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Page added on August 17, 2016

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Feeding the masses

Feeding the masses thumbnail

It’s an unavoidable question, and right now it’s a problem.

How do we feed 9 billion people on this planet? Leaders all over the world are furiously crunching numbers and developing strategies, preparing for one eventuality: There will be 9 billion people on Earth by 2050. Currently, 7.3 billion people inhabit this planet we call home, so one may wonder, “What’s a couple billion more?” The answer is, a lot.

“It’s a complicated problem,” said Ronnie Green, Ph.D., University of Nebraska-Lincoln chancellor. “Those are big numbers no matter how you look at it.”

Green, a published authority on the agricultural implications of a growing population, has studied this issue for many years. He understands the limitations the human race currently faces, and yet, knowing our survival depends on an answer, he said the call for action is upon us all.

“The agriculture and food industries certainly are focused on this,” Green said. “They have a big challenge ahead of them to continue innovating. We’ve got to be able to innovate the industries even further beyond the pretty dramatic innovations that occurred in our lifetimes.”

Before innovation must come understanding though, as Dr. Green explained there are several pieces to this puzzle.

The population problem

In July 2015, the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs reported a projection of 9.7 billion people on Earth by 2050. This updated the DESA’s 2012 study that similarly projected 9.6 billion by 2050.

Beyond comprehending the sheer magnitude of 9.7 billion people to care for, Green said, the situation is exacerbated by the specific regions experiencing growth.

According to the DESA report, half of the population growth will be centralized in nine main countries: India, Nigeria, Pakistan, Indonesia, and the United States of America, all ranked as top 10 largest countries in the world; as well as Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, United Republic of Tanzania, and Uganda. Green emphasized that, as they possess eight of the nine largest growing populations, Africa and Asia alone are predicted to contribute 90 percent of the population boom.

Unfortunately, some of these countries are already struggling with poverty. Possibly the province facing the most dramatic challenges is Nigeria, which is the seventh largest in population and anticipated to become third largest by 2050. Currently, more than half of all Nigerians live in poverty.

“The population growth itself is uneven, and these regions are already challenged,” Green continued, “and (these regions are) where we also think some of the greatest impacts in climate will be.”

Green added that other troubling issues add onto the heap, such as the poor agricultural infrastructure in Africa, water scarcity in China and India, and a higher demand for meat product.

Two specific factors are contributing to this expected demand in meat — wealth and urbanization. As the average household income rises in developing countries, so does the cost of their eating habits. Increased wealth directly correlates to a diet featuring more meat and costly foods. Additionally, experts predict at least 70 percent of the world’s population will reside in urban areas by 2050. Thus, the effect of rising incomes and urbanization is likely to mean an even higher demand on meat, vegetables, fruit, dairy and processed foods.

To better understand the pressures of higher meat consumption, consider the feed conversion ratio, which measures an animal’s efficiency in converting feed mass into body mass. On average, the ratios for feed per output of animal are approximately 2.5 units of feed for every one unit of poultry. For pork, the output ratio is 5:1, and beef is a hefty 7:1. As a result, it will require considerably more effort and energy input from farmers and livestock producers to generate meat on a larger scale.

More meat. More crops. Several roadblocks. With so many variable economic factors contributing to the situation, there is only one clear constant: the agricultural industry bears the burden of feeding the world. But the question remains, how?

To find out, look for Part 2 of the series “Feeding our world” in a future Today’s Producer.

Today’s Producer.



19 Comments on "Feeding the masses"

  1. Apneaman on Wed, 17th Aug 2016 7:21 pm 

    Louisiana flooding is the country’s ‘worst natural disaster’ since Hurricane Sandy, Red Cross says

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2016/08/17/louisiana-flood-victims-face-long-road-back-to-normal-i-lost-everything/?utm_term=.60023c970f7a

  2. claman on Wed, 17th Aug 2016 7:30 pm 

    Yeah, and take a look at this:

    http://peakoil.com/enviroment/africa-awaits-major-crisis-unless-governments-make-interventions/comment-page-1#comment-275618

    Things dosn’t look good for over populated areas.

  3. claman on Wed, 17th Aug 2016 7:42 pm 

    ” there is only one clear constant: the agricultural industry bears the burden of feeding the world”

    And yet, china has found the solution. When agriculture can’t do it, then why not steal somebody else’s fishing waters. And so they did these sea-robbing bastards.

  4. makati1 on Wed, 17th Aug 2016 7:52 pm 

    Claman, did you know that:

    China owns or leases large tracts of farm land in many countries? That the US has controlled oil for the same reason you blame China for doing with fish and have killed millions to do it over the years?

    That the Chinese are mindful of over fishing and is cutting back their catch limits while the Japanese are increasing theirs?

    That no one owns the oceans? They only draw imaginary lines on the water and pretend that it is theirs. That those lines originated with Western countries, not Eastern?

    Lots to know if you want to understand the world today. I’m constantly learning.

  5. claman on Wed, 17th Aug 2016 8:09 pm 

    Mak, do you mean to say that china’s move into the south china sea hasn’t been contested?

