From McGill University A plan to improve crop yields instead of shutting down industrial society as some potential eco terrorists want to do. Norman Borlaug made huge advances in agriculture. He was an American agronomist, humanitarian, and Nobel laureate who has been called “the father of the Green Revolution”. Borlaug was one of only six people to have won the Nobel Peace Prize, the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Congressional Gold Medal. He was also a recipient of the Padma Vibhushan, India’s second highest civilian honor. If this plan can do anything close to what Borlaug was able to accomplish, I’m all for it. FYI according to Wikipedia, “Green Revolution” refers to a series of research, development, and technology transfer initiatives, occurring between the 1940s and the late 1970s, that increased agriculture production around the world, beginning most markedly in the late 1960s, not to be confused with the counterproductive “deep green resistance”.
Feeding the world while protecting the planet
International team of researchers designs global plan for sustainable agriculture
The problem is stark: One billion people on earth don’t have enough food right now. It’s estimated that by 2050 there will be more than nine billion people living on the planet.
Meanwhile, current agricultural practices are amongst the biggest threats to the global environment. This means that if we don’t develop more sustainable practices, the planet will become even less able to feed its growing population than it is today
But now a team of researchers from Canada, the U.S., Sweden and Germany has come up with a plan to double the world’s food production while reducing the environmental impacts of agriculture. Their findings were recently published in the journal Nature.
By combining information gathered from crop records and satellite images from around the world, they have been able to create new models of agricultural systems and their environmental impacts that are truly global in scope.
McGill geography professor Navin Ramankutty, one of the team leaders on the study, credits the collaboration between researchers for achieving such important results. “Lots of other scholars and thinkers have proposed solutions to global food and environmental problems. But they were often fragmented, only looking at one aspect of the problem at one time. And they often lacked the specifics and numbers to back them up. This is the first time that such a wide range of data has been brought together under one common framework, and it has allowed us to see some clear patterns. This makes it easier to develop some concrete solutions for the problems facing us.”
A five-point plan for feeding the world while protecting the planet
The researchers recommend:
- Halting farmland expansion and land clearing for agricultural purposes, particularly in the tropical rainforest. This can be achieved using incentives such as payment for ecosystem services, certification and ecotourism. This change will yield huge environmental benefits without dramatically cutting into agricultural production or economic well-being.
- Improving agricultural yields. Many farming regions in Africa, Latin America and Eastern Europe are not living up to their potential for producing crops – something known as “yield gaps”. Improved use of existing crop varieties, better management and improved genetics could increase current food production nearly by 60 per cent.
- Supplementing the land more strategically. Current use of water, nutrients and agricultural chemicals suffers from what the research team calls “Goldilocks’ Problem”: too much in some places, too little in others, rarely just right. Strategic reallocation could substantially boost the benefit we get from precious inputs.
- Shifting diets. Growing animal feed or biofuels on prime croplands, no matter how efficiently, is a drain on human food supply. Dedicating croplands to direct human food production could boost calories produced per person by nearly 50 per cent. Even shifting nonfood uses such as animal feed or biofuel production away from prime cropland could make a big difference.
- Reducing waste. One-third of the food produced by farms ends up discarded, spoiled or eaten by pests. Eliminating waste in the path that food takes from farm to mouth could boost food available for consumption another 50 per cent.
The study also outlines approaches to the problem that would help policy-makers reach informed decisions about the agricultural choices facing them. “For the first time, we have shown that it is possible to both feed a hungry world and protect a threatened planet,” said lead author Jonathan Foley, head of the University of Minnesota’s Institute on the Environment. “It will take serious work. But we can do it.”
The research was funded by NSERC, NASA, NSF
The study Solutions for a Cultivated Planet was published in Nature. To read an abstract: http://www.nature.com/nature/
Most of Oz arable land is pasture (see the pic). There is a reason for that. It is not good land for growing crops, but it is good for feeding cattle. You cannot just wish it to change, and expect it to happen. I suspect there is a lot of that the world over.
