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A Look At the World's Dwindling Food Supply
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.'"
When 30% of our food doesn't even get eaten?
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 food here and how we're running low, so I guess the first step would have to be to make the production more efficient and less wasteful before we start reaching for .... oh heck, this whole study smells like it's funded by some seed corporation that wants more lenient laws concerning genetic engineering, why wear out the keyboard preaching to the choir?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
desalination..
All the problems are political. There are no technical obstacles that haven't been overcome.
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
Maybe we should stop trying to save the starving people in 3rd world countries and just let them die. Then we won't have to worry about running out of food and there will be less people.
Do we really need nine billion humans?
If you build a new freeway, or expand the number of lanes in an existing one, it will NOT reduce the amount of traffic, it will cause more people to move into new homes further away until the freeway is full of traffic again.
If you increase the amount of food production, or make the current production more efficient, it will not solve the hunger problems for the 9 billion people in 2050, it will cause hunger problems for the 20 billion people in 2060 (fake numbers).
The more food we produce, the more people will survive, the more they will procreate and the population levels will explode even more.
I think the only viable way to reduce the hunger problem is to... not actively reduce the current population (I do not advocate genocide)... but for people to STOP HAVING SO MANY KIDS. Newsflash folks, we're not in danger of dying out from too few numbers. We should voluntarily limit population growth and over time let numbers fall.
There are two (well, three) options:
We can take responsibility as a global society and manage a way to reduce our numbers through reduced procreation, leaving enough food for everyone.
We can keep making babies until we reach a breaking point where no matter how efficient and amazing our crops are, there won't be enough food, causing billions to die of starvation until the planet can bring itself into an equilibrium.
We can colonize space and fuck up other planets too.
Malthusian scaremongering.
...the hydrocarbons for use in plastics and fertilizer...
Orwell: "In a Time of Universal Deceit, telling the Truth is a Revolutionary Act"
...do nothing to increase food supply and everything to increase Monsanto's control over the worlds food supply.
Some problems are too complex to be solved. Get used to it.
If more people cooked their own food they'd have not only a better appreciation of it and be more likely to eat everything they made (and eat healthier), but would save money and stop the wasteful practices of many prefab food companies. I know a lot of these companies sell their excess food to one another (or use it in other products), but I wouldn't be surprised if a majority of the "30% waste" is on the developer's end, not the consumers.
Ginga no Rekshiya Mata Each page.
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.
Wealthy Europeans and Asians should drop wasting valuable land resources on wasteful crops like wheat and rice. Soy and potatoes crops are much more efficient.
The answer is not GM foods, as much as I love technology,we just haven't been able able to solve our other problems, like greedy ass, unethical corporations. Greed is the reason people don't get to eat, not any failing of technology or logistics. I haven't finished this article yet, but so far it pretty much seems like a scare tactic plea for the acceptance of GM foods and cloning so that mega-corp monopolies like Monsanto can can keep on raking in the dough. 10 pages in and it's basically only said, in a nutshell, that funding the research of new technology is the only answer to the growing problem of food shortages. Asking for money, asking for deregulation.
The eternal struggle of good vs. evil begins within one's self.
What makes you say that?
http://i.imgur.com/uKWJd.png
http://i.imgur.com/O9yfH.png
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h0hzghCaI00#t=4m39
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O6r_3AgI49Y#t=33s
It's never been a problem of food supply, it's a problem of economics of distribution. We waste food because we can afford to. We produce enough food everyday to feed the whole world 10 times over. Food costs money, like everything, expressed. (Food costs labor and land and shipping, etc.) It's so hard to believe papers like TFA because you look back, you can find that they projected and predicted in 1895 we would run out of food in 15 years, same thing to be found in the 1930s, and 1950s we would be out of food by the year 2000. The whole 'science' is based on so many assumptions about the future that it's close to pointless.
The cold, hard truth is: animal populations always live at the edge of starvation. Increase the food supply, and the population increases until they are at the edge again. This applies to humans as well: Provide more food for countries with chronic food shortages, and you get more people to feed. The food shortage continues, only now the population is utterly dependent on outside support.
People in Western countries feel oh-so-good that they have saved someone from starving - but the result is to make the long-term problem that much more intractable.
May I please remind everyone of this article concerning aid to Africa: For God's sake, please just stop!.
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
... because already now we have been measuring that the amount of vitamins and other healthy things are going down in our vegetables because we get too much out from our fields. The solution is simple and unpopular because it requires that we are becoming vegetarians. If everybody would be vegetarians we could use a lot of field area for producing actual human food, instead of food that animals will process in a wasting way.
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.)
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
"...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.
I don't post AC. I like my -1, Flamebaits. Trump/Sheen 2012 on the Batshit Insane ticket!
When I see the amount of food we waste everyday, I can't help but think the best solution is actually producing LESS food. We only waste them because we know for sure we'll have more tomorrow. If we know we won't, we'll start eating those crusts.
*cartwheels on the lawn*
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...
,so that less cooling energy is wasted when door is opened. One can have a section for drinks, and others for vegetables & fruits, packaged foods, etc.
This actually got me thinking. As I'm sure many of you have experienced often, buying things and stuff them in the fridge only to find it as the source of that barf smell in the fridge, rotten and oozing stuff. Instead of making bigger (deeper) fridges, why not make fridges w i d e r ?
With wider and shallower (around 1 foot deep) fridges -- with perhaps 3 to 4 doors, lined up sideways, preferrably at eye level -- foodstuff can be stored at a maximum two or three deep, making it easier to see and reach. I know it will take up space width-wise, but it will save in terms of depth. More doors than regular fridges are needed
I also know it's not for everyone, apartment dwellers might not have enough space for this. But with the right marketing strategy, this may appeal to many middle-class families and McMansioners. With money saved with much more food actually eaten than being let to rot, the thing practically pays for itself!! [cue infomercial jingle]
anyone wanna call out the developers who keep picking fertile land that can be used for food production because it's cheap and easy to build on instead of building somewhere that may not be as easy, but is still liveable?
