Posted: Wed May 14, 2008 8:03 pm Post subject: Re: The Spreading Food Crisis Thread (U.S. & World)
You must realize how much energy (not to mention fertilizer and pesticides) it takes to plant and grow such a field. Not to mention its in Brazil where is not very good. I suspect when the amazon is gone and the rest of south america is deforested we won't be eating food from there.
Joined: Mar 26, 2008 Posts: 1030 Location: Seattle
Posted: Wed May 14, 2008 8:40 pm Post subject: Re: The Spreading Food Crisis Thread (U.S. & World)
Homesteader wrote:
OilFinder2 wrote:
In a warming climate, there will be winners, and there will be losers. The net result will be zero.
Yeah, that is what we have been saying. . ."net result will be zero".
You are right. In a billion years or so, the sun will go supernova and engulf the earth, destroying all life and the earth itself. In fact, in the even farther future, the universe itself will either whither away and die a slow, cold, energy-deprived death, or it will recollapse into itself into a black hole. So the net sum of everything that will ever have happened in the universe will be zero. In the meantime, we can use all the energy we can possibly get our hands on to make our lives better while we're here, because ultimately it doesn't matter whether we do or not, because it's all doomed in the long run anyway. _________________ Abundance - what a concept!
Not to mention its in Brazil where is not very good. I suspect when the amazon is gone and the rest of south america is deforested we won't be eating food from there.
Man, the (lack of) logic of some of the doomers here is just astounding.
If the Amazon gets deforested (not that the farm in this picture replaced the Amazon rainforest, it replaced a savanah), it will be because it will be turned into a giant farm. If it is turned into a giant farm, a lot of people will be eating food from there. On the other hand, if we aren't eating a lot of food from the Amazon in the future, it will be because either, A) they didn't cut down all the Amazon after all, or, B) because they tried to do so and it didn't work. If B occurs, the rainforest will eventually grow back, so it will not be "gone." _________________ Abundance - what a concept!
Posted: Thu May 15, 2008 12:20 am Post subject: Re: The Spreading Food Crisis Thread (U.S. & World)
shortonoil wrote:
I would think that a more reliable statistic in this case would be how many head of stock there are to be slaughtered. kublikhan, do you have those figures?
It's in the same link I posted earlier:
Quote:
January 1, 2003: U.S. 96.1 million head
January 1, 2004: U.S. 94.9 million head
January 1, 2005: U.S. 95.4 million head
January 1, 2006: U.S. 96.7 million head
January 1, 2007: U.S. 97.0 million head
January 1, 2008: U.S. 96.7 million head
A total of 12 million cattle are set to be slaughtered and the system to process all that meat is failing.
Logical next step is 2009 is the year of the vegetarian.
This is nothing. Here are a few nice reads about poulty production and "fecal soup," which makes up 15% of the weight of USDA-certified chicken. For our non-native-English-speaking readers, "fecal" means crap. That's right, crap soup. Read on, if you've got the stomach for it.
Mindy Kursban, PCRM's staff attorney, said, "Under current regulations, people can become ill and even die from eating poultry and meat that passed USDA's inspection because the current inspection system is too weak to protect consumers."
Quote:
In 1996, the Clinton Administration introduced new guidelines, the Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point (HACCP) program, which took federal inspectors out of the line and handed responsibility of oversight, including inspecting the amount of feces in the chicken... to the industry producers themselves!
_________________ "We shall live in interesting times, and we shall die in them too." - Heineken
Joined: Aug 03, 2007 Posts: 3122 Location: Boston Suburbs
Posted: Thu May 15, 2008 2:14 am Post subject: Re: The Spreading Food Crisis Thread (U.S. & World)
OilFinder2 wrote:
If the Amazon gets deforested (not that the farm in this picture replaced the Amazon rainforest, it replaced a savanah), it will be because it will be turned into a giant farm. If it is turned into a giant farm, a lot of people will be eating food from there. On the other hand, if we aren't eating a lot of food from the Amazon in the future, it will be because either, A) they didn't cut down all the Amazon after all, or, B) because they tried to do so and it didn't work. If B occurs, the rainforest will eventually grow back, so it will not be "gone."
Hopefully they will have genetically stored all the life in the amazon so they can do a Noah's Ark and reseed everything to where it was before.
