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Most of the world’s grain is not eaten by humans

economist.com

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Re: Most of the world’s grain is not eaten by humans

#171

Post by rexpop »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #143
rexpop wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Educating women is the most effective way of equipping them to protect their own interests. To enlighten yourself, consider reading Federici's "Revolution at Point Zero" and Freire's "Pedagogy of the Oppressed."

I wrote that women’s education is necessary, but not sufficient. All the women in Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan can have PhDs, but it is not going to do them much good if the men collectively decide to oppress them.

Au contraire, the men can collectively decide to oppress them, but it is not going to do them much good if all the women in Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan have PhDs.

What is it, I ask you, that makes a population difficult to oppress?

Re: Most of the world’s grain is not eaten by humans

#172

Post by HWR_14 »

chii wrote: post #163
HWR_14 wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1) It's not group membership, it's targetted 2) I try to live in such a way that I'm not a wasteful glutton who misuses communal resources.

it might be that you get punished despite trying to live properly as you claim in 2). Punishment doesn't work in this context, since it's not a repeated game. Murder is punished because everyone has the chance to do murder - it's a "repeated" game. Destroying the environment isn't.

Destroying various environmental resources is completely a repeated game (for example, look at superfund sites).

If in the future it's decided that I made my money unethically and it needs to be redistributed, I guess I'm fine with that so long as the same standard is applied to everyone's money. I think it'll be close to a great reset, but whatever. I'm not thrilled by the idea, but it might have to happen.

Re: Most of the world’s grain is not eaten by humans

#173

Post by uxcolumbo »

causasui wrote: post #122
Fargoan wrote: post #116

Go vegan

Yeah but my ancestors natural human history circle of life top-of-the-food chain indigenous people crop deaths protein deficiency b12 free-range cage-free humanely-killed cow overpopulation lions and gazelles moral relativity plants feel pain canine teeth bacon is delicious though

Ha… good one… seems you dealt with this topic many times before.

Add slaughterhouse workers and PTSD to the mix.

Re: Most of the world’s grain is not eaten by humans

#174

Post by uxcolumbo »

justapassenger wrote: post #166
MrMan wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

not true not true

Ok, so compare two: 1. Vegetarian, living in a McMansion in an USA suburb in a desert, driving big SUV everywhere and flying for work every month to the other coast. 2. Meat eater, living car free in a small flat in London, taking subway everywhere and train to travel for work to Manchester. Is meat eating part most impactful life choice they’re making?

I think there are more people eating meat than people who

# Own and drive an SUV everywhere

# Flying for work every month

Think how much factory farmed meat is consumed. We kill and process ~80B animals per year.

For most folks meat is more affordable than buying an SUV or flying every month.

Getting people to heavily reduce or cut out meat & dairy and move to a more plant based diet will have a greater impact in reducing environmental impact.

This is based on an Oxford Uni study and also recommended by the IPCC. I’ll add sources later.

But it’s not an either or.

We need to do both and more.

It’s a tough challenge and we should have started yesterday.

Interesting times ahead… I wonder what the world will be like in 30 years.

——-

Edit: adding some sources

1) https://ourworldindata.org/environmental-impacts-of-food

2) “In addition to climate mitigation gains, a transition towards more plant-based consumption and reduced consumption of animal-based foods, particularly from ruminant animals, could reduce pressure on forests and land used for feed, support the preservation of biodiversity and planetary health, and contribute to preventing forms of malnutrition (i.e. undernutrition, micronutrient deficiency, and obesity) in developing countries. Other co-benefits include lowering the risk of cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, and reducing mortality from diet-related non-communicable diseases.”

From: https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg3/

3) “Imbalanced diets, such as diets low in fruits and vegetables, and high in red and processed meat, are responsible for the greatest health burden globally and in most regions. At the same time the food system is also responsible for more than a quarter of all greenhouse gas emissions, and therefore a major driver of climate change.”

From: https://www.oxfordmartin.ox.ac.uk/news/201603-plant-based-di...

Re: Most of the world’s grain is not eaten by humans

#175

Post by burntoutfire »

orionion wrote: post #34

The grass family contains over 9,000 species distributed throughout the world. Of that, 35 have been cultivated as cereals. Of these, the following are important today: Barley, Corn, Goat grass, Millet, Oats, Rice, Sorghum, and Wheat. Of the important grains and/or cereals listed above, only corn (maize) is a New World native. Corn is an important member of the grass family. Corn (Zea mays) was domesticated from a wi…

> Of these, the following are important today: Barley, Corn, Goat grass, Millet, Oats, Rice, Sorghum, and Wheat.