I'm watching the biggest stronghold of open arable land in southern california being systematically deconstructed and bulldozed in favor of McMansions.
Irony is, it was the filming location for Back to the future when Marty saw his neighborhood getting build in 1955. Now where Michael J Fox stood is becoming a neighborhood as we speak.
Yes, the entirety of the former Santa Ana Del Chino, and other former rancho lands encompassing parts of Chino, Chino Hills, Norco, Ontario, Mira Loma, Jurupa Valley, and the new McMansion city, Eastvale, is being destroyed in favor of building homes and huge empty industrial parks. Ontario is the only city in that list that is preserving the land (namely because the Ontario portion is the part that gets the worst flooding, it's useless to build on) All the other cities sold out long ago, told the farmers and the dairies to take a sugar frosted fuck off the mortal coil for all they care, forced them off their land, and put tons of houses up, where the people bitch about the ones who refused to leave and fought hard to keep their lands. The Chino Airport is also affected by this (they built homes on the side of the airport they test engines on to intentionally rouse the new residents up to petition for the airport to be closed, all so developers can turn that into housing too)
All this land was once for food, and was the true part of california that produced milk and beef in real numbers, numbers that rival the likes of Wisconsin.
What about the San Joaquin Valley and the whole great central valley? We still have that right?
Oh, not for much longer, They're developing the hell out of the valley now too, Fresno and Visalia and Tulare are building up quick with McMansion styled homes and similar NIMBY whiners who bitch about flies because of the horrible dairies. (and it stinks like hell some days because there is little wind coming from the ocean, also makes smog levels wonderful around fresno and bakersfield)
Meanwhile we have food shortages, and they keep building up whole live-in cities over perfectly suitable land for handling the shortages.
The sadder part is that 90% of the LA area in the last 60 years was once farmland, most of those former farm regions are now slums and ghettos with high crimerates.
What a fucking improvement that was.
Feeding an animal and eating the animal uses almost 10 times as many resources than just eating the plants.
....Is to stop putting corn in our gas tanks. We could resume drilling for oil in the US to make up the difference.
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
Nobody has mentioned soylent green yet? Or perhaps a similar solution: feed the homeless to the hungry.
double penetration;
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.
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
As others have mentioned, this is clearly GM propaganda advertising. Quite apart from curbing wastage there are also subsidies in most developed companies which pay farmers for not growing crops. If there were a problem feeding the population (and it may not be at 9 bil but it will come eventually) the solution will be in curbing population growth not in creating more food. Other resources even scarcer than food like energy and clean water will be a major problem before food is. There is a clear and obvious way to rein in population growth, and no white elitists, it is not to kill off all the poor brown people. Even ignoring the ethical side of this suggestion it is still merely a temporary drop in population. We are talking about a growth problem not a numbers problem and any solution that does not curb growth is not a solution at all. Statistically richer developed countries have little to no population growth outside of immigration, and even in those countries the impoverished contribute much more to the birth rate. The statistics clearly show a connection between poverty and population growth. The key then to bringing world population growth under control is eliminating poverty. The cost of eliminating poverty worldwide would run into the 100s of billions for a few years and would then be self sustaining. In terms of global spending for example defence spending, this is peanuts. Given the clear solutions available for the actual problem at hand, and the relative cheapness and massive cost effectiveness of those solutions, anyone who claims that this is an issue of food production is either failing to look at the big picture, or has another agenda. I can understand that the rich elites of the world don't want to give up their stranglehold on world economics, but I won't swallow this crap about it being a food problem. We have a population growth problem, which is caused by a poverty problem, prevented from solution by a greed problem.
or some other vegetable else that grows easily in your neighborhood. As an added bonus you'll be healthier.
We have plenty of resources. What we lack is the ability (or will) to use our resources in ways that aren't completely retarded. Making better food choices and cutting population growth (primarily by providing better education to women in developing countries) will suffice in keeping us fed. The last thing we need is excuses to give more money and power to companies like Monsanto.
Duct tape, XML, democracy: Not doing the job? Use more.
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...
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
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.
This is my footer. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
Was it greed or corporations that caused 10M dead of hunger in Russia and Ukraine (look up Holodomor), 40M in China (look up Mao's Big Leap), uncounted millions more in Africa and Asia? Was it greed or corporations that turned Zimbabwe from the breadbasket it was into a corrupt armpit of a failed state? Is Monsanto the reason Russia's population is decreasing by 0.5M a year?
No, the answer in all these cases is tyranny, violent Utopian cults, and broken economies in which there is no incentive to labor, because one cannot hold on to fruits of one's labor. It's that simple. No "greed" of "corporations" can compare to the destruction caused by the these.
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 plastics" or "have new biodegradable stuff and starve" I'd rather recycle the fucking plastic.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Yes but that solution is unpalatable because people don't want to eat other people. I have a better idea though, my company can produce virtually unlimited quantities of tasty and nutritious protien from vats, I'm calling it "Soylent Green"
The easiest and simplest solution:
Feed the rich to the hungry. Solves three problems all at once- poverty, hunger, and over-population.
TFTFY.
Proverbs 13:23 GNT "Unused fields could yield plenty of food for the poor, but unjust people keep them from being farmed."
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.
God spoke to me.
This blog nicely explains how banks have flooded food and oil markets and why there is such a high increase in their prices. It explains how commodity market functions and how are Wall street speculators almost a direct cause for turmoils around the world.
... eventually, no.
Golden Rice isn't an uninteresting insight into the development and implementation of GM crops.
