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Gene banks aren’t enough to save the world’s food

longnow.org

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Re: Gene banks aren’t enough to save the world’s food

#61

Post by karaterobot »

Retric wrote: post #60
karaterobot wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's where the economics question comes in. How do you make a living as a farmer selling a very specific variety of squash, when there are now (let's say) 9000 varieties of squash on the market, and the same number of people out there buying squash?

The same way you make a living when there is 1 type of squash in the market and 9000 farmers planting it. Mostly through government subsidies sometimes supplemented by selling actual food eaten by actual people. That’s perhaps overstating things, but remove biofuels and we would have an even larger surplus even as everyone gets fat from excess production. Western farming has no real need for increased efficiency unle…

Setting aside the subsidies part, if every grocery store decided to stock 9000 types of squash, this could totally work.

Re: Gene banks aren’t enough to save the world’s food

#62

Post by robbiep »

prox wrote: post #48
favorited wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting, thanks! I'd never heard of The Long Now Foundation before.

Interesting. Gets you wondering what else you might not have heard of.

Go easy, they’re one of today’s lucky 10,000

Re: Gene banks aren’t enough to save the world’s food

#63

Post by tschwimmer »

citruscomputing wrote: post #35
karaterobot wrote: post #22

If there are hundreds of thousands of plant varieties in that massive seed bank in Svalbard, and only 150 plants are cultivated for consumption today, how the heck is eating a more diverse range of plants supposed to replace seed banks? Is it that everyone on earth is going to eat 1000x more plants than we do now, or is it that there will be 1000x more farms, each making 1/1000th as much money? I know the author is n…

If I understand correctly, it's that everyone will still eat < 100 plants, but they'll be different ones from everyone else. Maybe every grocery store won't have the exact same kinds of squash in it. Maybe we'll have more region-specific crops! The example given about olive trees is illustrative, I think.

how do you allocate which types of squash farmers will be able to plant? Knowing very little about farming, I do know that certain varieties have much more desirable traits than others. For example, yield, pest resistance, soil acceptance, etc. What if everyone just wants to grow the "good" kinds of squash? How do you allocate the winners and losers? How do you allocate who will get to eat the "good" squash?

Re: Gene banks aren’t enough to save the world’s food

#65

Post by wolverine876 »

aeternum wrote: post #37
karaterobot wrote: post #22

If there are hundreds of thousands of plant varieties in that massive seed bank in Svalbard, and only 150 plants are cultivated for consumption today, how the heck is eating a more diverse range of plants supposed to replace seed banks? Is it that everyone on earth is going to eat 1000x more plants than we do now, or is it that there will be 1000x more farms, each making 1/1000th as much money? I know the author is n…

My idea can't be wrong, it's the world that must change. That about summarizes these types of articles. Solutions that do not require the world to change its behavior should be favored. Perhaps we could launch seed containers into low orbits such that they automatically and safely return to earth centuries in the future just in case.

The way the world is today, that's the result of earlier people who changed it.

Almost everything we have, from religion to politics to technology to morality to language to culture, etc. etc., all comes from people who intentionally changed things. Compare us to our ancestors 10,000 years ago, nomads emerging from the Paleolithic with only stone tools, no writing, etc.

Reactionary perspectives - the hot trend of the unwitting - seem to think that the world was what they grew up with, as some natural state. Someone dreamed, worked, sacrificed, persuaded, etc. to make it this way.

It's great news - we can do it; we can make a better world. You don't have to be Copernicus or Jefferson to do it. Our ancestors paved the way, put down lane markers and signs, gave us every tool we need. What are you waiting for?

Re: Gene banks aren’t enough to save the world’s food

#67

Post by itsanaccount »

groby_b wrote: post #47
NoMoreNicksLeft wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I want my own small farm, but I think that I want to make food instead of money. It's a different proposition, I suppose.

This is likely not an answer. Small-scale sustenance farming is not enough to support humanity at scale. (Without ag-industry methods, we're about 4 billion people past the planets carrying capacity) Also, if that small farm is something you dream about, I strongly suggest actually working on a farm for a while. It is surprisingly not fun. I know "I'm gonna have a farm" is a popular escapist things for many folks in…

While I agree its mostly escapist for tech workers who dream of building a farm, as someone who didn't just dream but am actively following it, I very much enjoy the hard work.

Maybe because I grew up on a farm and this is returning, but also because I do expect about 4 billion people to die in the coming climate decline? collapse? and would like to leave better more resilient bones (buildings, good soil, lumber trees, good game, maybe some tools, landrace seeds etc), the skeleton of a more sustainable life to those who come after.

Re: Gene banks aren’t enough to save the world’s food

#68

Post by groby_b »

chefkd wrote: post #56
groby_b wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is likely not an answer. Small-scale sustenance farming is not enough to support humanity at scale. (Without ag-industry methods, we're about 4 billion people past the planets carrying capacity) Also, if that small farm is something you dream about, I strongly suggest actually working on a farm for a while. It is surprisingly not fun. I know "I'm gonna have a farm" is a popular escapist things for many folks in…

This may be a little tangential (sorry) how is the planet's carrying capacity calculated? The malthusian school of thought never made sense to me

Super-simplified explanation: Three things matter for carrying capacity.

1) How many calories does a human need to survive?

2) How many calories can we squeeze out of an acre of arable land?

3) How many acres of arable land are there?

The first one is pretty much immutable.

The third one is maybe somewhat mutable, but to a very limited extent. We can squabble how much, but let's assume it's fairly immutable. Large changes would need energy amounts that are currently prohibitive.

That leaves calories per acre. And that's where ag-industrial methods had an impact that's absolutely bonkers[1].

As the graph shows, this is not a fixed number - that's why Malthus' predictions ultimately didn't come to pass - but you need ag-industry to squeeze out those numbers. (Without mechanized agriculture, massive production of artificial fertilizer, and Borlaug's dwarf wheat, Earth would have run into massive hunger by the end of the 80s - look for "Green Revolution" for lots of info on that)

And small scale subsistence farming (which is what most folks think of when the say "I want to grow food") cannot utilize all of those techniques.

That's also where the "4 billion" number comes from - we know how many calories/acre non-industrial farming generated, and it was at best enough calories for ~4 billion people. Optimistically.

[1] https://www.researchgate.net/figure/USDA-per-acre-crop-produ...

Re: Gene banks aren’t enough to save the world’s food

#69

Post by Retric »

karaterobot wrote: post #61
Retric wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The same way you make a living when there is 1 type of squash in the market and 9000 farmers planting it. Mostly through government subsidies sometimes supplemented by selling actual food eaten by actual people. That’s perhaps overstating things, but remove biofuels and we would have an even larger surplus even as everyone gets fat from excess production. Western farming has no real need for increased efficiency unle…

Setting aside the subsidies part, if every grocery store decided to stock 9000 types of squash, this could totally work.

Or 4,000 stores selling 3 un/labeled types.

Grapes, apples, and a few others get labels but I see a lot of generic items. Do you know the exact kind of carrots you’re buying in those little bags? Are your pumpkins just labeled pumpkins? How about blueberries etc etc.

Re: Gene banks aren’t enough to save the world’s food

#70

Post by SECProto »

kjkjadksj wrote: post #64
lm28469 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd be more worried about how polluted it is

You are not going to believe what they use to harvest and deliver wheat

I would suggest that the edge of a typical busy boulevard features 10-30 thousand vehicles per day, whose brake and tire particles in particular end up in the soil around the road. Typical farm fields might see 30,000 trips over the span of what, 100 or 1000 years? It's not in any way comparable to an urban roadway.
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