What about Rye?

Re: Most of the world’s grain is not eaten by humans

#176

Post by csomar »

sumy23 wrote: post #130
pessimizer wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That won't put the water back. Revenge is just the final form of prioritizing the comfort (or discomfort) of a handful of bad actors over the well-being of the other 99.9999% of the world. There's no answer except functioning government and the general eradication of solipsistic liberal/libertarian fantasies, and that's never going to happen.

> That won't put the water back. Revenge is just the final form of prioritizing the comfort (or discomfort) of a handful of bad actors over the well-being of the other 99.9999% of the world. Punishing the perpetrators won’t put the water back in the same way punishing a murderer won’t bring the victim back. We don’t punish to make right. We punish to deter.

Are you suggesting the farmers are criminal? Unless they subverted the democratic institutions to benefit from bedrock water, punishing them IS the crime.

Re: Most of the world’s grain is not eaten by humans

#177

Post by danielheath »

ncmncm wrote: post #108
orionion wrote: post #34

The grass family contains over 9,000 species distributed throughout the world. Of that, 35 have been cultivated as cereals. Of these, the following are important today: Barley, Corn, Goat grass, Millet, Oats, Rice, Sorghum, and Wheat. Of the important grains and/or cereals listed above, only corn (maize) is a New World native. Corn is an important member of the grass family. Corn (Zea mays) was domesticated from a wi…

Official US agricultural policy and habitual farming practice have made growing maize together with beans and/or squash, tomatoes, and peppers nearly impossible to do competitively. That could be fixed with policy changes that would be fought by the biggest agribusinesses. Corn is among the most efficient natural converters of sunlight into chemical energy useful to the plant (with some left over for the farmer), but…

Global PV cell production is about 1 million square meters per annum.

Global farmland is about 45 million square kilometers, approx 1e10 more.

Lets say the solar panels cover 10% of the field. That 10% produces 10x as much, so you've approximately doubled your fields overall productivity. We're currently a factor of 1e9 short of producing enough to do so (and it's not like PV cells are not currently produced at scale).

1e9 is an unfathomably large delta. We'd be converting most of the planet into PV factories & mines to supply them.

Re: Most of the world’s grain is not eaten by humans

#179

Post by Jistern »

innagadadavida wrote: post #30
wintermutestwin wrote: post #8

A staggering amount of California's water is used for alfalfa, which gets shipped to China to feed cows. In essence, we are allowing certain farmers to sell CA's water to China.

Agriculture consumes a lot of water in this drought stricken state. The worst part is that many of these farms pump water from the ground thereby collapsing underground aquifers. This is an irreversible change and has caused the Central Valley to sink by several feet over the last few decades. There is zero political will to solve this. Instead we waste time and energy on pointless green initiatives, desalination and…

California will never, ever, ever run short of water... unless the Pacific Ocean dries up.

Cheap electricity will result in cheap desalination.

The sky is not falling.

Re: Most of the world’s grain is not eaten by humans

#180

Post by mattashii »

danielheath wrote: post #177
ncmncm wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Official US agricultural policy and habitual farming practice have made growing maize together with beans and/or squash, tomatoes, and peppers nearly impossible to do competitively. That could be fixed with policy changes that would be fought by the biggest agribusinesses. Corn is among the most efficient natural converters of sunlight into chemical energy useful to the plant (with some left over for the farmer), but…

Global PV cell production is about 1 million square meters per annum. Global farmland is about 45 million square kilometers, approx 1e10 more. Lets say the solar panels cover 10% of the field. That 10% produces 10x as much, so you've approximately doubled your fields overall productivity. We're currently a factor of 1e9 short of producing enough to do so (and it's not like PV cells are not currently produced at scale…

The actual delta is indeed huge, but there were some mistakes in your calculation that result in an answer that is off by some orders of magnitude.

Assuming your initial numbers are correct, the approx 1e10 should be 1e7 (rounding down from 4.5e7), as 1 million sqm equals 1 sqkm (this is different from 1 kilo square meter; see cube square law etc.)

You also do not take into account that solar panels have an expected lifetime of over 20 years - your current calculation seems to want a panel produced every year for every field.

Taking these into account brings the production defecit factor down to ~ 1e5, which is still unfathomably huge but at least marginally more achievable than the 1e9 answer you got.

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