“Payment for ecosystem services”, well, where exactly is the money for this going to come from? Since this would be a government program, then it would have to come from taxes; in other words, it would have to be taken by force. “Certification”, that means you can’t do it unless we tell you you can do it, if you do it when we say you cannot, we will use force. All this using force to stop people from doing things they need to live means a lower economy, yet you have to tax them for those “incentives”, so where are they going to get the money? And the money won’t be worth as much anymore anyway, since you have stopped them from growing any food that they can buy with it, so even the people with money will have a hard time eating, since there is no food to buy with their money. Result, the rich will eat, the middle class will become poor, and the poor will starve. And then…well, all that use of force, and all that money from taxes, some people enjoy the use of force and extracting money from others by force, what will that sort of person do with this increased power to do so, are they the sorts of things that lead to greater efficiency, a better life, or the sorts of things that lead to graft, corruption, dictatorship, revolutions, murder, and war?
And “ecotourism”, where exactly are you going to get all the power (fuel, especially fossil fuel), to move all these people to the jungles for their tour? Just how many people can you move, exactly how many even want to go to those hot sticky disease filled jungles anyway? How much of the jungle will you need to cut down for roads, bridges, parking lots, airports, hotels and all the infrastructure for all those air conditioners and the like, power plants to run them, etc etc et-cetera.
Well, water, that’s a biggie. I know one way to get a lot of water, nuclear power. Yes, enough cheap, safe (as Japans proved, number of deaths from radiation, still zero) nuclear power and we can do mass desalination, less water needing to be shipped downstream to cities, more water to pipe upstream for farms. We can also use all that power to help make those “nutrients and agricultural chemicals”. Enough nuclear power and we can also use it to do what the Germans did in WWII (which everyone conveniently forgets about when talking about “peak oil”), which is to make fuel from coal and even from air. That would mean more oil to make “nutrients and agricultural chemicals” out of.
“Strategic reallocation” means force, I take it from you and give it to someone else. If I have that, what sort of person am I likely to be, what sort of person likes to use force? Who am I likely to actually “reallocate” it to, people who actually need it, or friends, relatives, my political supporters, and the like? Can you say graft and corruption on a now worldwide scale? Does that promote efficiency of any kind? Some of the sorts of people attracted to global power such as Adolph Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Genghis Khan, just the sorts of people we want running things. And that’s just at the top, think of the hordes of petty bureaucrats, so many that you can’t watch them all…
“Shifting diets”, sooo, exactly how are you going to “convince” people to shift their diet? Sounds like force again, see above. I can see it now, police breaking into your home to inspect it for banned meat, if they catch any, two options, use force and take it, they can then either eat it themselves or they can deliver it (under threat of force) to their masters who will eat it (shame to waste it, right?), or they can let you keep it for a… consideration. Result, a lot of corruption. Meanwhile, the “great leaders” of all this will, of course, be chowing down on steaks every night, after all, all this “saving the world” is hard work, and don’t they deserve a little extra for all the hard work they are doing? I doubt that meat production would even slow down with that horde of government types at the trough.
As for biofuels, see nuclear power above, unneeded. One thing you should know, however, a lot of the corn grown for biofuels is corn that humans cannot eat, corn that can grow on land that is not so “prime”. However, if we would stop subsidizing it, they could grow other things, such as animal feed, the animals themselves, and such food crops as will grow there, for which there is now much higher demand. Frankly, food prices have gone up enough that the only reason they continue to grow biofuels is because they are mandated to do so by law (force).
Another thing we can do in the USA at least, is go away from the current single buyer mandated system. Farmers basically are required to sell to a monopoly, which, being a monopoly, naturally pays less to the farmers then they would if there was competition driving prices up. Higher prices, they grow more food (and prices drop some again), we were trying to grow more food here, right? More people growing and shipping and selling food, a more vigorous economy, more able to afford whatever higher prices may result in farmers actually being paid the market value of their crops.
“Reducing waste”, riiiight, a giant worldwide bureaucracy, so many petty bureaucrats that we cannot watch them all, will certainly promote efficiency, right?
One way to reduce spoilage, make sure it can be packaged and/or shipped before that happens, that takes power, and lots of it, see nuclear power above.
I know a way to reduce a lot of the pest consumption at least in India. In India, rats are considered sacred. So, to reduce this problem, ban Hinduism. Good luck with that…
NW Australia could probably support a couple of million people, if irrigated cropping agriculture (eg rice) was allowed. I was stunned on a recent tour of this supposedly arid poorly producing reserve land. This is using Indonesian traditional methods of wet rice paddies, on one river. There are other rivers. Politically, the Greens would have an apoplectic fit, they have already moved to lock up millions of acres of potential paddy. Starvation is always a political problem, rarely anything else..
