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How To Feed The World
Dr. Norman Borlaug, who helped create wheat strains in the 1960s that increased the production of farms throughout the world by ten fold, turned 90 last week. This "food hacker", and his fellow agricultural researchers, by launching the "Green Revolution", have done more to feed the world than anyone else before or since. He recently published an essay on the future of the world food supply entitled
We can feed the world. Here's how.
Did he ever really answer the question?
All he seems to be doing in this essay is advocating that farmers use modern farming techniques (i.e. synthetic fertilizers and pesticides, mostly). So fine. That's not all that controversial is it? But how does that ensure that the food actually gets to people? How does that ensure efficient use of resources?
Where's the sensible criticism of the bizarre government involvement in the U.S. food supply? Why does he not take issue with price supports and all the other nonsense that makes a gallon of milk cost more here in the heart of dairyland than any two gallons of gas? Why does he not mention vegetarianism, which is far more energy efficient than processing vegetable matter through cows and chickens and pigs? Why does he not talk about the problems that foreign aid and the drug trade produce in many countries, where farmers find it more profitable to be on the dole or to grow drug crops than they do to grow food crops that could feed their coutnrymen?
If the answer were as simple as "use synthetic fertilizer and pesticides", don't you think we would have solved all of this by now?
I do not have a signature
What about the high cost of advanced pesticides and genetically engineered seeds (especially the ones which produce sterile plants, or for which it is illegal to reuse the seeds from)? Are poor nations supposed to magically get money to pay for this advanced agriculture, or are they supposed to take further loans, or rely on charity? If we really want to help out the third world I think we should exempt them from enforcement of pharmaceutical, pesticide, and bioengineering patents, so they don't have to mortgage decade after decade of their future not to starve now simply to meet some international patent treaty. Is this really a technological problem?
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
Huh? Today, in 2004, the USA alone has the potential to grow more than enough food to feed every single person on the planet. The problem is one of distribution.
Distribution problems are 100% unrelated to destruction of wildlife and forest, either as cause or effect.
Government IS the problem.
Here's the thing. By feeding the world without also putting major birth control measures in place you generate population surplus faster than you generate sustainable food production. I once heard a talk by a green revolution scientist who mourned the fact that decades later, because of population growth, there were now more people starving than ever before.
Syntax error: loose != lose, affect != effect, then!=than
and how many of the people starving in africa are you going to tell that we have the food we just don't send it?
Get paid to code OSS
All of them.
Even if we did send it, there's no guanatee it would reach those who need it. Look at Somalia. We tried and failed because local warlords wanted to control the distribution, and they absolutely did not want the US to get the food to everybody.
The problem, again, is distribution. Frequently for political reasons. If they would clean up their own politics so delivery was possible then we might just send more to them. But as long as their governments seek to control distribution for political reasons, there's just no point.
And it's not just Africa - look at Iraq or North Korea, where food was sent, but the leaders hoarded it and used it to reward loyalty and punish disloyalty. Food as a weapon! And you want we should just blindly send more food to such reigmes? I don't think so...
Government IS the problem.
We do not need more food. We need more cheap, sustainable, easy-on-the-land, crops that can grow in relatively infertile areas. Third world nations have plenty of space to grow crops such as these. If they used these to not only feed their populations but also to export and finally get a positive GDP, they might work back up the rungs in the world
don't send it to the regimes. don't send it at all. but don't expect the locals to not destroy forrest in hopes to create food for themselves.
Get paid to code OSS
Can't the world feed itself?
The real problem with poverty and starvation can't be solved by sending a starving family your leftovers. Sending food their way is just going to alleviate hunger for a few days. This is a band-aid solution that simply isn't sustainable.
The real problem is infrastructure. When a country is constantly in a state of war, when its government is controlled by a dictator who doesn't give a damn about his people, there obviously isn't going to be enough food. People can sustain themselves if they are left alone: people can easily be self-sufficient. But when they are exploited and oppressed in the name of greed and lust for power, when the knowledge of how to be self-sufficient is obliterated, people starve.
We can't feed the world, but we can free the world to feed itself.
Now, you are further marked as a troll by your complaint of Americans consuming too much food, "more than their fair share". The problem as you say is that food is not going where it's supposed to, it's rotting in warehouses and silos, it doesn't matter if some of it goes through McDonald's. And, eating is by definition an activity.
If you want to complain about the actions of Americans, complain about how instead of donating their time and/or money to help people in other countries, they're posting on slashdot, which while it does have a small impact on other news outlets is generally a tale told by an idiot. In more ways than one.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
The general observation that there is sufficient food to feed the current population, if only we could find a equitable way of distributing it, is one thing. But you need to factor in the impact of better food production on future demands too.