"The report calls for more innovation to increase production"
I think they should be tackling the underlying problem, namely, people having children without the direct means to support them. I can see a day when parental licensing is introduced. Its a terrible notion but it may be for the greater good.
but god, please don't take our crude.
so, we'll then expect to see you at any one of the million babys+ /us, beginning with disarmament?
play-dates, conscience arisings, georgia stone editing(s), & a host of
other life promoting/loving events. guaranteed to activate all of our
sense(s) at once. perhaps you have seen our list of pure intentions for
you
What makes you say that?
http://i.imgur.com/uKWJd.png
One has to imagine that the amount of energy they're calculating represents the total amount of sunlight hitting the earth's surface. There are myriad of reasons why we'll never be able to collect that much (trees need sunlight too).
A better chart would be this one which demonstrates land area needed for solar power to power current usage.
There are reasons why that isn't practical either (energy grid interoperability for one, resistance and loss at distance, etc), but it's a more honest assessment.
we'll (the world?) take care of it (like the article is framed), like we'll still (always) be helpless without their obscenely inaccurate chosen ones 'math', eugenatics, etc.... there are contrived shortages of everything, keeps the price 'right' (up there). what's really missing..?
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.
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.
Sent from my PDP-11
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.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
Having helped trigger the food-crisis, the Anglosphere is now beginning to make fixing it a priority. But as with so many other endeavors (when it comes to the Anglo-American axis), one has to approach the concept of "fixing" with some trepidation. The axis deals in dominant social themes designed to frighten people into giving up wealth and power to internationalist institutions. Global warming was one-such meme – and we have long been on record as pointing out that global warming was logically supposed to trigger water and food scarcity memes. These elite promotions tend to work as narratives, leading to the observer logically from one point to another. http://thedailybell.com/1662/.html
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 bones of my chicken or the shell of my egg, am I wasting food? How about eyeballs and anuses?
If I refuse to chow down when my mom dies, am I wasting food?
If I throw away roses when they get old and wilted, am I wasting food?
If I ignore the jellyfish and seaweed at the beach, am I wasting food?
I am completely flabbergasted that the apparent solution to an expected population of 9 bln in 2050 is to produce more food... How about birth control??? It isn't like there aren't enough people already. FFS, in this country (the Netherlands) you still get "Kinderbijslag", which is basically a subsidy for having kids.
Humanity isn't fast to wake up to the fact that it is becoming a plague. I think it would be wise to do so, or we'll end up like any other infestation: eradicated.
I dont know how, but we need to control the human population because resources are finite.
Earth can only support so much.
"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 of millions of people are going to starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now. Population control is the only answer." - Ehrlich in his book, The Population Bomb (1968)
The UN Population Division 2001 report, World Population Monitoring 2001, studied the relationship between population growth and development. Contrary to Malthusian doomsday predictions, this U.N Report stated: "From 1900 to 2000, world population grew from 1.6 billion to 6.1 billion persons. However, while world population increased close to 4 times, world real gross domestic product (GDP) [actual output of goods and service] increased 20 to 40 times, allowing the world not only to sustain a fourfold population increase but also to do so at vastly higher standards of living."
In 1990, the UNFAO Report on the State of Food and Agriculture estimated that with present technologies fully employed, the world could feed 30 to 35 billion people. Roger Revelle, Director of the Harvard Centre for Population Studies, estimates that the world's agricultural resources are capable of supporting 40 billion people. Indian economist Raj Krishna estimates that India alone is capable of increasing crop yields to the point of providing the entire world's food supply. India, it is worth noting has four times as much arable land per person as Japan and twice as much as Britain.
And the solution if you still believe there is a population problem?!.. Well, look no further than Obama's science czar Mr. John Holdren with his 1,000 book "Ecoscience" where he suggests we forcefully sterilize people and put drugs in the water to sterile entire populations without consent. Or simply implant you with a strilizaition "device" which would only be removed with government aproval.
The magical number is: 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
No children. No car. Travels ones a year by plane. Rides bicycles in cities. Buys as much as possible local food. Doesn't throw anything that still works.
Where are my tax breaks? I see only families with kids having them. Why not me?
No amount of green activity comes even CLOSE to having no kids. Nothing that anybody can do outweighs bringing even one more consumer to the world.
Don't get me wrong. Me and my wife love kids and all our friends are so happy to come visit us with their little ones, because the kids love our attention, care, my movie collection and Star Wars toys. I heard last time one of those kids knowing that they will come on Sunday started pestering the parents already on Friday "let's go, let's go!"
The species must survive. People will breed. But we humans made a declaration approx. 15 000 years ago. We declared that our fate is in our own hands and we refuse to let the gods do their work. We declared to the Universe that the natural constrains are not for us; that we will overcome them. So we did.
Now we face the deadliest enemy yet - ourselves. I've said it many times - we have missed our chance to build truly affluent society. Our perverse Ponzi scheme is coming to an end. It served its purpose; to keep following it means certain death.
A few practicalities:
1. We can feed ourselves with traditional farming. The "GM will save the world" is blatant lie, highly dangerous BS. Again we have put profit in front of sanity and well being.
2. The industrial fishing is "omnicide" activity. Those practicing it should be stopped at all costs. Deadline - yesterday.
3. Education, education, education. The people should know what they are doing. I bet more than half the population is oblivious to what we have done to our planet and what is coming to us if we keep on doing it.
4. 10 kids because God says so? No way, Hose! Get off my planet!
How do you get the salt out of the water? Evaporation? How many square miles do you need to evaporate the water? What do you do with the salt?
Why do ecologists and such always think of restricting what we do instead of just STOPPING bringing fucking suckers to the world? WE are the fucking weeds of the planet, let's stop OURSELVES.
