Can We Grow More Food on Less Land? • Hacker News Board

Re: Can We Grow More Food on Less Land?

#231

Post by mc32 » Sat, Dec 08, 2018, 11:17 PM UTC

agsdfgsd wrote: post #229

mc32 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The missing context is that people did that out of necessity. Hundred years ago 56% of Americans were rather poor. Most non-city people had outhouses in the 1940s. America’s rise to wealth has been long and hard fought. Wealth didn’t just land into our laps. The average American family had an annual income of ~$3000 (in today’s dollars), So, yeah, poor.

The average US family had an annual income of $956 in 1940. That is $17,268.43 in todays dollars, far more than $3k. And that was almost entirely earned by a single individual rather than both adults in the household working like now. Also, someone earning that little paid no income tax. The average house price in 1940 was $2938, which is $53k in today's money. Now the average family income is $70k, but that's mostly…

It’s my fault. Hundred years ago refers to previous turn of century, circa 1900, then went to 1940 about indoor plumbing for toilets. We were poor, not much above Mexican or Finnish standards (better, but hardly by much). It was anascrnt industrislization as well as WWi and WWii that catapulted us into a powerhouse.

Re: Can We Grow More Food on Less Land?

#232

Post by agsdfgsd » Sun, Dec 09, 2018, 12:26 AM UTC

vram22 wrote: post #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-sel…

I wouldn't consider the market gardener to be in the same area as grow biointensive. Jeavons has a strong focus on self-sufficiency and sustainability in his system and goals. Fortier does not, he's only interested in organic as gimmick to make money. Also his book is pretty deceptive compared to what he really does on his "farm", which wasn't actually profitable until after he released the book and got "famous", which is what sell the overpriced lettuce that finally got him profitable.

I think the biointensive system Jeavons promotes gives you a pretty good starting place, but it does promote a bit of needless work. Skip the composting and just use the compost crops as a mulch. There's no need to build piles and turn them and then spread the compost, you can just let it compost in place on the garden where it will end up. You can skip growing the compost crops too if you have trees to collect leaves from in the fall. And save your back and skip the double digging, or any digging at all for that matter. All it does is set you back in your first couple of years for no reason.

Re: Can We Grow More Food on Less Land?

#233

Post by agsdfgsd » Sun, Dec 09, 2018, 12:40 AM UTC

beat wrote: post #94

tareqak wrote: post #6

There 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…

Population growth is leveling off. Birth rate globally is already at/below replacement rate (there are ~2B children right now, the UN estimates that in a century, there will still be ~2B children). The growth we are seeing now is a growth of the adult population, not the child population, due to the 1-2 generation overhang between nations getting decent food and health care (especially immunizations), and the birth r…

>Birth rate globally is already at/below replacement rate

No it is not. Current RNI is 1.06% and projections do not suggest it getting down to replacement levels in the next 50 years unless mortality increases substantially.

>Meanwhile, in a half-century, we've doubled the population, while significantly reducing food costs and radically reducing hunger globally.

By destroying vast portions of the natural world and wiping out thousands of species and even putting the future survival of our own species at risk. The "angst" is entirely valid. Destroying the planet to prop up obscenely inflated population levels for absolutely no benefit is horrifyingly evil. The expected population growth in Africa is enough to finish destroying every last spec of natural ecosystem on the planet that is capable of being used for food production. Yes, we absolutely need to address this problem.

Re: Can We Grow More Food on Less Land?

#234

Post by greedo » Sun, Dec 09, 2018, 1:21 AM UTC

sametmax wrote: post #217

We don't need to. - The part of the world that consumes the most eats too much. A balanced diet would reduce greatly the food consumption. - The part of the world that consumes the most wastes a huge quantity of the food it produces. - Human don't need to eat meat to be healthy and we are past the need for hunting for survival. We can even produce non animal b12 supplements if we ever need to. Since most food are gro…

There is no shortage of food. Even with the Western world eating a rich, meat based diet, there's plenty of food; no need for everyone to go vegan.

What there is, is a problem with distribution.

Re: Can We Grow More Food on Less Land?

#235

Post by greedo » Sun, Dec 09, 2018, 1:23 AM UTC

randyrand wrote: post #134

maccam94 wrote: post #132

From a recent Bloomberg article[1] The last two graphs show that 41% of the land in the contiguous 48 states is used for feeding livestock. More than 33% of the 48 states is just pasture, most of which I believe is used by cattle. What would it take to shift protein consumption from beef (3% efficient) to products like poultry (21%) and eggs (31%)? [2] I think we have to take a hard look at taxes, fees, and subsidies…

wow. those numbers are so cool. never knew poultry was so efficient. No wonder it’s so much cheaper. What would it take to make beef production more efficient? genetic engineering perhaps. People wil naturally switch to more efficient food as population goes up and food resources become more scarce.

Cheaper? Where I live in the US, chicken is much more expensive than beef, unless you're comparing it to steak.

Re: Can We Grow More Food on Less Land?

