Slashdot Mirror
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?
desalination..
All the problems are political. There are no technical obstacles that haven't been overcome.
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
Malthusian scaremongering.
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?
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.
A quick search would've provided you with links to back up your data, or to refute it. For example:
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).
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.
I'm willing to not breed.
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.
A unique way to learn a language: http://languageloom.com
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?
They whose government reduces their essential liberties for temporary security, receive neither liberty nor security.
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.
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...
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
Grazing meat: good, for all the reasons you mentioned.
Feedlot meat: Pretty stupid, and currently much more common in the US.
I am officially gone from
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.
You don't know what you don't know.
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?