Phosphorus is the problem. We use it to make fertilizer. Just like oil, we are close, or are past peak production. If we cannot fertilize, crops will not grow.
Fertilizers will become more expensive and as usual, third world countries will be the first to suffer.
Clearly a booming global population is a huge factor and needs to be addressed.
Collectively in these comments we have identified all the worlds problems. This is easy to do. A much harder task is to find and implement the right solutions.
Obligatory:
Meat. Extremely inefficient. Bad. Stop. You know the drill.
http://overpopulationisamyth.com/
Malthus wanted to kill the poor so the rich could remain rich. Seriously.
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 energy return on energy invested, but...
Deleted
Wait, I thought it wasn't "scare people with pointless whinging about the non-shortage of food" month until May? Aren't we still in the "nuclear scare March"?
There is no food shortage. The world's food production is AMPLE for a population at least triple the current 6 billion. Witness the energy-wasteful foods that we consume in great quantities in the US (beef takes about 12 calories to produce for every 1 calorie of beef), itself a massive overconsumer of food (ironically one of the main health problems suffered by the US poor is obesity).
There is a food DISTRIBUTION problem, mainly political.
What is it about the UK and FUD? They seem to produce more of this nonsense - and give it the credo of 'official' accuracy - per year than anyone else.
-Styopa
... but don't mind the patents - we won't enforce those. Oh, yes - we do. We sue the shit out of you if your crops contain our genes, but don't worry, they don't travel to non-GMO crops. Oh, wait, yes - they do. We're still going to sue the shit out of you until you pay us for the license for our genes that are appearing in your crops. Using non-Montsano fertilizer? That's against the license conditions - you must purchase round-up, since you are using our seeds. You must be using our seeds, if they contain our patented genetic material. Did I mention ACTA?
(PS - Fuck GMOs. It's a trap)
Interesting article in the April National Geographic about a rather different kind of GM crop. The idea is using annual grasses rather then perennials for food production, and seems promising. Annuals have far deeper and more robust root systems, providing a host of advantages. They also don't die in winter, meaning that even if Monsanto dose sell you some you don't have to buy more next year or be violating your seed agreement.
Both Jonathan Swift and Harry Harrison solved this ages ago.
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).
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
Yawn... wake me up on the day the world's population actually drops in numbers for the first time in the 10,000 years (or ever since our "agricultural revolution").
As long as the human population increases, there simply cannot be a *decrease* in food production, as people are usually made out of food, not moon light of fairy dust.
It might also be worth noting that the usual laws of ecology also apply to the human species: No species dwindles iwhen food is available in abundance, and the constant rise in numbers of the human population is simply a reaction to the increased availability of food for humans on this planet (on a global scale, of course).
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
[2]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soybean#cite_ref-britannica_26-1
[3]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soybean#cite_ref-23
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.
which is the goal of Heifer International:
http://www.heifer.org/
(Over 50% of the chickens in South Korea are descended from eggs donated after the Korean War)
William
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
The world has lots of water, lots of desert, too much carbon dioxide, far too many people who do not have enough to eat and insufficient clean water. What follows is a possible solution.
I have posted my idea here
http://www.halfbakery.com/idea/Water_20transportation#1287975564
To save the above website from being slashdotted, here is my idea plus a few edits.
Deliver water and electricity anywhere on the planet cheaply
In Iceland they have built a vast hydroelectric system.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C3%A1rahnj%C3%BAkavirkjun
They are using the electricity to smelt aluminium. I propose a different plan, that they use the electricity to smelt hydrogen from the sea.
The three beautiful attributes of hydrogen are, it can be used to lift things, make electricity and it is one of the two elements that make up water.
Why not combine all three attributes of hydrogen to improve the planet and undo some of the harm, our species appears to be doing.
Put the hydrogen in a vast balloon, attach a motor driven propeller and a hydrogen compressor, both driven by the hydrogen in the balloon, navigate it automatically using GPS.
Fly the balloon into the jet stream using the compressor to control the height of the balloon, use the jet stream to transport the balloon encased hydrogen most of the way, to where water is required on the planet. When the hydrogen is as close to where it is wanted as you can get it, using the oxygen hydrogen reaction, start compressing the hydrogen and the balloon will sink.
In one cubic mile of uncompressed hydrogen, there is potentially 744316795 gallons of water, which is enough water to fill over a thousand Olympic swimming pools.
Water is very heavy so would be expensive to transport about, simple just transport the hydrogen 'coz the oxygen is already there!
Once we can get the water to the dry areas of the planet and grow oil palm plantations there, we can stop the absolute scandal of chopping down jungle in Indonesia to plant oil palm plantations and in so doing - destroy the orangutans environment.
Imagine a plentiful supply of water in the middle of Australia or in the Sahara.
More water in dry areas means more plants means less carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
If the water is stored at the top of mountains then hydroelectricity could be made when the water is needed at the bottom of the mountains.
The electricity generated when the hydrogen and oxygen are combined in a fuel cell, could be used to create fertilizer and if there were any juice left over, you could always smelt aluminium with it :)
The price of scrap aluminium is very cheap, the planet has little need of smelted aluminium.
Little Iceland, needs an economic lifeline so as to pay off its debts.
It's called an elephant's trunk whereas it is in fact, an elephant's nose, a nose by any other name would smell as sweet
Malthusian scaremongering.
I'm sure someone on Easter Island right before the collapse said the same thing as you did.
So, you're just going to discount everything because someone was wrong at the time?
Food prices have been increasing dramatically - that's one (of many) of the things that got the Arabs revolting.
Fish prices have been increasing over the years too. My favorite, Sockeye salmon has doubled in price in the last 5 years. In short:
The markets are showing decreasing supplies of food. The markets are almost never wrong.
We just don't notice it here in the rich World.