Just look at Zimbabwe’s agricultural collapse due to the marxist dictatorship or North Korea. That’s where the real problem lies.
Re. my post above this one on how such worldwide social engineering to increase food production would actually result in massive corruption and probably a loss of production, let see how that worked out with government funded and mandated “green energy” here in the USA.
One of the types of “green energy” (think dollar bill green and you ‘get it’) is solar power, such as the government funded (half million dollar loan) Solyndra solar power company, which, after getting the money, went bankrupt. Some quotes about how they got the money “the company’s biggest investor, George Kaiser, bundled more than $50,000 in contributions for the President’s 2008 campaign, and visited the White House four times before the loan from the Department of Energy was finalized). “This year, even as Solyndra approached bankruptcy, the company and the White House kept it a secret, telling Congress and the workers everything was going great until the day it shut its doors.” ” And Obama’s Energy Department took the unusual step of restructuring the loan to Solyndra, so that private investors would be paid off before taxpayers in the event of a bankruptcy”. This latter suggests strongly that bankruptcy was actually expected, and that this was merely grand theft by Mr. Obama, to take taxpayer money and pay off one of his supporters.
And about government “stimulus money” ” Statistics show that stimulus money was overwhelmingly directed toward projects in Democratic congressional districts, not Republican ones. Even for those who believe that government spending can boost economic growth, that’s a red flag suggesting money was handed out to pet causes and constituencies, not to those who could necessarily use it most wisely. And the actual effect on creating jobs of all this “stimulus” is ” As for the “green jobs” that would result from showering cash on companies like Solyndra, the Washington Post crunched the numbers in September 2011 and found failure: Instead of creating 65,000 jobs, as promised, the $38 billion loan program which included Solyndra could only claim 3,545 jobs.” (which means that 95% of the money was wasted, or perhaps more accurately, stolen).
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/rich-noyes/2011/10/11/reality-check-abc-cbs-and-nbc-bury-news-taxpayer-money-squandered-obama-#ixzz1aVQjfGrl
This is why I said “Strategic reallocation” means force, I take it from you and give it to someone else. If I have that, what sort of person am I likely to be, what sort of person likes to use force? Who am I likely to actually “reallocate” it to, people who actually need it, or friends, relatives, my political supporters, and the like? Look above and you can see this in action now. Now, imagine this worldwide, imagine this with a global scale horde of bureaucrats, so many that you cannot possibly watch them all.
If we want a government that can give us everything we want, we must have a government that can take everything we own.
If they can take it all, they then ask themselves, why not just keep it?
This graph says it all – and it is from wikipedia – food production per capita up 25% worldwide over past 40 years.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Food_production_per_capita_1961-2005.png
So, at the same time the globe was warming and CO2 was increasing, and global populations more than doubled, food product outpaced population growth!!
Could it be that plants like it warmer with more CO2?
TRM says:
October 13, 2011 at 1:28 pm
Crazy idea 101. If they don’t want it sold in their country in order to keep the price high for their producers then they should pay shipping to the areas where starvation are occurring.
That has been done before. It destroys the market for farmers in the countries where people are hungry, driving farmers out of business, ensuring that even more people starve the next year.
Consider for example what would happen in the US if for example a country like China was to price its currency artificially low. Over time Chinese products would be so much cheaper than US products that it would be all that Americans would buy. This would drive US companies out of business and cause a huge balance of trade problem. At the same time Americans would lose their jobs and erode the tax base, driving the US government into debt. The Chinese, flush with cash from the trade imbalance would be only too happy to lend this money back to the US government. Eventually as the situation was allowed to continue, the US would be forced either to default on its debt, or the US people would be effectively owned by the Chinese.
This whole article is wrong-headed. There is no shortage of food. There -are- totalitarian governments that starve off portions of their populations. That is what happened in Ethiopia and is happening in Somaliland now. That is why we have so much excess corn in America that we can turn a few percent into ethanol – because thanks to Borlaug’s revolution reaching the developing world, we in America no longer feed the world. We aren’t needed for that anymore.
James H says:
October 13, 2011 at 9:40 am
The study also points out the harm caused by being a “locavore”. This requires that everything
that you want to eat be grown locally,
Imagine if you extended this to all products, not just food. For example, only use metals mined, smelted, and machined within 100 miles of your house.