Posted: Thu May 15, 2008 3:22 am Post subject: Re: The Spreading Food Crisis Thread (U.S. & World)
OilFinder2 wrote:
manu wrote:
OilFinder2 wrote:
As for fertilizers and pesticides, how do they reduce the lifespan of soil? If anything, they increase the productive lifespan of soil.
That's not true. It has been proven that they reduce the fertility of the soil. [...] The artificial fertilizers may grow more volume, short term, but they deplete the soil in the longer term.
Uhhh . . . yeah. Here are corn yields in the US -- capital of industrial-scale, heavily-fertilized agriculture -- going back to the 1860's. Still no decline.
And soybean yields, going back only to 1972 (though soybeans weren't a big crop until the 60's or 70's anyway). It's immediately aparrent from this graphic that mass soil depletion is taking place.
manu wrote:
You may have more quantity, but less quality in your crops.
Gee, I dunno about that. My Doritos and corn-on-the-cob taste just fine.
manu wrote:
They also pollute the water systems, rivers, lakes, ect.
You're right on that one, but there are ways to mitigate that. It's just one of those trade-offs in life. See comment below for alternative to fertilizers.
manu wrote:
So what's the solution? Go back to small farms, use the oxen and bull. Get rid of the whole agro-buisness. Hang the people at Monsanto for treason. Also hang the people in the Gov't who helped put these policies in place.
Uhhh, yeah, go back to small farms. Revert to the 18th century. See corn yield graph above, noting yields prior to 1940. Production collapses, millions - or billions - starve. Brilliant! Though no doubt some of the doomers here would like such a solution. Your next task is to convince millions of city slickers and suburbanites to give up their jobs as lawyers, accountants, salespeople and computer programmers to take up farming on 20-acre lots. And live the life of a poor farmer. More brilliance!
Why would they starve? They are growing their own food. The charts don't take into account of more land being farmed. They also don't take into account the amount of pesticides and artificial fertilizers being applied at an increasing rate. How are "they" going to clean up the Gulf of Mexico, what to speak of all the rivers and lakes and underground water tables being polluted? If you include the price of the cleanup, then it isn't so cheap to farm this way. But they don't, they will leave it for their children and grand children. But guess what? Little do they know, they will come back as a grasshoppers in the desert they made. The people above, accounts, lawyers, ect. will have to change soon anyway, or die, so they might just as well start to think about it now.
Joined: Mar 04, 2007 Posts: 504 Location: Hong Kong
Posted: Thu May 15, 2008 3:22 am Post subject: Re: The Spreading Food Crisis Thread (U.S. & World)
OilFinder2 wrote:
You do not need fossil fuels to produce fertilizer. You also do not need fossil fuels to transport the food - in fact, you don't "need" fossil fuels for any of the steps you just described. Even if you were right about the oncoming depletion of fossil fuels (which, of course, you aren't), your argument would be moot because you're claiming that something is necessary for modern agriculture which isn't.
I read the link. This paragraph struck my eye.
Quote:
Any energy system could be used to make hydrogen. We've heard of wind farms planning to use their peak output energies to make hydrogen as a way of storing the energy from intermittent winds. The hydrogen is a sort of battery in the sense of being charged up when the wind blows and drawn down between times, and thus overcoming one of wind's limitations as an energy system. Hydroelectric power has been used to make hydrogen and fertilizer too. All of these energy sources and hydrogen sources use no fossil fuels, just air and water, to make fertilizer.
Hydroelectic power is not sustainable. That's a myth. Dams flood agricultural land and destroy ecosystems. The water used to create electricity takes on a higher temperature, loses oxygen content, experiences siltation and gains in phosphorus and nitrogen content. Siltation often occurs far upstream, altering river patterns. In the case of river ports on the Yangtze River, that silt must be dredged using equipment that runs on diesel. Furthermore, hydrogen dams often generate more carbon emissions than coal-fired power plants.
As for wind farms, they produce intermittent power. Denmark produces 20% of its electricity using wind power, yet no conventional power plants have been decommissioned. Furthermore, it takes enormous amounts of energy to build and maintain wind farms, energy that is currently provided by fossil fuels.
FreakOil wrote:
A cyclical system, on the other hand, has no beginning or end. For simplicity's sake, I'll use traditional Chinese night soil agriculture as an example. The farmer harvests the food, the farmer eats the food, the farmer poops the food, the farmer puts the poop back on the fields, the food grows back. The whole process forms a nice cycle that can go on for thousands of years, if not more, without any of the inputs common to the linear system.
