[Tyler_JC]

Westerners need to stop romanticizing the life of the rural peasant. There's a common belief on this site that it would be great if everyone returned to the farm. It's not going to happen and very few would be interested in this.

Population is expected to grow from 7 billion in 2010 to 9.2 billion in 2050. That's a compound growth rate of only .7% a year. Round up to 1%/year to account for improved diet.

Can we improve global crop yields by 1% a year for the next 40 years? I don't know, but it doesn't sound impossible. If anyone has any real research on this subject, I'd like to check it out.

Idle speculation without any research to back it up is pointless and personal attacks against OF don't add much to the discussion.

Moreover, how do we know that these soils won't last long or that it won't be enough?

http://www.afrol.com/articles/33605

afrol News, 22 June - A vast stretch of African savannah land that spreads across 25 countries has the potential to turn several African nations into global players in bulk commodity production, according to a study published by FAO and the World Bank.

The book, entitled Awakening Africa’s Sleeping Giant - Prospects for Commercial Agriculture in the Guinea Savannah Zone and Beyond, arrives at its positive conclusions by comparing the region with northeast Thailand and the Cerrado region of Brazil.

The study finds that at the moment only ten percent of the Guinea Savannah zone, a vast area of around 600 million hectares of land from Senegal to South Africa, with 400 million hectares suitable for farming, is actually cropped.

The Cerrado and northeast Thailand, like the Guinea Savannah both had physical disadvantages; abundant but unreliable rainfall patterns, poor soils and a high population density in the case of Thailand; and remoteness, soils prone to acidity and toxicity and low population in the case of the Cerrado, said the study.

In both countries, successive governments created the conditions for agricultural growth “characterized by favourable macroeconomic policies, adequate infrastructure, a strong human capital base, competent government administration, and political stability,” according to the publication.

Indeed, Africa is better placed today to achieve rapid development in agriculture than either northeast Thailand or the Cerrado when their agricultural transformation took off in 1980, the study argues.

[copious.abundance]

\Furthermore, there are millions being born *right now* who will need to consume food from the Brazilian cerrado.

No they don't. They do not need to consume food which does not exist. There is plenty of food to feed the current population. It is not fairly distributed.

The US throws away 40% of its food.

I agree there is a lot of waste. But let's say all of it is eliminated. Will this solve the entire problem of feeding future humans, or will it just delay the inevitable further clearing of the Brazilian cerrado?

Furthermore, if you use food *too* efficiently I can't help but wonder if you'd run into a sort-of Jevon's Paradox for agriculture: If you used food extremely efficiently, that would send the price down, which would simply encourage additional consumption.

Some "food" for thought (pun intended).

[Tyler_JC]

Daniel Quinn doesn't know what he's talking about. He's a writer. He's not an agronomist, an economist, a biologist, a sociologist, or anything else even remotely related to what he writes about. He's right that humans existed before "totalitarian agriculture" but it's not a relevant fact for those of us living in a world with more than a couple million people.

Moreover, he assumes that food production and human population are perfectly linked. They aren't.

Obviously we can't grow a population beyond the food production capacity, but we can certainly grow food production faster than human population.

[Ludi]

Can we improve global crop yields by 1% a year for the next 40 years? I don't know, but it doesn't sound impossible. If anyone has any real research on this subject, I'd like to check it out.

Yields could be greatly improved on existing farmlands with different practices, but the high-yield practices require hands-on farmers, which you say is impossible or in any case undesirable.

Information on high yields in the smallest area: http://www.bountifulgardens.org/products.asp?dept=104

You have to actually purchase the research pamphlets, though, if you're interested. They are a couple bucks apiece.

In my opinion, there's no need to develop additional farmland when so much has already been put under cultivation and is being mismanaged.

But that's just my opinion as someone who has studied farming for about a decade.

There's a lot more information about increasing productivity on farmlands if you look into "permaculture" and "Natural Farming" or "Fukuoka farming." But these may not appeal to folks who want to put the planet under the plow.

See also "Yeomans Keyline Plan"

Seems like some of us have been posting about this stuff here for years now, and it still doesn't seem to have sunk in at all that there is information about this available.

[Ludi]

Daniel Quinn doesn't know what he's talking about.

Neither do you. So your opinion is irrelevant.

Human population numbers as a function of food supply
by Russell Hopfenberg and David Pimentel
Environment, Development and Sustainability 3: 1-15, 2001.


http://panearth.org/world%20food%20&%20 ... layer.html


Hopfenberg, R. (2003) Human carrying capacity is determined by food availability. Population and Environment 25, 109-117

Hopfenberg, R., Pimentel, D. (2001) Human Population Numbers as a Function of Food Supply. Environment, Development and Sustainability 3, 1–15.

http://panearth.org/publications.htm



Human Carrying Capacity Is Determinedby Food Availability
Russell Hopfenberg
Duke University


http://www.panearth.org/WVPI/Papers/Car ... pacity.pdf

http://www.millenniumassessment.org/en/ ... ound2.aspx

[Tyler_JC]

(Sorry Ludi, I didn't mean to sound rude.)