I recall a recent study that showed that the major difference between Neanderthals and modern humans was trade. Neanderthals had bigger brains and were stronger than modern humans, but they didn’t survive.
Neanderthals used locally produced tools. Modern humans of the same era used tools produced hundreds or even thousands of miles away, acquired likely through trade. These tools were typically of much better quality than Neanderthal tools, having been produced using the best materials for the job. Over time it was the better tools, using better materials, that made modern humans more successful..
Not enough food to eat yet more corn is going to ethanol in the US than is going to animal feed:
http://green.autoblog.com/2011/10/12/more-corn-now-going-to-ethanol-than-animal-feed/
oMan says:
October 13, 2011 at 8:43 am
“If wishes were horses, then beggars would ride. …These five high-level recommendations are all very well. But they are neither novel nor, in this general form, actionable. The lack of novelty forces us to ask, “why haven’t people done much of this already?” The lack of specificity forces us to ask, “what makes your plan likely to succeed –with breakthrough efficiency and broad acceptance– where so many other plans have not?””
Ditto.
“I hope to read the underlying Nature article, which may answer some of my concerns.”
Doubtful. These concerns and pie-in-the-sky answers to them are stock column filler for books, newspapers, and magazines everywhere.
Population control is the fallback position that kicks in automatically if nothing else is done. Population outgrowing the food supply is a problem that mother nature has solved countless times in the past.
crosspatch says:
October 13, 2011 at 6:20 pm
“Not enough food to eat yet more corn is going to ethanol in the US than is going to animal feed:”
There’s plenty of food in the U.S. Obesity is a major health problem here fercrisakes. We should probably turn so much grain into ethanol that the price of corn syrup goes so high that people here can’t afford to get fat on it.
Just sayin’
Dr. Dave says:
October 13, 2011 at 11:25 am
These “researchers” apparently didn’t do much in the way of research. ….
If we could end ethanol subsidies and the government mandated use the industry would collapse. Within two years the cost of food would drop precipitously. If feed stock gets cheaper, so does meat and every other product made from these crops. I wouldn’t dare sully the good name of Norman Borlaug with this tripe.
Speaking of not doing much in way of research and of “tripe” … so many outright falsehoods, and these people actually believe what they claim. If only people would put as much effort into researching these other topics as they do in climate issues we’d all be far better off.
First – ethanol subsidies are being ended – on June 16th senators from both parties voted by sizeable margins to repeal a tax credit and tariff on ethanol.
Second, there is virtually zero credible evidence that “food prices would drop” let alone “precipitously” if ethanol use was ended. This claim is classic “tripe” … sadly almost exactly like the AGW proponents claims, unsupported by facts.
To start, numerous reports have shown that corn price contributes a tiny fraction to the cost of food using corn – one set of examples (from 2008 story):
For example, an 18-ounce box of corn flakes contains about 12.9 ounces of milled field corn. When field corn is priced at $2.28 per bushel (the 20-year average), the actual value of corn represented in the box of corn flakes is about 3.3 cents (1 bushel = 56 pounds). (The remainder is packaging, processing, advertising, transportation, and other costs.) At $3.40 per bushel, the average price in 2007, the value is about 4.9 cents. The 49-percent increase in corn prices would be expected to raise the price of a box of corn flakes by about 1.6 cents, or 0.5 percent, assuming no other cost increases.
and:
In 1985, Coca-Cola shifted from sugar to corn syrup in most of its U.S.-produced soda, and many other beverage makers followed suit (see “High-Fructose Corn Syrup Usage May Be Leveling Off” in this issue). Currently, about 4.1 percent of U.S.-produced corn is made into high-fructose corn syrup. A 2-liter bottle of soda contains about 15 ounces of corn in the form of high-fructose corn syrup. At $3.40 per bushel, the actual value of corn represented is 5.7 cents, compared with 3.8 cents when corn is priced at $2.28 per bushel. Assuming no other cost increases, the higher corn price in 2007 would be expected to raise soda prices by 1.9 cents per 2-liter bottle, or 1 percent.
What about beef?