If any of the steps in the process - extraction, transport, production, etc. - are interrupted, the entire system collapses. That could happen for a number of reasons such as fuel shortages, war, social instability or natural disasters. Furthermore, the process is dependent on a fragile supply chain that extends thousands of miles around the globe and is susceptible to disruption at any geographic point that the supply chain runs through.
OilFinder2 wrote:
That was true of the ancient Chinese system as well. War, social instability, natural disasters, disease (human and animal) all frequently took their toll on human agriculture back then. If anything, I'd say we are less susceptible to such disturbances now than we were back then. Back then, since most food was grown locally, if some disaster struck locally, the local populace was screwed. These days, if drought strikes the wheat crop in India, they can always import some wheat from the US or Canada or Australia or Argentina or Russia or . . .
We are more susceptible to such disturbances because thanks to globalization, a catastrophe in another country affects regions thousands of miles away. We cannot always import commodities from another country. Russia, Kazakhstan, China and other countries have already put up barriers to exports of grain and/or fertilizer. Thailand is trying to create a "rice cartel" with other Southeast Asian nations. When there's a food crisis, trade comes to a halt; it doesn't increase.
FreakOil wrote:
However, there are outside inputs to any local cyclical system that make it part and parcel of the entire biosphere. For example, winds blowing over the Earth carry dust particles into the atmosphere; those particles, which contain vital nutrients, are then deposited on soil thousands of miles away, thus enriching that soil. Water that evaporates from oceans thousands of miles away is carried by the winds and deposited on the soil, allowing the crops to grow.
OilFinder2 wrote:
So what? This is just as true now as it was 2000 years ago.
I know. I'm trying to demonstrate how local agriculture is affected by things happening thousands of miles away, which I explained in the next paragraph.
FreakOil wrote:
Those are just a few examples of a local cyclical systems' relation to the biosphere and how they will be affected by global warming. Global warming will alter those wind patterns and lay waste to cyclical agriculture systems that have served humanity for thousands of years.
OilFinder2 wrote:
Increasing temperatures will likely lead to increased precipitation, not less. There will be some areas negatively affected by increased temperatures, no doubt, but other areas will benefit. You will simply see a shifting around of global agricultural patterns toward the poles.
Much of that land up north that has will have suitable temperatures and precipitation for agriculture are not suitable for agriculture for other reasons. Would you suggest that we clear cut Canadian and Siberian forests to grow more crops? Are we just going to take billions of people and move them up north? That is ludicrous. _________________ "We shall live in interesting times, and we shall die in them too." - Heineken
World food prices fell in April for the first time in 15 months, according to figures from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO).
Its food price index fell to 216.7 from 217.0 in March, having surged from last April's figure of 141.7.
FAO seems to have put a very positive spin on the numbers, but the article include comments that I thing are important (my highlights)
Quote:
"It is dangerous to look at just one month, especially when the underlying factors remain the same," he said.
Mr Segal pointed to factors such as population growth still outstripping food production, increased affluence pushing up meat consumption, and the use of grain for biofuels.
The index dropping 0.3 points (0.2%) having risen 75 points (53%) seems like a pause for breath on the road up. I hope I am wrong in this. _________________ We should teach our children the 4-Rs: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle and Rejoice.
World food prices fell in April for the first time in 15 months, according to figures from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO).
Its food price index fell to 216.7 from 217.0 in March, having surged from last April's figure of 141.7.
FAO seems to have put a very positive spin on the numbers, but the article include comments that I thing are important (my highlights)
Quote:
"It is dangerous to look at just one month, especially when the underlying factors remain the same," he said.
Mr Segal pointed to factors such as population growth still outstripping food production, increased affluence pushing up meat consumption, and the use of grain for biofuels.
The index dropping 0.3 points (0.2%) having risen 75 points (53%) seems like a pause for breath on the road up. I hope I am wrong in this.
Do you see how completely mind blowingly contradictory this statement is? During a time when the growing middle class is being hit by across the board inflation, internationally? "Increased affluence pushing up meat consumption"?
That may help explain how we got here, but it's a strong argument for a correction, going forward. How are people paying double for rice and wheat products, going to increase meat consumption? It's this type of thinking that drives me absolutely up the wall.
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Here are corn yields in the US -- capital of industrial-scale, heavily-fertilized agriculture -- going back to the 1860's. Still no decline.
