Lazar wrote:@Tyyr: It's interesting, I just read an
article in National Geographic recently about the global food crisis; it talks about how technological advancement led to the Green Revolution in the mid-20th century, which led to a huge increase in world food production, and we need a second such revolution in order to keep pace with the growing human population.
If we're intent on using the same amount of land for farming as we do today, sure. However there is more arable land available than is used. Land you don't have to deforest to get to. Land that's not used because its just not worth farming it. Why? It's the economy. I hate to say it but poor people in other countries are not going to be a big profit center. Not when the ethanol (now there's a joke) plant down the way is willing to pay for your corn. Again, the problem is not that we can't grow enough food to feed all our people, it's entirely a political/economic/and just plain human nature issue. It can be done, it's just going to require some people to get outside their comfort zones.
For instance, eat less meat. I'll be honest, I'm a carnivore. I love meat. If you told me I'd only be able to eat meat from now on and no veggies I'd shed one little tear for the loss of broccoli and tomatoes then dig into a new york strip. It's not efficent though. I know this. The solution is simple though, eat less meat. Hell, I already do. As meat prices have increased I've just eaten less.
Also biofuels are a scourge right now. Why do you think the price of food is going up? Partly because we're turning it into gas. It doesn't take much added demand to drive prices up and when the price of grain goes up anything that needs it goes up to, like meat because feed got more expensive. You could feed a starving person in Africa for a year with the corn it takes to make a gallon of ethanol.
The Green Revolution kept millions of people from starving, but at the same time it has led to problems like aquifer depletion, desalinization and carcinogenic pesticide pollution in places like Punjab - prompting thousands of farmer suicides there recently. There are sustainable ways to increase production in developing countries (referred to in the article as the agroecological approach; they've had some great successes in places like Malawi), but I'm concerned that such methods will be skipped over in favor of more synthetics, more intensive irrigation, more rainforest clearances, etc.
Again, not a problem with the planet being able to sustain us. It's human stupidity. I agree with Rattan Lal on this. It's not that the techniques are bad, it's that they're being abused. Rather than using enough fertilizer to get results the amount gets doubled or tripled trying to eek out that last few bushels. Rather than just enough pesticide to do the job the field gets soaked so that anything that lands on it ever dies, again to eek out a few more bushels. The irrigation isn't wrong, the over irrigation just to be safe is. Not rolling husks and left overs back into the soil or practicing crop rotation is just stupid, but again a fallow field isn't making bushels.
Also, 1,400 deaths isn't thousands, it's hundreds.
Read a bit down the page. "Malawi's President Bingu wa Mutharika declared he did not get elected to rule a nation of beggars. After initially failing to persuade the World Bank and other donors to help subsidize green revolution inputs, Bingu, as he's known here, decided to spend $58 million from the country's own coffers to get hybrid seeds and fertilizers into the hands of poor farmers." What did I say? Political/Economic/Human-Stupidity. The man want's money in order to bring the green revolution to his country so he can FEED THE PEOPLE and what does the World Bank say? Nope. If that doesn't warrant a big FAIL I don't know what does. Now normally I'm a capitalist at heart but even I look at the minimal investment subsidizing agricultural investment takes versus the kind of rewards that come from it and even I say do it.
When I read things like this, "That only works in an era of cheap fossil fuels, and that era is coming to an end. Moving anyone to a dependence on fossil fuels seems the height of irresponsibility." What I hear is, "I'm willing to let a few brown people starve to death to save the planet." First, we're not running short on things like fossil fuels. If anything a reduced reliance on fossil fuels (which is not a bad thing) will free up those resources for making things like fertilizers. Increased prices of fertilizers would also make farmers seriously think about their use. Instead of just pouring it on higher prices would make them seriously think about how much to use to get the maximum benefit then stop.
I'm all for sustainable agriculture, and lets face it. In places like Africa and such it's probably the best approach because its one that can be maintained less expensively than the fertilizer soaked fields of the first green revolution. It works, it's good, I like it. However you have to temper that approach with the acknowledgment that the first problem we have is that people are dying right now. Like it or not they need the fertilizers and such to make food now. You're not going to convince a starving and impoverished village to use things like composting and such when the next village over is going fully to the fertilizers and making more than enough food to feed themselves and then sell the excess to fix that whole poverty thing. It's a growth and maturation process. Until people no longer have to wonder if they're going to be able to feed their children this week you're not going to convince them to shoot for loftier goals.
Instead of doing our best to beat the third world down and keep them there we need to help them out and share our experience. Show them what we learned the hard way, help them through things faster. Guess what, they don't have to reinvent the wheel. We've got the knowledge and technology to help them. We essentially give them the green revolution for free. Better seed, fertilizer, help them dig wells or divert rivers for irrigation. Once they can feed themselves we educate them about how to be good stewards, not over fertilize, not over produce, etc. Then we show them how they can feed themselves in a more sustainable way. We can help them get up to par from a food production stand point in one hell of a hurry.
Ya know what? Maybe it's not the absolute best thing for the planet. Maybe that means things will be a little less pristine there, but ya know what? I'd shoot a baby elephant right in the head if I have to choose between them and a starving child. Last panda bear? I'll skin the fucker to make a coat for freezing child. People first, and if that means a few species don't make it well then tough shit.
Essentially, I think humanity's growing food needs pose an environmental risk (based on what we've seen of the first Green Revolution) - I'm not saying that there's no hope for a sustainable approach, and I certainly do not think there's going to be any mass die-off of humans, but I see the potential for more short-sighted solutions that might cause further damage to the environment.
The first green revolution was partially about fertilizers and pesticides and those are a problem. However that ignores a huge part of what the green revolution was, better seeds. The seeds alone doubled crop output. Better seed. We have the ability now to start improving the seeds even farther. It's going to take time, and research, but we can do it. We're going to have to change some of our habits. We will probably need more farmers, more farm land, and prices will go up in the grocery stores, but it can be done. However we are not running out of space and we are not reaching the point where the planet can't sustain us.
The idealized alternative - zero or negative human population growth - would greatly lessen that risk; is there any reason why we need 9 billion over 6, or 4 - why that would be preferable? We may be able to pull it off - we may even be able to pull it off sustainably, although I'm skeptical - but it seems to me that sustainability and prosperity would be easier to achieve with a stable or lower population. Why push our agricultural output to the technological limit if we don't have to? (And I'm aware that we have little choice in reality; it's pretty much a certainty that the human population will continue to increase.)
But why is that the ideal alternative? Why is it ideal to start telling people, "No, you can only have two kids max." We would be the first species in history to willingly start removing itself from the planet. Biologically that boggles the mind.
Oh, lemme shed a little light on the extinction rate thing. Here's how they do it. Some biologist takes a grad student out and shoves them in an acre of land (sizes vary, just an illustration). The grad student is supposed to count everything they can in there, bugs, plants, animals, etc, and document it. A year later they are shoved right back out there again and are supposed to count everything again. They do this a couple times and over several different plots. If some animals don't get counted a few years in a row they are "extinct". Never mind that the animals might have moved, the student might have missed them, or they were transient to begin with. Nope, not there = extinct. We actually have no idea how many animals have actually gone extinct. No clue. We're pretty sure some of the big popular ones are gone like the dodo and such but again, we're not 100% certain even with some of them.
Extinction rates are estimates, more appropriately referred to as wild ass guesses. Of course with people being people and people having agendas anything that's estimated can be influenced so... "THOUSANDS OF SPECIES ARE GOING EXTINCT A YEAR!*"
*Probably, maybe, we really have no idea but doesn't that sound alarming? FUND MY RESEARCH!
But yes, I second what Stitch has posted.