AND there's potable water. All over the US there's fights over water and it's going to get worse - and that's just here in the US. Just imagine what's going to happen in the poor countries!
It's not FUD. Everyone I've seen reporting on this really have nothing to gain with the FUD. Nothing.
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.
Eating Fossil Fuels:
http://www.fromthewilderness.com/cgi-bin/MasterPFP.cgi?doc=http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/100303_eating_oil.html
However, the resources needed by the developing world is much much lower. Therefore the many children have no more impact than the sprogs dropped out of the clacker of a first-worlder soccer-mom.
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.)
Congratulations, you're the first. I had to scroll 80% of the page down... Everyone else is only focussing their misguided attention to solving the world's food problem by 2050. Trying to squeeze out 20%, 50% or even 100% more food.
The core of the problem:
* Population growth = exponential
* Food production increase = linear at best
And everyone with a little math knowledge knows this will all go wrong eventually.
Now, instead of focussing on secondary issues like raising the level of wealth, or creating awareness, we just have to tackle the problem head on. Stop population growth is done by having less babies. Period.
potheads growing pot. That ain't farming considering it grows like a "weed"
I'm going to go out on a limb and say you haven't grown much of anything, let alone marijuana. It is every bit as difficult to grow as other crops, not even considering the oppression of marijuana users. It takes years of study and hands-on experience to get to the point where you can produce a quality and consistent result, and yield enough for your own personal use. You can't just wing it and get a satisfactory result (as you seem to be implying), or even a result at all.
When 30% of our food doesn't even get eaten?
Certainly and GM crops aren't the real solution and this is for multiple reasons:
- Monsanto based grain can't be reused by the farmers, so one company hold everyone to ransom.
- GM crops require far more chemicals than traditional crops. This risks killing off pollinators.
- GM farming is a short-term solution.
We may able boost yield in the short term, using GM crops, but we may end up with dangerous mutations that can't be used in a food source and with a lack of pollinating insects that are necessary to make our crops survive.
The sad truth is that the real problem is over population. There is only so many people the planet can support. History has shown us plenty of examples of human populations making their lands inhospitable, because of short-term planning and no regards for the future.
The other issue is over-consumption. If you go to the USA, UK and Australia you will see many cases of people eating far beyond what they need. If people only ate what made sense then this would also help food go round. The problem is this does not fit into what companies want and being able to eat more than you need is an apparent presentation of wealth.
Don't get me started on G20 countries wanting to exploit third-world countries, in such as way that the people have lived on those lands for centuries are kicked off and end up with no means of feeding themselves. When blaming some of these countries for crimes against humanity, we should sometimes be taking that blame back to our own governments and companies.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
We are closer to the edge of the cliff than most people imagine. For example the recent tragedy in Japan just might collapse the Japanese economy to a degree that a cascade of international banking failures is touched off causing a huge depression world wide.
At the school level we need to neuter most kids allowing only those who are the brightest and strongest to reproduce.
Just confiscating the millions of tonnes of grain that rot in the silos because the big players keep them away from the market to prevent grain price falling too low for their comfort would suffice to feed everyone, even now.
... the 'market' is free to oligopolize the supply and let people die for its profit. we call this freedom.
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
Read radical news here
I went to Ethiopia about a year and a half ago and was staggered by the poverty. There were people everywhere begging for food or money. Yet the ground was fertile... I come from Wisconsin and I know good farmland when I see it. What were they growing? Coffee... huge swaths of land dedicated to Coffee grown for export. Next to that, the largest greenhouses I've ever seen. I was told by our guide that they were owned by the dutch who grew flowers and exported them. Lastly Teff, which is a grain that they use to make a local bread. 1 out of 3 isn't bad. Or is it?
Some populations will always grow to their absolute limit, more food is not the solution. We already have way too many people.
The government should also have a much larger role in who you get to marry. It's quite obvious that letting people choose on their own is inefficient, ineffective and just plain wrong almost half the time! Upon issuance of your breeding license, the government will review your personality data by scanning your implanted chip (minor little detail pay no attention *waves hand*) and assign you a government mandated breeding partner.
Also, we should not only make gay marriage legal, we should make it MANDATORY, for those failing the breeding license test! Just as a little incentive to pass it.
Now you may be thinking that the world's religions might oppose this last step, which brings us to the last point. They've proven that they are inflexible, not adaptable and mired in superstition and policies thousands of years old! The new state sponsored religion will involve Smurfs and will offer modern lessons on morality, breeding and cleanliness more in-line with the needs of an established population. Non-smurfy religions will naturally have to be banned in the process, another minor detail *waves hand*.
Now you may be thinking, "What's my place in your vision of this exciting new world order?" Well today is your lucky day, because my first 1000 supporters will have their picks of choice government posts in my regime! So act now to secure your position in my Exciting New Future!
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
What, 200+ comments and no Soylent Green reference. Actually, there is a fairly decent article concerning this topic in the Economist:
"The 9 billion-people question" http://www.economist.com/node/18200618?story_id=18200618.
- kg
A friend told me about a programme she saw on apples (the fruit, not the products of the tech company). Perfectly good apples—PERFECTLY good—were thrown away because they didn't fit in those cardboard display things that they put in supermarkets. They weren't turned into apple juice, or apple sauce, or plowed back under for fertilizer, they were literally tossed into a dumpster to rot.
Our attitude towards food as a disposable, waste-able resource needs to end first. We need to remember that this stuff may grow on trees, but it's possible to waste it all the same. We need to stop eating food just because we can, and eat it because we love it. Factory farming has provided us with a huge abundance of cheap meat that tastes like nothing, and as a byproduct, we also get astounding amounts of waste and animal cruelty.
