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Can We Grow More Food on Less Land?

nytimes.com

11–20 of 287 posts

Re: Can We Grow More Food on Less Land?

#11
post #5

What 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.

>A lower subsidy on corn would significantly raise beef prices relative to chicken,

We export roughly 40% of our corn in the US, it wouldn't increase beef prices prices much, it'd reduce exports though.

Re: Can We Grow More Food on Less Land?

#12

What 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.

Convince people that ground beef (and chicken for that matter) that's made up partially of plants (probably soy) is more upscale than just ground beef.

People have been socially/culturally conditioned to think that meat that's not all meat is inferior (because it often is/was). If you can get over the culture/perception hurdle most people won't really care that ground beef is only beef so long as their taco or McDouble tastes the way they want. The health angle is probably the best way to go about doing this.

Re: Can We Grow More Food on Less Land?

#14

What 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.

I'm not interested in eating less meat so we can grow the population more. It's not a cost issue. Why do we want a population size that requires people to cut back on quality of life?

Re: Can We Grow More Food on Less Land?

#15
Why is food grow not stuck up vertically? I mean let's go 3D, since at least majority of vegetables and most fruits do not need more than height of 2 feet of space.

It also surprised me how old school modern farming still remains. Look at the first picture from this article: a bunch of modern tractors unnecessarily burning oil, unnecessarily operated by humans. By now this should be three times the size field with 15 levels up, run by 3D seeds/soil/water/plants/etc sampling throw out from automatically replaceable cartridge/dispenser.

We have long way to go, but certainly we don't need more land to grow; we need more technology in place!

Edit: should have mentioned it - even going vertical you can still use natural light! Its a matter of setting up bunch of mirrors reflecting sunlight. Of course you need sun to grow.

Re: Can We Grow More Food on Less Land?

#16
Recently posted on HN, under the thread "A remote UK community living off-grid (bbc.co.uk)":

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18498110

Excerpt from the comment:

[ A political science graduate of Yale University, Jeavons worked for the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and Stanford University before launching his career in small-scale agriculture education. He is the author of the best-selling sustainable farming handbook How to Grow More Vegetables, Fruits, Nuts, Berries, Grains, and Other Crops Than You Ever Thought Possible On Less Land Than You Can Imagine, now in its 8th edition in eight languages ]

Re: Can We Grow More Food on Less Land?

#17
This is touched on in Pinker's "Enlightenment Now." The current trendy "organic" label requires more land to grow the same amount of food. Whatever benefits of so-called organic farming you perceive, if any, it is a regression in terms of feeding the world's growing population.

Re: Can We Grow More Food on Less Land?

#18

Why is food grow not stuck up vertically? I mean let's go 3D, since at least majority of vegetables and most fruits do not need more than height of 2 feet of space. It also surprised me how old school modern farming still remains. Look at the first picture from this article: a bunch of modern tractors unnecessarily burning oil, unnecessarily operated by humans. By now this should be three times the size field with 15…

Because sunlight ?

I do feel the same about the mechanical side of farming. I'm sure there's room for different tools and structure.

Re: Can We Grow More Food on Less Land?

#19

What 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.

As a vegetarian that actually doesn't like many vegetables (I don't like bell peppers, for example, which severely limits my options) and who was a huge carnivore before going veggie ( and with more than one hunter in the family): I see two groups of meat eaters.

Group A, who just like the taste and texture of meat. For them, a variety of substitutes that adequately matched would suffice. As of today, we have many fake meats that do a good job of matching the taste/texture of HEAVILY PROCESSED meats (e.g. turkey loaf), but not matching more straightforward meats. Likely vat-grown meat will be the only reasonably quick way to match both demands for the general population. Outside of that as more research is done into faux meats to match tastes and textures we will presumably get there, and as meat alternatives become more popular there is a feedback loop where research gets more widespread and has a better ROI, so maybe it's not so far off, but I personally wouldn't bet on it. Expense is a big deal to this group, as they basically want to be content (food-wise) with minimal effort, so meat alternatives that are familiar and not expensive is not a difficult transition, particularly if meat becomes more expensive. Making it low-effort to know what you are getting also helps. Currently meat alternatives are completely separate from meats in the store, and the delivery very different. (a box of burgers or a bag of crumble, for example, vs the pile of ground beef).

Group B, who are invested into the particulars of meat. These are the ones who will debate for hours the precise way to grill the perfect steak. Like with audiophiles who complain of qualities I can't hear, I have to assume they aren't delusional, but it doesn't really matter for the purpose of your question. This group is unlikely to be satisfied by vat-grown meat, outside of random luck. I don't see this group changing within their lifetimes, though they can be swayed to alter portion sizes. Honestly, the best way to REDUCE meat consumption is to avoid angering this group - they can take meat becoming a bit more expensive and more of a luxury without a fuss, but if it looks like meat were to be banned or too expensive they would react with all the furor you can expect from someone losing something they are passionate about. And their message would resonate with Group A, because Group A is just looking to be content like they currently are, so change represents risk, not benefit. This means the goals of REDUCING meat consumption and REMOVING meat consumption are at odds with one another.

If you have ethical motivations, none of the above is fast and vat-grown meat research has its own ethical questions, but I don't see a realistic fast alternative that doesn't involve mass suffering (to more than humans) due to uncontrolled events.

Re: Can We Grow More Food on Less Land?

#20
There's a great method called Agroforestry that uses forest floors to produce more food:

Quick overview of a farmer's land that uses this method: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=stABAx82TbY he harvest around 3x more cocoa per hectare than traditional methods and its one of the most valuable in the world right now.

Big producers joining to make it more scalable: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gSPNRu4ZPvE

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