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Can We Grow More Food on Less Land?

nytimes.com

21–30 of 287 posts

Re: Can We Grow More Food on Less Land?

#21

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.

Isn't the meat industry already heavily subsidised?

Re: Can We Grow More Food on Less Land?

#22

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?

eating beef being higher quality of life may be less real and more perceived (because of habit and freedom), given that there are several similar substitutes.

Re: Can We Grow More Food on Less Land?

#23

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?

[deleted]

Re: Can We Grow More Food on Less Land?

#24
Don’t we already know how to do this? For example, the concept of companion planting — growing plants which behave symbiotically together — is a centuries old idea. The issue is whether we have an economic incentive to.

Re: Can We Grow More Food on Less Land?

#25

Or we could stop throwing away nearly 1/3 of the food we produce...

Great point. As a kid growing up in India, reading about recurring starvation / famine there, and in Africa, etc., I also read about some European countries dumping mountains of butter and other edibles into the sea, due to surpluses, and maybe to keep the price up.

I mean, I understand it is about economics, supply and demand, profits, etc., but still,

shudder

Re: Can We Grow More Food on Less Land?

#26

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…

If you don't expose your plants to the sun, you're going to need a lot of energy to power their illumination. I'm not sure solar panels-> tuned led illumination is any more efficient than direct exposure, nor could it be any cheaper (and because solar irradiation on Earth is finite of course the amount of food you can grow is also finite). Then there's the profit per m^2 of agriculture isn't that high -- how much does a structure cost? I'd say at least $400/m^2. If your profit is I think direct nutrient synthesis probably has potential, but it will take a very long time to understand nutrition and synthesis of organic mollecules -- not an expert by any means, but I'd be surprised if it took less than several decades to develop the necessary tech/science. Even then the gains in efficiency will probably not be that large -- plants/life in general have been optimizing synthesis for billions of years, they're already quite efficient. What we would gain is minimizing to its limit parts of the plant we don't consume, and concentrate on the essentials/optimal nutrients.

Re: Can We Grow More Food on Less Land?

#27
post #24

Don’t we already know how to do this? For example, the concept of companion planting — growing plants which behave symbiotically together — is a centuries old idea. The issue is whether we have an economic incentive to.

I am not an agronomist, but my instinct is that companion planting interferes with large-scale farming, where machines or poorly paid humans in a hurry need to easy access to a single crop to harvest, and often destroy the field as they work. I'd like to think if the yields were worth it we'd have worked around that, but possibly robotic harvesters can take us there.

Re: Can We Grow More Food on Less Land?

#28

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?

Would you eat more chicken instead of beef though? Is there a certain meat you couldn't do without and if so why? I'm not against anyone eating meat (although as an ethical - and hypocritical milk drinking vegetarian - I'd like to see animal suffering reduced) just interested in what meat eaters love about meat.

Re: Can We Grow More Food on Less Land?

#29
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Out of that list, the corn producers can get lost. They are not entitled to our subsidy.

Re: Can We Grow More Food on Less Land?

#30

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 have a mirror-image question:

What will it take to convince vegetarians that a meat-based diet is actually the healthiest way to eat, and that meat can be raised in humane, environmentally-friendly ways?

:-)

Edit: This a serious question. Down voting is hardly a productive form of dialog.

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