Using ratios and data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, a simple pass-through model provides estimates of the expected increase in meat prices given the higher corn prices. The logic of this model is illustrated by an example using chicken prices. Over the past 20 years, the average price of a bushel of corn in the U.S. has been $2.28, implying that a pound of chicken at the retail level uses 8 cents worth of corn, or about 4 percent of the $2.05 average retail price for chicken breasts. Using the average price of corn for 2007 ($3.40 per bushel) and assuming producers do not change their animal-feeding practices, retail chicken prices would rise 5.2 cents, or 2.5 percent. Using the same corn data, retail beef prices would go up 14 cents per pound, or 8.7 percent, while pork prices would rise 13 cents per pound, or 4.1 percent.
Nothing remotely “precipitous” there – and these examples were from an older 2008 story – corn yields and production have continued to increase since.
They also do not take into account the significant byproduct production of ethanol … high value distillers dried grains feed, corn oil and other products. We are producing ethanol and STILL extracting a significant amount of animal feed at the same time.
Let me repeat – creating ethanol produces high energy, high quality feed stock, feed stock that directly replaces corn – every bushel of corn for ethanol produces appx 2.7 gallons fuel plus 18lbs DDGS feed.
Assuming you are one who thinks feeding corn to beef is a good thing (its not for a myriad of reasons, not the least of which cows are made to eat grass not corn – corn causes digestive problems and can only be fed in conjunction with antibiotics – which you then EAT with your steak) the animal feed produced with ethanol is higher in protein and higher in fat and generally more digestible than corn itself.
Which leads to another of the silly claims – that ethanol production creates a negative energy balance – that more energy is used than is created. Another simply false statement. With the exception of the thoroughly debunked, but oft quoted, work of Patzak and Pimentel, and work derived from them, the science is clear – corn ethanol production is net energy balance positive.
From the US Government – this is USDA quote but also can be found at Energy.gov:
USDA Releases Corn-Ethanol Industry Report Showing Improving Energy Efficiency
WASHINGTON, June 21, 2010 – USDA’s Chief Economist Joseph Glauber today announced the publication of a report by the Office of Energy Policy and New Uses that surveyed corn growers for the year 2005 and ethanol plants in 2008, which indicates the net energy gain from converting corn to ethanol is improving in efficiency….
This report measures all conventional fossil fuel energy used in the production of 1 gallon of corn ethanol. For every British Thermal Unit (BTU) unit of energy required to make ethanol, 2.3 BTUs of energy are produced. The ratio is somewhat higher for some firms that are partially substituting biomass energy in processing energy. Since the last study in 2004, the net energy balance of corn ethanol has increased from 1.76 BTUs to 2.3 BTUs of required energy.
According to the report, overall, ethanol has made the transition from an energy sink, to a moderate net energy gain in the 1990s, to a substantial net energy gain in the present. And there are still prospects for improvement. Ethanol yields have increased by about 10 percent in the last 20 years, so proportionately less corn is required. In addition to refinements in ethanol technology, corn yields have increased by 39 percent over the last 20 years, requiring less land to produce ethanol….
Note this is based on 2008 numbers – with continued increases in corn yields and ethanol process these numbers are yet higher today.
Conclusions
1. Ethanol subsidies are already being discontinued, result of a bipartisan vote this past summer.
2. Corn price does not have even remotely a “precipitous” effect of food prices – a doubling of corn price causes a few cents difference in a box of corn flakes or a bottle of pop, and a nominal change, single digit percentages, in price of beef.
3. Feed stock – creating ethanol already produces a significant amount of high value feed stock which significantly mitigates use for ethanol.
4. Corn as feedstock – Cows are not made to eat corn – it is less digestible and causes significant health issues with require large doses of antibiotics. These antibiotics are passed thru the to beef humans consume, They are also “pooped” into the environment at concerning levels. The end result is continued degradation of the efficacy of these antibiotics. In some aspects we would likely be better served to continue to use corn for ethanol, rather than switching to cellulosic on marginal lands and instead use those lands for grasses for cattle feed – at least in theory greatly reducing need for antibiotics in the food chain and thus excreted into environment.
5. Energy balance – claims that ethanol production has a negative net energy balance are even more absurd and unsupported bu science the global warming claims. Even corn based ethanol production sees a significantly positive net energy balance – approaching 3 to 1 today. New methods – cellulosic etc – are expected to be multiples of that – 6 to 8 to 1 in near future.