I'm no vegan (or vegetarian, even!) but the more appreciation you have for your food, where it comes from, the people that need to make it, and the animals that die to feed you, the less you eat and the more you savour what you have. It's actually possible for us to be healthier AND happier at the same time, reduce waste and bycatch, AND feed more people.
Admittedly, the one flaw here is that factory farms produce a lot of CHEAP food. Maybe we'd have to pay more. But maybe we'd cut out the stuff that isn't worth paying for and buy more of the stuff that is. Actually, what we'll probably do is claim that we have a right to eat shitty, cheap food and try and make someone else solve the problem.
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.
Just put them in the "B" Ark.
While industrial farming is efficient in that it minimizes cost, the largest part of that cost is human labor, not land or raw materials. More human-intensive farming methods can be much more efficient. Keeping livestock in small groups rather than in warehouses reduces up-front resource use and allows you to use animal waste as fertilizer - but it's more expensive because it takes more human labor. Planting crops together (the classic example being corn, beans and squash) improves yields and reduces the resources used, but it's more expensive because it requires more human labor.
But really, it's not like starving people would have much else to do. Barring idiocy or profitable evil, it's not hard to increase resource efficiency in countries that have industrial farming.
One of food production.
One of food consumption (by overpopulation).
The main problem is overpopulation, that has been an issue, and identified for decades. Yet no one will talk about it or even think about doing anything about it. With one exception: China. I recall when they started their one child policy, the world was aghast! Now not so much. How big would China's population be if they had NOT done that?
Apart from totalitarian control which will likely not work in many other parts of the world, there are a number of things that can be done. First, this is not a problem of the developed world, but that of poor countries (though policies and practices by developed countries and corporations are not helping matters). Promoting birth control is a big must, as is smartening up and telling the Catholics to stop being idiots (as well as every other religion). Another thing that can be done, is increase the wealth and education of said areas. If anything in the past has taught us anything its that this leads to less children. Get those women working, then they will want careers and have children later, and fewer.
The trouble is the issue of food production, long term is uncertain, and the methods above and others will likely only slow growth, not stop it. When oil goes, lets say for argument sake in 2050 (or at least becomes much more expensive) producing cheap crops using machinery and fertilizers will be a thing of that past. Now compound that if the dire predictions of climate change takes place, reducing the amount of fresh water available for irrigation. Then shit starts to get dicey.
In the end no matter what there will be in increase in conflict (nice way to say War and Genocide) over land and food, as well as an exponential increase in emigration and refugees coming from the developing world to the developed world. At some point these countries are going to have to make a decision about the whole mess, at some point they are going to say no. Of course with all that strife going on, and likely some pretty serious contagion due to poor conditions and overcrowding, the population issue may regulate itself, with however a lot of tears and regrets. However perhaps that is what it will take to change peoples minds about population control and food production. Anyway as I allude I don't see any change realistically in the short (50 years) term, I think it will take a real disaster to get any sort of real action.
Sorry to be all gloomy and depressing. If its any consolation I'll probably be dead by then, so one less to worry about...
50% of the world food production is used to feed cattle in the rich parts of the world.
The complete article is utter nonsense anyway. With the actual curve of "growth decline" yes, the growth rate is declining since 45 years ... the planet will reach a population equilibrium somewhere with 10 billion, perhaps 12billion.
That is all very easy manageable if the western world would change their way of live ... see the www.thevenusproject.com/ and the zeitgeist movies on youtube e.g.
angel'o'sphere
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
We don't know how to induce people to have smaller families. Unfortunately, even if we did we would still be in a box: over time, those reasonable people who agreed to have smaller families would be massively outbred by those who ignored the exhortations and went on having 6, 10, or 13 children per family. Result: all those who can be persuaded to practice birth control vanish from the gene pool, and population growth becomes even more rapid. There are other problems, such as the fact that the decay of marriage in more and more societies makes it much harder to limit the number of children born.
The only method of even limiting population growth that I have seen work is the Chinese method. One child per family maximum, and no exceptions. That's harsh, and its enforcement is bound to involve very nasty acts - such as forced abortions and even killing babies who have been born illegally. About the only thing in favour of the policy is that it seems to work - it's so simple that there is little to go wrong with it. OTOH any government that tried to impose such a policy in a democratic nation would probably get slung out of office so violently it would find itself in solar orbit, and replaced by a government that let the people do what they want.
I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.
I intuit that if we only allowed local residents to exploit their local resources...and treated our cattle more like people and our people less like cattle...the problem would be a non issue for most of the world. The corporate structures building like plaque on teeth are breaking the systems, and the systems cease to remain sustainable...there's only so much world...and it's a globally interdependent system we are childishly breaking in the name of profit. Unfortunately I have no advice or recommendation other than revolution. Unfortunately attaining this in an appropriate manner which would end in bio-socio harmony falls outside of the scope of my skill set.
Why do people think these Malthusian problems always have to have a happy ending? The most likely way we will resolve our limits to growth is the way they are always resolved in nature: via a population bottleneck. These are probably the last days of homo sapiens, and what will emerge on the other side of the bottleneck are transhumans better adapted to a global technological civilization. This is how evolution works, but we homo sapiens have been so successful of late that we've forgotten just how harsh and indifferent this process is to our notions of justice and equality. The fact of the matter is that there is no obligation and little likelihood of feeding the 9 billion on our destabilizing planet; the important thing is that and advanced core of technological civilization run by transhumans survives and flourishes. It doesn't seem to me that primates from the Olduvai gorge have much future, but a more intelligent and adaptable posthuman species should be able to multiply and expand into the Cosmos indefinitely. I find this exciting and wonderful, but then I'm one of those crazy people who understands that the universe is an indifferent and alien place that has zero concern for our human values.