    None of their neighbours like it, but they are also afraid of the consequenses if they deny china the fishing rigths.

    What the Chines military doesn’t see is that Japan, Chorea and Vietnam is silently building up forces together with the US, and that China might be driven back eventually.

  6. claman on Wed, 17th Aug 2016 8:23 pm 

    Mak , you have put your bets on China, but they have changed from being an under devellopd sympathetic country into a local bully that nobody really trust anymore. Face it.

  7. makati1 on Wed, 17th Aug 2016 9:40 pm 

    As I posted earlier on anther article:
    “Most people don’t appreciate that it takes six months to grow a wheat crop and only a single extreme weather day to wipe out a large part of its yield potential. In my part of the world, a single night of frost at the wrong time can reduce hundreds of thousands of acres from 2 ton yield per acre to just a few hundred pounds per acre. A few hot windy days can cut it in half. As can a week of wet weather during summer harvest. We are seeing an increase in all these types of events in the grain growing region where I live.”

    The vulnerability of global food production to extremes of weather is a profound reality that few grasp. A single hard frost can decimate yields in a day or two just as effectively as drought can devastate crop that are not irrigated.

    In effect, the global abundance of food depends on the rarity of weather extremes. If weather extremes become more common, it will follow like night follows day that agricultural yields will plummet accordingly.

    Few people expect anything other than a permanent stable abundance of grains and other foodstuffs. The idea that multiple failures in multiple crops could make basic foods scarce is not even considered a possibility.”

    http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-08-17/odds-global-food-crisis-are-rising

    Past results are NO guarantee of future supplies.

  8. makati1 on Wed, 17th Aug 2016 9:46 pm 

    Claman, I will accept your view as a fact, WHEN they invade another country like the US does regularly. Claiming what was theirs for centuries and given away by Westerners in the last one does NOT count as aggression. The West colonized most of Asia at one time and redraw the lines where THEY wanted them, not where, historically, they should have been.

    I support the Chinese dashed line and I think, if the US stays out of it, all of the problems in the SCS will be diplomatically settled in the next few years. But the US wants to start another proxy war here and is trying to break up the alliances with China. It has nothing to do with shipping or democracy. It has to do with domination and control.

  9. makati1 on Wed, 17th Aug 2016 9:57 pm 

    Claman, Japan is a failed nation that needs a war to survive, very similar to the US. The US is just encouraging Japanese militarization to sell weapons. It’s ALWAYS about money and power when it comes to the Empire.

    Ditto for Vietnam and S.Korea. The US has no business in the Western Pacific other than trade. Suppose China were to come into the Gulf of Mexico and start telling the US what it can and cannot do? Maybe build a few military bases in the Bahamas or Haiti? Sail it’s fleet along the East and West Coast regularly? Do you think the US would like that? But the Chinese are not aggressive like you claim. They don’t have to be. They buy what they want, not steal it with MIC weapons and megadeath.

  10. Sissyfuss on Wed, 17th Aug 2016 11:00 pm 

    Mak, not if weather extremes become more common but when.

  11. makati1 on Wed, 17th Aug 2016 11:25 pm 

    Sissyfuss, perhaps you are correct but we shall have to wait and see. So far, few have impacted major food crops, just people. But, yes, they probably will eventually affect major crops, even in the US.

  12. dooma on Thu, 18th Aug 2016 9:03 am 

    The sooner the population of the earth is reduced to a more sustainable level, the better. People in the Western world are not prepared to veer away from the comfort of BAU. People in developing nations (quite understandably) want to emulate the living conditions of the West

    So when we learn the lesson that nature controls us, it will be hard and fast.

  13. Kenz300 on Thu, 18th Aug 2016 9:20 pm 

    Endless growth, especially endless population growth is unsustainable………….Climate Change will impact all of us and cause enormous problem for countries and people around the world……… this is the great challenge of our times……. will future generations be doomed to suffer the consequences of our actions….

    Should We Be Having Kids In The Age Of Climate Change?

    http://www.npr.org/2016/08/18/479349760/should-we-be-having-kids-in-the-age-of-climate-change

  14. claman on Fri, 19th Aug 2016 7:55 pm 

    Dooma, I suggest that we let child mortality have its ways again, so that children under f.ex 5 years of age don’t get healthcare but have to survive on their own.
    Old people – like my self- should also be allowed to die under controlled circumstances.

    I am sure that nobody wants this solution, but being a “doomer” I don’t se other ways to go.

    I would like to hear any other suggestion to how we solve the problem of the over population of the world.

  15. Shaved Monkey on Sat, 20th Aug 2016 4:14 am 

    If we work out how to feed them they will breed until we cant

  16. Davy on Sat, 20th Aug 2016 7:00 am 

    Yea, feed em and they will breed. The problem is give em “th-A-ngs” and they will consume. The rich and the poor are part of the same game of overshoot. Our overshoot and collapse process that is also and extinction event and an Epoch turner is a product of both population and consumption. It has now entered the overdrive of both conditions in Asia where Asian’s are taking a huge populations and combining affluence. In many areas it is just poor breeding making them poorer and less sustainable like Africa. In the prosperous west it is rich people getting fat, lazy, and dumbed down.