6. Use of ethanol – we DO have significant reserves of fossil fuels and I am solid proponent of their continued use. That said there is a finite quantity and production and use does has significant negatives associated. Ethanol IS a renewable energy – we can simply grow more each year on the same lands. Its is also a cleaner energy by far. Ethanol can also be produced domestically – every gallon we use is a gallon of oil we need to import, and $80 or so (per barrel) we deprive the madmen, dictators and despots running oil rich countries of (and yes I do realize not all oil is from these places).
Ethanol is not the solution to our domestic fossil fuel needs. It IS however a renewable, green, domestically produced PARTIAL solution to the issue. Subsidies are ending (big question there is when are we doing same for solar, wind and other such debacles?) and it will have to sink or swim on its own. And contrary to the AGW-like beliefs of many – it is not most of the bad things some claim it to be.
I’ll repeat – if people put a fraction of the effort into educating themselves on ethanol as they do climate change we’d all be better off. Its sad – ethanol skeptics too often are much like the AGW crowd – too often simply believe without learning the facts.
My brother and his son farm over 2000 acres in Iowa with part time help (like one or two additional people) in the spring and fall. A couple years ago they were visited by some rural folks from one of the countries in the southern part of Africa. Those people were incredulous that there were no locks on the storage bins and machine sheds, and that a similar size farm in Africa would need 300 people just to keep everything from being stolen.
Guess what ? I don’t think that certain countries, or continents for that matter, with a 2000 to 4000 year head start over the United States, are in the toilet because they could not find the right seeds or fertilizer. Those who assume such probably have the condition known as rectocranial inversion.
crosspatch says:
October 13, 2011 at 6:20 pm
Not enough food to eat yet more corn is going to ethanol in the US than is going to animal feed:
http://green.autoblog.com/2011/10/12/more-corn-now-going-to-ethanol-than-animal-feed/
Just like the AGW crowd – wonderful job of “cherry-picking” there … from USDA Crop Report:
The USDA Crop Report projects 2011 corn crop at almost 12.9 billion bushels, which is an increase of about 4% above the 2010 U.S. corn production – 3rd highest production on record. USDA lowered projections on national average corn yield to 153.0 bu./acre, just above the 2010 U.S. corn yield of 152.8 bu. ( due to unusually high temperatures and below-average precipitation across much of the Corn Belt during July). Estimates for corn usage in 2011-2012 for feed and ethanol were also reduced.
Of course we shouldn’t expect a “green” reporting source to tell the whole story or even offer perspective. Other reports on the story include comments like these:
“A primary reason for the shift in grain demand away from livestock is the thinning of herds and flocks in order to reduce red ink and improve prices for producers, University of Missouri Extension said in a statement released Thursday.”
“Some observers see report as noteworthy, others as a ‘footnote'”
“Pat Westhoff, director of the University of Missouri’s Food and Agricultural Policy Research Institute, cautioned that the projections for ethanol and feed use are very close, and … also pointed out that ethanol byproducts also become animal feed, so the bulk of the corn crop still goes toward food.”
There’s those pesky high quality distillers dried grains again – appx 1/3 of every bushel of corn for ethanol is returned in form of DDGS feed … no, that can’t possibly be any impact on use of corn as feed now can it? :rollseyes:
Oops … latest Corn Report projects surplus now up to just shy of 1 million bushels … highest in several years – we have a growing amount in excess of domestic AND export needs.
That is a KEY point … the US meets ALL of its domestic demand, including ethanol, plus they sell every bit of corn foreigners want to by, and still have hundreds of millions of bushels surplus left over. Oh, and we apparently exported 370 million gals of ethanol last year, supplied 100% of the current domestic needs plus had enough to export.
Dave Springer says:
October 13, 2011 at 7:19 pm
crosspatch says:
October 13, 2011 at 6:20 pm
“Not enough food to eat yet more corn is going to ethanol in the US than is going to animal feed:”
There’s plenty of food in the U.S. Obesity is a major health problem here fercrisakes. We should probably turn so much grain into ethanol that the price of corn syrup goes so high that people here can’t afford to get fat on it.
Just sayin’
High fructose corn syrup is far worse to our collective health – and as a result our wealth – than ethanol could ever possibly be. The increased cost of health care due to obesity and problems high fructose corn syrup contributes to IMO dwarf anything ethanol could do …
What decision regarding food production is going to be more accurate–that made by a bunch of bureaucrats that don’t have any “skin in the game”, or the farmer who must grow sufficient high-quality food to achieve a profit (or else lose his farm to the local bank)?