#236

Post by agsdfgsd » Sun, Dec 09, 2018, 1:33 AM UTC

fouc wrote: post #162

This is called Permaculture, it maximizes yield using natural methods (i.e. avoid tiling the soil, herbicides, etc) and results in an "edible forest" From the wikipedia: 4 Common practices 4.1 Agroforestry 4.2 Hügelkultur 4.3 Natural building 4.4 Rainwater harvesting 4.5 Sheet mulching 4.6 Intensive rotational grazing 4.7 Keyline design 4.8 Fruit tree management https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permaculture

Permaculture doesn't mean food forest. A food forest is one form of permaculture, but it is by no means the only form, or even the ideal one. The hype about food forests comes from how effective they are in tropical climates. But it isn't actually very efficient in temperate climates. Temperate climates do need to rely heavily on annual crops. Those crops can be grown using permaculture, we don't have to trade our potatoes for chestnuts.

Re: Can We Grow More Food on Less Land?

#237

Post by ericd » Sun, Dec 09, 2018, 2:41 AM UTC

mac01021 wrote: post #206

ericd wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Show me a carbon-neutral cow. Any purely grass fed cow should be close, no? They're part of the normal carbon cycle, and that carbon is pulled back in when the grass regrows. The problem is when you bring sequestered carbon (fossil fuels) into the mix.

No, because that land could be be reforested if it weren't kept for the cattle.

A lot of grassland can’t support a forest. Cattle are able to survive on land that is otherwise too marginal to do much of anything but grow grass.

Re: Can We Grow More Food on Less Land?

#238

Post by ericd » Sun, Dec 09, 2018, 2:48 AM UTC

ceras wrote: post #216

ericd wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have to raise and kill more chickens per pound of meat, but aren't they much, much less intelligent than cows?

They are, but while intelligence does likely have a correlation with capacity for suffering, it isn't the same thing. For example, a human infant is much less intelligent than an adult, but we do not typically believe their capacity for suffering is lower than an adult. Cross-species capacity for suffering is still under heavy research, but the general consensus is that birds (including chickens) have a comparable ca…

I suppose I care less about the suffering of less intelligent animals than I do about more intelligent ones. All else being equal, I’d like chickens to be raised better, to the point where I pay a lot extra for it (though this is partly pure selfishness, I think chickens who’ve gotten a lot of exercise taste much better), and I think that sadism against chickens is still sadistic and evil, but even if they can suffer, I’m not going to put them on the same level as eg a suffering whale.

And babies past a few months of age are pretty remarkably intelligent, albeit still a bit uncalibrated.

Re: Can We Grow More Food on Less Land?

#239

Post by agsdfgsd » Sun, Dec 09, 2018, 3:01 AM UTC

nyokodo wrote: post #81

dghughes wrote: post #73

It's slightly terrifying to see the data about the loss of nutrients in plants around the world due to climate change. On YouTube there was an interesting Veritasim story about plants and their mineral levels. It seems plants have fewer minerals now compared to 100 years ago. Farmers have fertilizer and the plants grow but they don't have the same levels of nutrition even with all that help. Samples of weeds from the…

IIRC that youtube video concluded that the difference in nutrient content was because growth rates were accelerated by the increased CO2 in the atmosphere but the rate of extracting nutrients from the soil was not accelerated. This is then presumably related to the global greening phenomenon we've witnessed where the increased CO2 has lead to a large increase in forestation globally. It's important to note that the v…

It did conclude that, but it is just some guy making a statement, and he completely dismissed the soil issue without even considering it. The idea that you are fine if you eat an ill defined "well balanced diet" isn't very well supported. Lots of people have vitamin deficiencies they are not aware of. Very few people get enough B1 or b9 for example, and those are down 1/3 from what they used to be in lots of plants.

Re: Can We Grow More Food on Less Land?

#240

Post by jessriedel » Sun, Dec 09, 2018, 3:17 AM UTC

strainer wrote: post #222

jessriedel wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The question wasn't whether a synthetic diet has side effects compared to a natural one, the question was whether we could accidentally "wipe out the human population".

I was replying to your own claims, but I dont think it actually is ridiculous to worry if novel food products could "wipe out the human population". Its just an unnecessarily extreme phrase for catastrophe, but it is possible. Disease can wipe out a population and novel material exposures can cause novel diseases like Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. Food safety should not be presumed on theoretical basis, only a long hist…

> I was replying to your own claims,

My claim was "they do fine" which, in the context of the question, doesn't mean "there are no side effects".

When a family friend had to have his spleen removed, it put him at somewhat higher risk of infection for the rest of their life, but in the context of him having emergency surgery for a ruptured spleen everyone knew what "he's going to be fine" meant.

> I dont think it actually is ridiculous to worry if novel food products could "wipe out the human population".

I don't think it's ridiculous to worry about in principle. If fact, I think human extinction is super important to worry about and not enough people do it. But I do think it's basically ridiculous to worry about any particular disease or diet doing it (except possibly maliciously engineered diseases). Diseases and diet changes just never have the extreme mortality rates you'd need to threaten the species.