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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

#281

Post by strogonoff »

kristopolous wrote: post #269
strogonoff wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is your own personal takeaway, from reading that material, as far as the alternative to capitalism (if any)?

That things as complex as macroeconomic systems can't be described in comment threads on internet forums. As an analogy and an extreme example, pretend there is an evolutionary biologist among a group that believes in creationism. The creationist has a very simple narrative, only takes a few words. The evolutionary biologist has a much bigger task at hand. They're starting not from an ideology but from a discipline o…

> That things as complex as macroeconomic systems can't be described in comment threads on internet forums.

You’d be amazed how far the medium of written conversation can get you. Pretty involved concepts in the sciences you mention had been explained and discussed here before.

> People presume that any critique of the system have an alternative sweeping simplistic all-encompassing dogmatic ideology.

You have so far not made an attempt to even hint at an alternative, after so many words.

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

#282

Post by strogonoff »

Schroedingersat wrote: post #275
strogonoff wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that punishment != punishment, and there seem to be many cases where evidence of intentional harm appears to be substantial enough that the majority would support if something was done about it legally, yet unfortunately nothing is done. That aside, I still doubt it would be a fundamental deterrent (it’ll deter some from doing this particular thing, but they’ll find another workaround).

Well then the key is to align incentives. If the powerful bear consequences when something bad happens regardless of fault, then power will be wielded to prevent those outcomes rather than enact them. Anyone who does not wish to take that risk can dispose of their power.

There’s a hint of the idea that “power should be exceedingly inconvenient, not lucrative, and attract people who ‘irrationally’ want to make the world better as opposed to abusing it”, which I don’t disagree with.

However, there’s another big concept, and that is “do not fire an employee who just learned a big and expensive, to you, lesson”. Punishing people simply because they failed, especially in a complex environment with slow onboarding process, is unproductive.

Furthermore, it can sow fear, resentment and distrust. Take China, where a local official risks unpredictable punishment, up to losing their job (or worse), if they fail—such as by allowing COVID cases to happen in their locality. Unfortunately, the side-effect of it is that officials are incentivized to lie up, meaning the government may think the country is COVID-free and be unable to make informed decisions.

This is also why I think COVID lab leak event, if confirmed, should not lead to any repercussions for China in particular. Fear of said repercussions seems likely half of the reason the research is being obscured in the first place, as a result preventing the global community from making informed decisions.

So, if you don’t want such shenanigans to take place in your government (I wouldn’t), you have to agree that whichever human being you elected should be able to make mistakes to learn from them, and thus another measure of their performance should be used.

For example, repeat trend of malicious intent supported by concrete evidence could be a good one.

(And to be make things even trickier, they do not deserve the whole credit in case of any success either. The success or failure of a measure to large extent depends on the whole country and the larger context it exists in. There are situations where one can only win, and situations where losing the least is the best outcome.)

Incentives should be aligned, but I don’t think punishment is the instrument for that.

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

#283

Post by konart »

jessaustin wrote: post #224
konart wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Buckwheat isn't a cereal or even a grass.

TIL: "Buckwheat is related to sorrel, knotweed, and rhubarb, and is known as a pseudocereal because its seeds' culinary use is the same as cereals, owing to their composition of complex carbohydrates." - wiki

Still though, the question is not so much about classification but about importance as a food\resource.

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

#284

Post by jessaustin »

amanaplanacanal wrote: post #273
amanaplanacanal wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The water is owned by the farmers, not by California. Probably the state should eminent domain it, but I have no idea what it would cost to do so.

I can't tell if the downvotes mean that I'm wrong about this, and the state could theoretically reallocate that water, or that I'm right but people think it should work differently. Are there any experts on how this works in California that could weigh in here?

Every time this comes up, the simple straightforward actually-legal solution of "let's pay the farmers to use less water" gets downvoted to oblivion. I conclude that many Californians on HN simply dislike farmers and don't want them to prosper. The other possibility, that there isn't actually a water shortage in California so there's no need to waste money managing water, seems to contradict everything I've ever learned on this topic from the commercial news media.

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

#285

Post by jessaustin »

zoomablemind wrote: post #237
roenxi wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How will 'exerting more pressure' help? We may already be past the point where there is a good solution but the best approach so far would be de-escalation, negotiation and cooperation in an attempt to avoid all this. Every attempt to exert pressure has put the west in a less favourable position. More pressure has built an energy crisis in Europe; rivals in Asia awash with cheap gas and contributed to a global food s…

>...Every attempt to exert pressure has put the west in a less favourable position. There's a largest war started by russia (8 years ago!) and going on in the middle of Europe with a threat of use of nuclear weapons. As evident by now, russia is uncapable of maintaining any trustworthy agreements with any other nation, let alone its neighbors. It openly laughs at any civilized rule of law principles and considers thi…

Parent made a valid point. Why are you on about rabid dog analogies? Please don't urge more aggressive economic measures until you can explain why the existing ones haven't worked at all. [0]

It's grimly amusing that you think the thing that happened in 2014 was that Russia started a war. [1]

[0] https://www.xe.com/currencycharts/?from=RUB&to=USD

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pKcmNGvaDUs

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

#286

Post by Retric »

b112 wrote: post #272
Retric wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was responding to how to maximize use of land. Grazing is low investment for low returns, but rarely the only option. I am explicitly not saying significant investment is economically viable, we have a vast surplus of farmland. That said, historically people would improve land because they had a labor surplus and few options for long term investments. We are living in a world where thousands of years of such decisi…

but rarely the only option. Unless you do crazy things, there is more land suitable for grazing only, than not. And doing crazy things makes zero sense in the context of this conversation, which was about how cattle are all some land is good for. Your argument seems to boil down to "well, we could literally move mountains of dirt, or perform massive terraforming projects on useless soil!," well of course , and so wha…

PS: Just to add.