I’m betting on the farmer–the agricultural guru, the hard-working, sweat-drenched, humble farmer who has “skin in the game” clear up to his proverbial neck. That’s what makes the US the number 1 food producer, but the more “direction” forced upon them by government, the less productive they’ll be.
A. Scott says:
October 13, 2011 at 8:20 pm
Being obese is equivalent to smoking 2 packs of cigarettes a day–not a healthy situation at all!
I was excited to see this post, because I knew that Gail Combs would bring great wisdom to the discussion. Gail, you did not disappoint! Major props to Lucy Skywalker as well.
For an exciting and experience-based alternative to the tired globalist McGill formula, see Joel Salatin’s explanation of the efficacy of human-scale technology-enhanced grass-based agriculture, “Eco-Agriculture Can Feed the World”, here:
http://www.springhillfarms.us/uploads/2/7/2/7/2727868/sept10_salatin.pdf
Biochar/terra preta discoveries are also very exciting and encouraging, carbon sequestration side “benefits” notwithstanding. (Google them)
Concerning the role of pastured meat in the human diet, this from “Two Years Before the Mast” by Richard Henry Dana, events ca. 1836:
“This was the most lively part of our work. A little boating and
beach work in the morning; then twenty or thirty men down in a
close hold, where we were obliged to sit down and slide about,
passing hides, and rowsing about the great steeves, tackles, and
dogs, singing out at the falls, and seeing the ship filling up
every day. The work was as hard as it could well be. There was not
a moment’s cessation from Monday morning till Saturday night, when
we were generally beaten out, and glad to have a full night’s
rest, a wash and shift of clothes, and a quiet Sunday. During all
this time– which would have startled Dr. Graham– we lived upon
almost nothing but fresh beef; fried beefsteaks, three times a
day,– morning, noon, and night. At morning and night we had a
quart of tea to each man, and an allowance of about a pound of
hard bread a day; but our chief article of food was beef. A mess,
consisting of six men, had a large wooden kid piled up with
beefsteaks, cut thick, and fried in fat, with the grease poured
over them. Round this we sat, attacking it with our jack-knives
and teeth, and with the appetite of young lions, and sent back an
empty kid to the galley. This was done three times a day. How many
pounds each man ate in a day I will not attempt to compute. A
whole bullock (we ate liver and all) lasted us but four days. Such
devouring of flesh, I will venture to say, is not often seen. What
one man ate in a day, over a hearty man’s allowance, would make an
English peasant’s heart leap into his mouth. Indeed, during all
the time we were upon the coast, our principal food was fresh
beef, and every man had perfect health; but this was a time of
especial devouring, and what we should have done without meat I
cannot tell. Once or twice, when our bullocks failed, and we were
obliged to make a meal upon dry bread and water, it seemed like
feeding upon shavings. Light and dry, feeling unsatisfied, and, at
the same time, full, we were glad to see four quarters of a
bullock, just killed, swinging from the fore-top. Whatever
theories may be started by sedentary men, certainly no men could
have gone through more hard work and exposure for sixteen months
in more perfect health, and without ailings and failings, than our
ship’s crew, let them have lived upon Hygeia’s own baking and
dressing.”
Doomed to failure. All five recommendation are the very thing the free market would do If it was allowed but its not.
No 1. will get you shot by left wing red necks in Brazil, hacked to bits in the Congo and beheaded in parts of South East Asia. People are desperate. Forests are productive but we don’t have the technology to get at that harvest and get it out. Fruit on 80 m trees are worthless. Corruption rules the third world and particularly these projects.
No 2. Is wrong the yield gap can’t be bridged with current and imported crop varieties. Indigenous crops are immune to local pests etc but they buy that immunity with reduced energy to yield to the ‘crop’ {the part we want}. They are using part of the productivity to deal with the pests. Breading local seed crops to higher yield requires true markets for the seeds and high, impossibly high, prices to the growers. Old subsistence growers get/ got phased out. Subsidies have been tried for decades and failed. Government money gets skimmed. Private and charitable projects are needed.
