Well we don't need those rainforests and national forests. Turn them into biodiesel plantations and grazing ranges. Anything to allow us to continue to drive SUVs to McDonalds.
Edit: How did my post end up above the original post?

Food production to peak

Whats for dinner? Biodiesel....

Which in turn makes for a very fine crop or two until the land gets barren and we have to feed on eachother.

Torjus Gaaren

im sure someone will burn down the rest of the rain forrests and plant crops in the fertile land which is left

What happened to this thread? The chronology is completely screwed up.

Either that, or someone is a time traveler, and is replying to posts before they were posted.

John Titor, is it you?

Well I think it all comes down to the question wether one is capable of paying the same price for food as for the equivalent of biodiesel. Have a little faith in the free market!

I do...very little.

If we leave it up to the free market, a few rich people who want biodiesel for their limos and Hummers and Learjets will push the price of food out of reach of the rest of us.

This thread contains some strange numbers (the link to the article doesn't work). So here are a few other numbers.

-50 to 60% of all farmers worldwide, who use 60 to 70% of all arable land, use such bad techniques that they produce only at 30-50% of possible attainable yields (some even worse).

-the average sub-Saharan maize grower produces 800 kilos per hectare; the average intensive maize farmer produces between 8000 and 10 000 kilo's, even in areas where maize isn't a suitable crop. It's a difference.

http://faostat.fao.org/faostat/collecti ... griculture

-Currently, in sub-Saharan Africa (more than twice the size of the USA), between 5 to 10% of all potential arable land is used. So there's room to expand.

http://www.fao.org/ag/agl/agll/terrastat/#terrastatdb


Obviously, the potential to grow more food is still gigantic. (And we're not even talking about genetically modified crops, which promise to increase yields even more.)

Let the grand era of food production begin, because we haven't seen anything yet.

i've been here b4, but i'll go here again as its worth mentioning
the free market fails sometimes, think street lights. You need government invervention otherwise they wouldn't never exist as people wouldn't want to pay for them.

The free market solution to the problem of oil/gas is to drill like crazy, because oil/gas. So for a while you will see oil production staying flat, or maybe even increasing slightly as the number of wells will dramatically increase, eventually leading to a production collapse. I believe we are in stage right now (the plateau). Take Saudi Arabia, they were told years ago if they pumped at 10mbd or somewhere around there in the 70s, if they kept production like that they would have nearly run out by now. But now the world needs that extra oil so they are pumping flat out. Mexico ramped up production massively by injection nitrogen gas into pemex cantrell to bump up production. All short solutions to lthe ong term problem. It will lead to a collapse at some point.

Lorenzo

But have you then taken into account that many of these areas are only productive for a generation or so, before they are turned into desert. Tropical climates doesn't favour agriculture as most of the nutrients at any given time is stored in living biomass and not in a top soil layer as in temperate lands. Pesticides is much more important here, as will fertilizers be after only a short period.

And we have to sustain some level of at least semi-wild nature, as intensively utilized farmland inevetably (there is absolutely no fix for this) needs to rest for a while after a period. Even volcanic soil will become leaner after in time. Intensive farming is to suck the nutrients from the soil, without enriching it at all naturally. The sun cannot provide for everything the plants need.

Risk of loss to desertification also grow higher when a area is used too intensively. In the long run the only sustainability is a food production at the level of which the native environment does. That accounts for all of nature. Otherwise, disasters from overuse will happen from time to time.

Torjus Gaaren

Try this one

Food crisis feared as fertile land runs out

I thought they had this fixed. I read once there are 2 servers which are not quite in synch. Or something like that.

40% of the earth's land mass is used for farming? Didn't know that. Damn, that's just a sad statement about humanity's greed...

Yep, this is the scariest thing I've read this week, at least on a planetary scale. It's completely obvious if you care to look that we've exceeded the carrying capacity of the world, but humanity being the way it is, there's no way we'll actually face up to the problem until it's too late. Incremental changes just won't cut it here; growth restraint and population control need to be implemented now.

Have you seen what is left after the trees are cut down in a rain forest? There is no fertile land left. All the wealth and fertility was *above* ground in the forest itself. We're not talking Great Plains prairie land here! Lose the rain forest and desolation remains.