Take the soil example, yes it would be billions per 100 acres, because on that scale (the Canadian shield) you'd either have to desoil massive amounts of usable farmless, or start grinding rock and creating new topsoil from that... so current market prices are meaningless!

Individual large river delta’s contain hundreds of cubic miles of soil. It’s not a limitless supply, but there is plenty of soil though not topsoil to cover 3 million square miles of the Canadian Shield.

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

#287

Post by ClumsyPilot »

strogonoff wrote: post #266
ClumsyPilot wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

" suggesting an alternative to capitalism for some reason, I’m reasonably sure that in any of them the society would suffer from the same issues" capitalism is a term so vague its meaningless in a policy discussion Neoliberalism, on the other hand, is spesifically responsible for many of the problems we are facing now. the fact that people worship it is also a problem, we have media hosts calling large scale landlord…

It’s not vague if the other side directly argues against capitalism. Then it means they can be arguing for is likely a command economy, which… yeah. Not going to solve anything. Which I am inclined to try to make abundantly clear in such a discussion. But I also disagree with you. “The system” should not reward anyone. People create value, and people reward those who they think provide value by becoming their custome…

> It’s not vague if the other side directly argues against capitalism. Then it means they can be arguing for is likely a command economy, which… yeah.

Could be feudalism, could be technocracy, could be replacing all limited companies with coops, could be getting rid of publically traded companies and allowing only partnerships.

> But I also disagree with you. “The system” should not reward anyone. People create value, and people reward those who they think provide value by becoming their customers or by investing into their business.

This is exactly the fantasy-land neoliberalism that got us in the shit to begin with.

It anwers none of the important questions of the day - what can be owned as intellectual property, who does it belong to, how long does it last, why is it that academic reseach is paid for by the tax payer but belong to private journals, why is it that when a company accuses someone of theft that the police investigates it at no cost to the company, but if you accuse the company of breaking the law you have to file a lawsuit at your expence.

Can you claim compensation when a company sells you a product that is 'environmentally friendly' but turns out they lied? What law breaking puts you in jail, and what law breaking just looses you money. What law breaking is prosecuted by the sate, and what lawbreaking is prosecuted in civil court by claimants.

Why is it that stock buybacks were illegal before 1982? Should they be illegal?

All of that is 'the system' and absolutely does determine who are the winners and losers.

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

#288

Post by cheese_goddess »

throwanapple wrote: post #240
cheese_goddess wrote: post #229

> Some grain by-products, such as maize husks, are unsuitable for human food. And feeding grain to animals does generate food for people indirectly, in the form of milk, meat and eggs. However, this process is highly wasteful. For every 100 calories of grain fed to a cow, just three emerge as beef. Along with other feed crops and pasture, rearing animals also uses land that could produce human food. But we don't only…

Do you have sources for claiming animals are the most efficient source of those micronutrients? Where do those animals get those micronutrients from? Why do they still need to be injected with supplements like vitamin B12? Why do you discount use of pasture for rewilding?

> Why do they still need to be injected with supplements like vitamin B12?

I've had this conversation many times before: maybe animals need to be supplemented with B12 where you live, but not where I live and I'm pretty sure not in most of the world, either. If we couldn't get enough B12 from meat and animal products we'd have been in real trouble a very long time ago. Like a couple hundred thousand years ago, at least.

But I should not use the word "efficiency" in this kind of context because it's really so vague what "efficiency" means that it can be used to mean anything at all and justify any kind of conclusion at all, even completely contradictory conclusions. For example: are chickens "efficient"? Sure, because you can pack a hundred of them in a square meter! Aren't chickens really "inefficient"? Obviously, since you need one chicken to lay one egg a day!

Mea maxima culpa. Animals are not "efficient" producers of B12. Instead, eating the meat of animals is how we naturally acquire our B12. Regardless of who actually makes it. How does that sound? Better I hope.

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

#289

Post by cheese_goddess »

arthur2e5 wrote: post #248
throwanapple wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have sources for claiming animals are the most efficient source of those micronutrients? Where do those animals get those micronutrients from? Why do they still need to be injected with supplements like vitamin B12? Why do you discount use of pasture for rewilding?

B12 is basically never made by eukaryotes. We humans use bioreactors or traditional fermentation cats to have bacteria do the job. Ruminants like cows get B12 by fermentation in the gut. Animal with smaller guts like chicken need it in food like us, generally via fermented food. There is no significant difference in bioavailability that I know of for B12, but there’s an argument to be had that meat is more palatable…

> We humans use bioreactors or traditional fermentation cats to have bacteria do the job.

OK, same line of reasoning as above, I guess. Answer me this question please: how did we get the B12 we needed to stay helahty before we knew about B12, or any other vitamin, or were capable of creating in bioreactors?

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

#290

Post by cheese_goddess »

throwanapple wrote: post #243
cheese_goddess wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is patently false. It is burning fossil fuels that is destroying the planet by contributing almost 75% of the global Greenhouse Gas Emissions: https://ourworldindata.org/emissions-by-sector#sector-by-sec... Please don't spread dangerous lies! By saying that meat is destroying the planet you're distracting from the true source of climate change: oil .

Biodiversity loss also counts as destroying the planet. Don't let climate change distract you from other sources of planet destruction. There's this concept called planetary boundaries.

> Don't let climate change distract you from other sources of planet destruction.

Not a good wording. Climate change is a major driver of biodiversity loss.

In general, there isn't any problem we're facing right now that's worse than climate change any way you look at it.

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