    We are now in a collapse process where we have hit or are in the vicinity to limits. Technology is failing and efficiency and innovation are stagnating. Our economic connections are going dysfunctional with corruption, manipulation, and repression. Our foundational commodity is approaching a dead state of economic value. Our climate is in abrupt change with dangerous feedbacks now in motion. Tell me how the hell we are going to feed the masses? Tell me how the hell we are going to maintain affluence?

    We have many on this board that are unconcerned. They have faith and belief in the power of the markets and technology. They dismiss physical realities of climate and physical laws. They are bought into the human narrative of progress and development. I am unconcerned on one level and that is acceptance. I have come to the conclusion this collapse process is a natural process. It is necessary and must happen. There is nothing we can do to change this. We are part of the great turning of a civilization and an epoch. Man has never been through anything like what we are going through and likely never will. This may be the last time on earth advanced life grows to complete earth dominance and then destroys itself and its fellow life.

    There are things we can do. We can make wise choices that do not add to the problems. We can invest what our hyper productive global system is producing to give us mitigation tools. It is easier to adapt with resources and gear. We can transition of sorts into crisis mode and prepare for the shit storm of pain, suffering, and death. Most of what is coming is beyond anything we can do accept embrace with acceptance. Attitude is 90% of what is needed in the current process and coming events. We can also just do the status quo dance and dance until we drop. No one is getting out alive anyway so live large while you can is a valid option. We all live the existential isolation of the ego so let the ego run its course which is the ego’s abyss of the denial and final death.

    I am living large and trying to do something. This is the other option. The living large is relative. Instead of maximum dopamine hits I am maximizing appreciation of what I have. Practice relative sacrifice for your own good and the good of Mother Nature. This will also benefit others. Your love ones will appreciate your efforts I assure you when SHTF. Collapse in place with dignity in a location with strength. Embrace a life that is filled with activities and learning with a future of less. Practice self-induced stoicism in preparation for the real thing. I don’t eat anything on Mondays and Thursdays. On these days I also do a 90 minute work out after a long day of farm work. I get to experience hunger and draining physical activity together. This is surely in our future so why not prepare for it today. The next day when I eat I can assure you the food taste wonderful. The feeling it gives my body is fantastic.

    We can’t change society Nature will do that and it will do it fairly and equitably per nature law that is incorruptible. Nature is balanced and seeks harmony. Be a part of Nature’s way and she will fight for you. Embrace the real reality and find real meaning. Reject society’s narrative that has brought on so much pain and suffering and guarantees so much more. Take what you have and what you can do in this highly productive global system and organize a lifeboat to buy you some time when everything around you begins to decay and is swept away by fate.

    No one here know what is ahead. Some here have a pretty good idea in general but the details are for no one. Not even the finest super computers and the best intel of the powers that are can know. This is Natures secret she will provide when the time is right. Embrace Nature and she will give you the answers. Embracing nature first requires facing reality and leaving denial. That action in this day and age is all about facing death and leaving the denial of death. Society can’t do it but you can.

  17. Boat on Sat, 20th Aug 2016 8:35 am 

    “We have many on this board that are unconcerned. They have faith and belief in the power of the markets and technology. They dismiss physical realities of climate and physical laws.”

    Who are these people. Who claims to “dismiss physical realities of climate and physical laws.” Some argue your claims to an imminent collapse. Some of us argue the technology is not to blame and is important. But I have yet to read anyone argue that population overshoot is not a huge problem. This problem is not a tech problem, not an oil problem, not a resource problem. It’s a people fucking and having to many children problem.
    Climate change will eventually start “culling the herd” and reducing populations to sustainable levels but I suspect his will happen over decades and no guarantee of major collapse.

  18. makati1 on Sat, 20th Aug 2016 8:58 am 

    Boat, maybe <5% of the world's population consuming 25+% of the world's resources has no business telling ANYONE else what they should do. The US consumes enough for not the ~320 million Americans that exist, but for 1,700+ million people.

    Look in the mirror, and admit your huge part of the problem. Americans are great at pointing fingers at others but not accepting the blame themselves. And, looking at the world today, America has a lot of blood and death to account for.

  19. Boat on Sat, 20th Aug 2016 10:01 am 

    mak,

    Blame anyone with multiple homes, boats, jets. There are rich world wide that have high energy foot prints. Iceland and Quetar per capita have more than double the energy use than the US.

    According to Oxfam’s report, “the richest 10 percent of people around the world,” have “average carbon footprints 11 times as high as the poorest half of the population, and 60 times as high as the poorest 10 percent. The average footprint of the richest 1 [percent] of people globally could be 175 times that of the poorest 10 percent.”

    http://www.mtv.com/news/2681199/wealth-poverty-climate-change-emissions/

    There is always blame to go around. Blame the American farmer for keeping the poor alive through exports. How much water could we save if there were no trade. No that isn’t reality. Climate change killing off humans faster than we fuck is the eventual reality.

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