Recently there was a TV documentary in the UK to commemorate 20 years since the 'Band Aid' / 'Live Aid' events triggered by famines in Ethiopia. This insightful program (Ethiopia: A Journey with Michael Buerk) by the original reporter who broke news of the famine observed that prior to the famine, the country was able to feed itself (provided the rains came). Twenty years of food aid and the ensuing population explosion later, Ethiopia remains the largest receipient of food aid in Africa, and no longer can produce enough to feed itself even in a year with good rains. There is also apparently an increasing problem with fresh water supplies in the country.
So more food may be part of the answer, but simply providing more food to hungry people does not appear to be the solution. As always, it seems to be much more complex than that.
The so called problem of overpopulation is that we can't feed everybody.
Sorry, but the real problem of overpopulation is that other people suck. There is nothing like living in an area, where you can turn off the TV, step outside, and hear nothing but the wind and the birds. In the Great Kingdom of Suburbia, I can step outside and be guaranteed to hear several neglected yapping dogs confined to fenced backyards and at least one car with 1000 watts of trash in the back seat and truck. Add to that neighbors who mow their lawns only once a month and street networks that achive gridlock when a water main breaks, and the suburbs are sheer heaven, right?
The only benefit to living near a city hospital is the quickness of care delivered when that stress-induced stroke or heart attack strikes.
Vote in November. You won't regret it.
> and how many of the people starving in africa are you going to tell that we
> have the food we just don't send it?
It's true; we have extra food, more than we can possibly use. It sits around
and rots because the supermarkets don't buy it all up in time, and the food the
supermarkets do buy up, a significant portion of *that* sits there (mostly in
their back rooms, but sometimes out in the consumer areas even) until it rots,
because people don't buy it fast enough, and the food that people do buy, more
than half of it doesn't end up going into anyone's stomach, for one reason or
another -- it doesn't get prepared before it goes bad, or once it's prepared
there's more than enough and it doesn't all get put on a plate, or it does get
put on a plate but then it's not all eaten. The *poor* people in Ohio throw
away almost as much food as they eat, and that's just what gets all the way to
the consumer before it gets thrown out.
Restaurants waste even more food than supermarkets. School cafeterias,
*especially* college cafeterias, waste even more than restaurants.
We have plenty of food. More food than we know what to do with. Who do you
know who, if a clearly emaciated person obviously starving came to the door,
would *for lack of extra food* turn the person away? (Some people would turn
them away for other reasons (fear of criminal activity, annoyance at being
interrupted by a total stranger, a dislike for the poor, a worldview that
considers handouts not to be doing the recipient any favors, or cetera), but
here I'm talking about turning them away for lack of any food to spare.)
Further, there are lots of people in the USA who would be happy to donate
food, even purchase food just to donate it, for the warm fuzzy feelings they
get from it. When the public library offers "Food for Fines", wherein people
can pay their fines with the equivalent amount of food, which is then donated
to some community action group, people come out of the woodwork to pay off
fines that they've let stand for months or years. McDonald's would be
pleased (if they were approached correctly) to donate a hundred thousand
Extra Value Meals toward a Solving World Hunger initiative just for the PR
value, and they're not alone.
But shipping donated food to where the starving people are is less than
altogether practicable (much less practical). If the recipients can't afford
food, they *certainly* can't afford the international shipping. On a small
scale, the cost of the international shipping positively *dwarfs* the cost
of the food, so that you feel like you're mostly giving your money to the
shipping company, not to the starving people. On a large scale, the
ecconomics of the shipping would be somewhat less unfavourable, but getting
the scale large enough would almost certainly require government involvement
(which raises budget issues and can upset taxpayers) or a large corporation
(which by the time you consider shipping and organizational overhead can
probably get a larger PR kick by doing something domestically).) And the
problems don't stop when you drop the shipment of food onto the docks. The
starving people are mostly inland, and the transportation infrastructure is
somewhat less developed[1] than around here. So you're looking at probably
using choppers half the time... it gets expensive fast.
Then with any large-scale food import operation there's the issue of making
sure the starving people get to eat the food; in a lot of places this would
require a significant long-term military presence, lest the local thugs[2]
take the food to make feeding their armies a little easier. Of course, a
significant long-term military presence has serious political ramifications;
Various nations (mostly Europe) would not be keen to allow us to keep armed
forces all over Africa on a more-or-less permanent basis. They would make
a big deal publically abo
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
I disagree. It is possible (I suspect even easier) to build a sustainable agriculture practice without all the expensive inputs. In the US, the most expensive input into agriculture is labor. Ironically, that's what these other countries have as a cheap input. We substitute petroleum inputs for labor because it's cheaper, the situation is probably reversed in South America.
I'm really not sure why things are the way they are, but I don't buy your theory. I suspect it has more to do with the efforts of farmers to grow cash crops for export rather than sustainable food crops.
Anyway, that's my opinion, and it's worth at least as much as you paid for it :)