I was waiting for someone to mention Heifer. Good org, one of my very few recurring donations. They also teach sustainable farming suitable for the recipient's locale, not just animal agriculture. Work in the US, too - there are a couple of projects in my region, one for rabbits and one for bees.
Uh, "if it looks roughly mouse-shaped according to my infra-red sensitive pit, eat it"? --Chris Burke 09-08-10
If there isn't enough food to support a population of 9 billion people without increasing production, and you don't increase production, then there won't be enough food to support a population of 9 billion people. Perhaps I'm being thick here but how will the population grow to be larger than the world can currently support unless we increase the number of people it the world can support.
Couldn't we solve this by genetically manipulating ourselves to be the size of capuchin monkeys?
We would only need a fraction of the food we need today. We could live in homes ten times small than we live today, and our energy needs would decrease as well.
Our iphones and androids would become super sized tablets, and our 22" monitors would become big screen tvs. It's a win/win situation!
Any volunteers for testing?
'For we walk by faith, not by sight.' II Corinthians 5:7
If humans wan't to act like animals that breed until they run out of food, let the same population limiting mechanisms that work on animals work on them. What will be the end result of increasing production to support higher and higher numbers?
It's called soylent green. More food and fewer people.
Maybe it's time for a really big plague or natural disaster? I'm just sayin'...
I call this B.S.
Most of the shortages are due to the fact the food is heavily centralized has very poor nutrional value, particularly the GMO stuff.
While we are on the topic, efforts by corporations like Monsanto to defile organic growers and poison their food supplies, destroy there ability to produce seeds all the while while paying off the courts to insure laws prevent people from growing there own food doesn't help matters.
Anyone remember the little girl who was selling lemonade on the street corner last year? Under the guise of "Well, we have to protect the public from little girls selling lemonade.", almost put the kid in prison because she didn't "pay off" Monsanto and other buddies for a license to sell lemonade.
Meanwhle, the FDA just ignore their pals in the poultry business who sold a billion rotten eggs.
Oh, and when did they last inspect the plant that sold the 1 billion rotten eggs?
How about never.
But a little girl on the street corner is a HUGE PUBLIC HEALTH HAZARD.
What Monsanto is doing is criminal, and they have to be stopped, along with the bought off judges and criminal organization we call "Congress".
Everything is way too centralized, and the corporate growing of food should be abolished, shutdown immediately.
Too many people have way way WAY too much control over food production and these artificial shortages they create to boost profits is causing a great deal of unrest in the world as well.
-Hack
Got Geometrodynamics? Awe, too hard to figure out? Too bad.
Soylent green!
Soy is appropriate to use as a condiment. It's useful for replenishing nitrogen in the soil, but other beans can also be used for that purpose.
I'm thinking it would be better to use land currently devoted to soybeans to graze animals directly. If most the soybeans get fed to animals anyways, why not skip a step?
This would require much more labor. I think the oligarchy prefers being able to hire John Deere to plant/harvest their fields than having small-scale farmers with independent livelihoods.
Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly.
www.teslabox.com
You seem to be missing the fact that scaremongering (anxiety in general) can be a very useful thing for our survival. Don't you think the Green Revolution had some impetus in the fear of Malthusian predictions? FUD or not, sometimes our anxieties get us to think about potential problems before it's too late.
Ask me about my sig!
I think aquaponics is the future. A 3000 sq foot greenhouse can produce 4000 lbs of organically grown produce per month, and several tons of fish per year.
One of the best species of fish to use is Tilapia, which is native to africa and is a vegetarian fish which can subsist mainly on duckweed with some protien supplements. Channel cats eat pretty much anything, and striped bass are predators, which is why I'll also be raising tree frogs (who will serve as pest control too) and composting their waste.
With some solar cells an aquaponics greenhouse can be totally self sufficient and is very water efficient. There's virtually no waste if the fish solid waste is composted, which can provide the worms and insect larvae necessary for the protein supplements. (provided you keep the effluent separated. Fish can't eat animals grown in their own feces. However animals grown in other species feces are fine)
Bacteria convert the ammonia from the fish waste into nitrates, which feed the plants, who filter the nitrates out of the water and help oxygenate it.
It's pure genius. Best thing is you can start an aquaponics setup with a kitty litter box, 50gal plastic container or aquarium and a $200 trip to home depot.You could grow 12 tomato plants in such a setup.
You can build and outfit a 3000 sq foot green house with $30k if you have the space for it on your land. There's no pesticide needed, no outside fertilizer. It's about as organic as you can get if you use lady bugs, lacewings and other natural pest control in your greenhouse.
http://attra.ncat.org/attra-pub/aquaponic.html
I just aquired a 25 acre property and am starting my enterprise this summer. My end-game goal is to grow my own vegetables and fish. I'll probably mix channel catfish and striped bass with the tilapia, in different tanks of course ;) I'm starting small (in my sun room) and studying aquaponics for now but I eventually plan on building a greenhouse and my GF and kids will be running a roadside stand to sell whatever extra vegetables we can't eat. The GF has always wanted to run a produce stand and a greenhouse. So she'll handle that while I work 9-5. She's quite excited about the idea.
I already have a business plan and someone writing up my grant papers now. Yes you can get grant money and farm subsidies for this, it's green, sustainable, and can be done year round even in a temperate climate. It's also good way to earn some extra pocket money. The best thing is you know your veggies are really organic and not FDA-Skirt-the-rules bullshit organic. You also know your fish doesn't have mercury and pesticides in it :-)
Don't kid yourself. It's the size of the regexp AND how you use it that counts.
Sadly, our monetary policy makes it even worse.
