, the problem comes from understanding the difference between traffic volume and traffic congestion. They're not the same and may be used incorrectly or interchangeably by people who don't understand the issue very well. Increasing road surface area tends to increase traffic volume and r
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I think you're preaching to the choir here...
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We should voluntarily limit population growth and over time let numbers fall.
News flash for you : WE ARE.
Go look at North America and European birth rates. Compare to death rates. Notice the latter is larger than the former and has been since the 60s. The only thing that has kept population growth going is immigration, and even that isn't working in some place, like Germany (Also Japan and Russia, though the latter is more to do with a high death rate), which is having negative population growth.
Barring a massive spike in birth rates, world population growth will level off in abo
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So what you are going to get is billions of angry militant and completely desperate and fearless teenagers attacking us anyway they can. Well it is already happening in a small scale, just imagine the present terrorism problem times a million.
Re:Maybe (Score:4, Insightful)
You heartless swine! What about all the managers of the charities? Who will pay them and their expense accounts? What about the officials in the countries receiving aid? Without those donations to siphon off, how will they pay the service charges on their Swiss accounts?
That's not what we are talking about (Score:2)
It's clear enough that the situation changes above a certain standard of living. Primarily, this seems to be driven by the easy availability of birth control, plus a standard of living where having and enjoying free time is a real option. This isn't what TFA is talking about - no one is struggling to feed the populations of first- or second-world countries.
The point is... (Score:5, Informative)
The point is to stop giving direct aid, which then makes them dependent on more aid. If you actually want any sort of long-term success, you have got to provide support for them to become independent. Sending food, and driving local farmers out of business is simply not useful.
Moreover, "aid" is big business. Look at the number of organizations that make good money, leeching off the never ending stream of money. If one dares to question how beneficial the "aid" actually is, then one is suddently "Hitler".
Thank you for proving Godwin's law yet again...
Re:It is easy. Just stop eating meat. (Score:5, Insightful)
That's overly simplistic, though. Animals eat plants that humans can't. Until you figure out a way for humans with their resolutely omnivorous digestive system to eat the kind of tough grasses and heathers that ruminants thrive on, we can't eat the kind of plants that animals do.
Most of the world is not arable farmland. It's either too wet, too rocky, too precipitous or has the wrong type of soil to grow crops. Again, if you can figure out a way to grow your lettuce and carrots in an acidic peat bog slanted at 45 degrees then great, but right now it's really more suitable for grazing sheep on. You could drain it and slather it with all sorts of chemical fertilisers, but that would make a mess of other parts of the environment. When the oil runs out, those fertilisers will be really, really expensive, and without grazing livestock the PETA types are going to starve.
Re:It is easy. Just stop eating meat. (Score:4, Informative)
Grazing meat: good, for all the reasons you mentioned.
Feedlot meat: Pretty stupid, and currently much more common in the US.
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humans are omnivores not herbivores. we need to eat both in order to be healthier.