Can We Grow More Food on Less Land?
nytimes.com
Can We Grow More Food on Less Land?
1–10 of 287 posts
Re: Can We Grow More Food on Less Land?
#2[deleted]
Re: Can We Grow More Food on Less Land?
#3What if we all had a green wall with aquaponics ?
Re: Can We Grow More Food on Less Land?
#4What would make people eat less beef? Since taxes seem a hard sell, would subsidizing chicken + non-meat protein help? As a vegetarian I'm trying to get my head around what would help change the behaviour of the meat eating HN members.
Re: Can We Grow More Food on Less Land?
#5What would make people eat less beef? Since taxes seem a hard sell, would subsidizing chicken + non-meat protein help? As a vegetarian I'm trying to get my head around what would help change the behaviour of the meat eating HN members.
A lower subsidy on corn would significantly raise beef prices relative to chicken, without being a tax. That's difficult in the US for systemic political reasons, but not necessarily a tax issue.
Longer term, lab grown protean is likely to be a net win.
Re: Can We Grow More Food on Less Land?
#6There is also the problem of food distribution. Ignoring future population growth, the world does produce enough food to people everyone [0] (obtained from the first sentence of [1]). If we are collectively unwilling to solve the distribution problem today, then it there is a good chance that we won't do much about the shortage tomorrow. In addition, unconsumed food waste is also problem, and probably does have some correlation with the unequal distribution.
An article with the headline "Can we share food more fairly today?" does have a simple answer, but would rock the political establishment uncomfortably, so has little chance of ever being published.
[0] Leathers, H., & Foster, P. (2009). The world food problem: toward ending undernutrition in the third world. Colorado: Lynne Rienner Publishers Inc.
[1] http://12.000.scripts.mit.edu/mission2014/problems/inadequat...
Re: Can We Grow More Food on Less Land?
#7What would make people eat less beef? Since taxes seem a hard sell, would subsidizing chicken + non-meat protein help? As a vegetarian I'm trying to get my head around what would help change the behaviour of the meat eating HN members.
That is the wrong mindset, trying to fix the effect and not the cause.
Re: Can We Grow More Food on Less Land?
#8What would make people eat less beef? Since taxes seem a hard sell, would subsidizing chicken + non-meat protein help? As a vegetarian I'm trying to get my head around what would help change the behaviour of the meat eating HN members.
Continuing to improve artificial meat (e.g. Impossible Burgers) to get to the point where it's better than the real thing. You don't change people's minds by taking things away from them. You give them a better substitute.
Re: Can We Grow More Food on Less Land?
#9What would make people eat less beef? Since taxes seem a hard sell, would subsidizing chicken + non-meat protein help? As a vegetarian I'm trying to get my head around what would help change the behaviour of the meat eating HN members.
A lower subsidy on corn would significantly raise beef prices relative to chicken, without being a tax. That's difficult in the US for systemic political reasons, but not necessarily a tax issue. Longer term, lab grown protean is likely to be a net win.
But it would be seen as a "tax" to the corn producers, beef eaters, sugar water drinkers, car owners, and probably a load of other groups who benefit from the artificially cheap price.
Re: Can We Grow More Food on Less Land?
#10Or we could stop throwing away nearly 1/3 of the food we produce...