People say increases in the money supply don't matter as long as there is no increase in the CPI. This might be true if everyone spent their money in the same proportions. Technology forces prices down. Increases in the money supply try to force those prices to stay the same. However, some technology advances (with respect to resource input) at dramatically different rates. Looking at only two industries to calculate CPI, computers and food, a 100% increase in computing power with the same amount of resource, a 1% increase in food output with the same resources, and a food industry arguably 10 times greater than the computer industry, (10 x 1% + 1 * 100%) / 11 gives us an average industry output increase of 10%. At fixed wages this IS said to be 10% deflation. Therefore a 10% increase in the money supply would kill this deflation. Yay, right? well, it depends on what you buy. If you are buying computing power with the same money, $1000 * 2 * .9 means that today you can buy for $1000 what would have cost $1800 last year. By contrast if you are buying food $1000 * 1.01 * .9 means today you can buy for $1000 what would have cost you $909 a year ago.
What are your spending habits? Did the "extra money" help you?
Well, if you spend $8.79 on food for every dollar you spend on a new computer, then you are still making the same amount of money you were making last year. If you spend more money on computers, you got a pay raise, if you spend more money on food you took a pay cut. What does this look like in practice?
Lets say a frugal but geeky family of three REALLY wants a new computer every year, but they understand inflation. They are not greedy and really just want to break even. If they could minimize their food purchasing to $200 per person, how much would they need to spend on new computer to break even? Easy: $200 * 3 * 12 = $7200 per year. Given $7200 * -.91 + x*1.8=0, x=$3640. So, if they spend more than $200 per person on food per month, or spend less than $3640 per year on a new computer, they are making less at the same wages.
How do Americans spend their money? http://www.visualeconomics.com/how-the-average-us-consumer-spends-their-paycheck/
Which means you are just part of the problem, not the solution. People are animals and like any animals, we're most likely going to increase out population to the carrying capacity of our habitat. By not breeding, you are just making more room for people who not only are breeding but probably don't care. Thus when we hit the top of that population S-curve there is going to be some very large up and down adjustment while things sort themselves out. If you had had children and taught them your values that actually cared about the world, those troublesome times would be lessened, and humanity might actually stop its population growth before we hit the Earth's carrying capacity. Instead, you done your part to make sure that when it does, people who don't care about a sustainable earth, or believe that the population should be fruitful and multiply will be in the dominance. Not breeding is not the answer because it fails to pass along the values that caused you not to breed.*
*My apologies if you adopt.
.. can be found for example here: ("Food Enough, Land Enough", PDF 2.7MB) http://www.svenskakyrkan.se/default.aspx?di=737980 A recent Swedish report on food security and poverty.
The UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food recently (March 2011) made strong statements that technology is not the solution here, "Agroecology and the right to food": http://www.srfood.org/index.php/en/component/content/article/1-latest-news/1174-report-agroecology-and-the-right-to-food
It's worth to think about who are the ones likely to support a cost-intensive, patent-friendly food system, and who's to pay the price. Feeding 10 billion people is not a question about land or technology, rather about politics, something the authors of this report has yet to grasp.
time to fire up the gas chambers and crematoriums.
Free, financial incentives, tax breaks, (government awarded) college credits, school control, foreign aid... This is all accomplished with tax money against the wishes of many people. That's totalitarian, and your saying it's nontotalitarian does make it so.
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in the 80's we were told we have enough oil for thirty more years.. about 2010.. I would believe them if I were you.... btw why would you want other people to have more control over your life? can you not make decisions for your self?
one bite at a time.
The single most effective way to slow down population growth is to educate women. The places with the highest birthrate are generally where women are considered chattel or below men. In those societies the women are not well educated. Educated women more than any other single thing will reduce the birthrate.
Wouldn't it make sense that while we're trying to find a way to produce more food, we also find a way to check our own numbers? Just a thought...
Either we will solve it, or it will solve us.
We don't have a food shortage so much as a people surplus.
Utilizing the synergization of benchmark e-solutions to pre-workaround action items!
With the rule of 2 per family, we actually begin to shrink in numbers.
Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada
With the already low aquifer levels pumped down to grow food, and the increased demand from solar power, water is going to be the real issue. Food is just an end product.
In 2002, the UN releases a report which projected would food supply to exceed population growth by 2030 (http://www.fao.org/english/newsroom/news/2002/7828-en.html). Unless food supply growth were to stagnate or the report is in significant error, reaching this goal may not be as difficult as it may sound at first. Of course, the proposals of the UK may also help to reach that excess growth.
Yep, if first world nations would just sell fridges that are wide and shallow, a lot less food would be thrown away.
:T:R:A:N:S:
It's sad to say, but my family's orchard is in the process of shutting down. Our orchard loses money almost every year it operates and it has for two decades at least (maybe slightly longer). It has a profit maybe once every 6 or so years. It didn't used to be this way. My grandmother has run the place for maybe 50 or 60 years when she acquired it from her father-in-law who ran it before then.
We are located in the U.S., in southeastern Pennsylvania (not far from Philadelphia). As far as I can tell, in our country, in our state, it does not pay to grow food-- at least not in the traditional sense (as food suppliers to food manufacturers seem to get by). I am not involved in the running or operating of the business, so these are just my observations. It costs so much to grow our crops. We can only sell to stores at set prices. The only prices we have control over are the ones at our local stand, which much be reasonable if we wish to sell. Weather affects the crops and we have no control over bad weather years. The workers are paid very minimally (and are all family for that reason-- but there is little want, so it works out). Last year's losses were through the roof. And, no one wants to take the business over. My grandmother is old and my dad and uncles are entering retirement ages.
I am sad. My family's orchard will probably such down next year. My grandmother declared there is no longer a possibility of a profit, so there's no reason to try continuing.
If anything, governments should be encouraging farming and the growing of food. I don't know if there's already programs out there for farmers-- I assume that there MUST be somewhere-- but I don't see them for the average farmer.
My two cents.
--Dave Romig, Jr.