Teaching people how to grow more food without industrial agriculture is certainly a good idea in places where people are already growing food. The global rural poor could benefit enormously from permaculture.

However, it doesn't make sense for urban people to spend so much time trying to grow food. They won't be very good at it and they don't have the land resources to make it worth their time.

However, the permaculture debate is somewhat separate from the bigger question of "more food = more people".

If that were the case, it wouldn't have been possible to increase global calorie intakes so substantially over the past century. We would see global calorie availability and global population moving together.

Instead, we see ever increasing food availability. In the developing world, daily average calorie intake soared from 1,900 to 2,600 between 1960 and 2000. Imagine how much higher it could be if the warmongering lunatics in charge of far too many countries were replaced with benevolent dictatorships.

There are now more overweight people than hungry people in the world. Hunger is the result of poor governance, not shortages.

Fertility rates throughout the world are falling because of education and economic opportunity for women, not food shortages.

Moreover, the increase in food production isn't just a function of oil based chemicals. There have been major advances in biotech and agricultural science that have pushed up yields substantially.

[ralfy]

Benevolent dictatorships???

[rangerone314]

Maybe the problem is the 3rd world is addicted like crack addicts to unprotected sex without birthcontrol.

I hope you're helping them get access to the birth control they want but can't get.

http://www.populationconnection.org

Don't forget, one First World baby uses many times the resources as a Third World baby. I don't see you complaining much about First Worlders having kids.

http://www.footprintnetwork.org/en/index.php/GFN/

We were discussing food supply, and I don't think my First World baby needs to EAT more FOOD than a Third World baby. He sucks at his mother's teat like many other babies.

I got plenty to say about First Worlders consuming to much, but that is not this thread...

I would note that, as of yesterday (14 months after buying our house), the first set of curtains for the house arrived... darn my eggregarious consumption!

[mos6507]

The Great Plains have been under constant cultivation for at least 150 years.

The soil of the great plains was running on veritable fumes right before the green revolution staved off catastrophe. So don't hold that one out as some kind of model of sustainability. Whither goes artificial fertilizer, goes the agricultural potential of the great plains and any other breadbasket like it.

[mos6507]

There have been major advances in biotech and agricultural science that have pushed up yields substantially.

You mean GMOs and pesticides? You surely know that boosting yields in these ways is not necessarily sustainable. There are many stories, for instance, about how this approach is backfiring in India. The only way these gains will matter is if they can be sustained. Otherwise they just set the stage for a malthusian catastrophe.

[rangerone314]

Maybe someone needs to pick up the kind of research that Alibeck did in the USSR on ebolapox. That'd solve the 3rd world's population problem more effectively than leveling the rest of the world to make room for farms.

Peak oil should solve the 1st world's excess energy use problem.

[sparky]

.

The green revolution wasn't fertilizers or cells genetics

It was him , the man who saved billions of life , he recently deceased

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Borlaug

His old enemy , rust , is back with a vengeance

" An epidemic of stem rust on wheat caused by race Ug99 is currently spreading across Africa, Asia and most recently into Middle East and is causing major concern due to the large numbers of people dependent on wheat for sustenance. The strain was named after the country where it was identified (Uganda) and the year of its discovery (1999) "

The disease is now in Iran , held for the moment by the severe drought raging there ,

How long before an U.S. soldier from Kansas posted in Afg. or Irak bring some home with dust on his boots ?

[rangerone314]

.

The green revolution wasn't fertilized or cells genetics

It was him , the man who saved billions of life , he recently deceased

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Borlaug

His old enemy , rust , is back with a vengeance

" An epidemic of stem rust on wheat caused by race Ug99 is currently spreading across Africa, Asia and most recently into Middle East and is causing major concern due to the large numbers of people dependent on wheat for sustenance. The strain was named after the country where it was identified (Uganda) and the year of its discovery (1999) "

The disease is now in Iran , held for the moment by the severe drought raging there ,

How long before an U.S. soldier from Kansas posted in Afg. or Irak bring some home with dust on his boots ?

Or some nutjob maniac from the Middle East with an IQ of more than 90 arrives in a midwest airport with a vial of dust from Iraq containing Ug99 to spread it deliberately?

[sparky]

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OoHH YES .


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[zeke3000]

The markets solve everything. You know, demand-supply, high demand high prices new technology more food. Easy. Energy for new technology? Markets will solve. High demand high prices new technology more energy. Natural resources are infinite ? No no, markets solve that too.

[hillsidedigger]

The markets solve everything. You know, demand-supply, high demand high prices new technology more food. Easy. Energy for new technology? Markets will solve. High demand high prices new technology more energy. Natural resources are infinite ? No no, markets solve that too.

Markets are blind, heartless and don't care how 'the cookie crumbles'.

[sparky]

.

........Unemotional , you have to be joking !

it hasn't been run by humans for a while now


http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/4dbd933c-b7d8 ... ab49a.html

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