No 3. Is the carbon partitioning problem. Building real fertile soil requires energy and that energy must come from the crop because most fertilisers have no energy content. It also requires biodiversity, polyculture systems with fertilising plants: legumes and deep rooted mulch plants, pest control plants within the crop. These all reduce the need for external fertiliser and pesticides but they also use up some of the photosynthetic potential reducing the yield marginally with most crops. We can’t harvest broad acre poly-cultures. We have no one funding the harvester research. You can garden a small mixed polyculture but we don’t have the technology to farm it yet.
No. 4 Is the classic food verse fuel lie. You can’t make biofuel without making protein. All cells have protein. It must be extracted from the energy product or the energy product must be extracted from it. I.E. Soya and Canola press cake, 90% protein, or beer mash 30% or dried distillers grains with soluble’s, at 10% moisture content its the highest concentration of plant protein known. Governments have simply regulated it into land fill and dog food cans by botching the process of sizing the ethanol plants or seed oil plant to a size that get the stuff back to the farm or onto the human food market. Most stock feed is damaged crops not safe for humans to eat. And while I know how to cook grass most humans can’t eat grass, straw or hay. Diversifying the number of animals we farm and finding some that tolerate conditions that would kill most sheep and cattle are opposed be many green organisations. We know how to farm turtles, hippo’s, gazelle and kangaroos but we are forbidden to try.
No.5 is precisely what modern food multinationals and super-markets do. Its why they work. Its why branding works. Its why there’s four layers on the food as it leave the truck at the loading dock. Whole foods, unprocessed foods, and slow foods all produce more green waste. Most third would markets and many organic markets have huge piles of rotting plant matter while a fast food joint has a much smaller pile of rubbish, mostly plastic and paper, headed to free carbon sequestration in the nearest land fill.
If we develop the technology to:
1. farm the tall jungle,
2. domesticate and breed up 2 new cultivars a month (we average 1 a month),
3. harvest poly-cultures,
4. farm biofuels for both their food and their fuels.
5. Brand, Package, dry and store third world like we do with western crops and direct the factory waste streams back to the farm as feed or fertiliser, We will feed 30 billion.
If that not enough we have tree terrestrial planets, 30 moons and 1000 000 asteroids that we can mine to build space farms.
This is so frustrating to see people going back the the drawing board but not rubbing out the previous failed attempts rules and assumptions.
Sceptics might want to back off a bit here. What we did for India and Pakistan in the 1960s has yet to be done in Africa, and there’s lots of room for improvement throughout South America and Asia. Hybrid and GM crops increase yields, as does fertilisation. Note also, where high intensity farming has removed pressure on food supply, human fecundity has decreased. It can’t be a bad thing if we increase agricultural productivity to the point where increasing population can be fed using less land — if we hadn’t been doing just that for the last half-century, something close to a billion would’ve starved already. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I think the 9 billion peak for human population comes closer to 2100 than 2050. Either way, on current trends population will DECREASE thereafter. If population stabilises or shrinks world-wide, as it can and should, we might need to find something else to argue about: climate change and environmental degradation — real, imagined, or exaggerated — will be much easier to deal with. We need to support this kind of science, for the simple reason that it works. Nothing could demolish the extreme Greens’ raison d’etre faster or more effectively.
Gail Combs, your comments describe very succinctly many of the main issues around this matter that are rarely mentioned. Thank you!
As to the “shifting diets” suggestion, which is based on the totally unproven assumption (which I call the “old, tired vegan argument”) that dedicating croplands to direct human food production would be the most efficient use of land, I would like to extend on your comment by pointing to the life work of Allan Savory (http://www.savoryinstitute.com/allan-savory/) who received the 2010 Buckminster Fuller Challenge (http://challenge.bfi.org/) award from his work. His main argument is that without appropriate use of livestock the land base will continue to deteriorate – in the words of Savory himself; “I believe, today humanity’s entire future hangs on a very slender thread – learning how to manage livestock to address biodiversity loss/desertification/climate change. If we don’t do that we’re gone – with all higher life forms, we’ll be gone. It hangs on this little thread, and this is the most condemned thing.” (from his lecture in Dublin 2009,
). Farmers around the world are using similar principles with commercial success, perhaps Joel Salatin as the most prominent example).
(*) Maybe it’s worth mentioning explicitly, that Savory has chosen not to take a firm stand in the CO2-climate link, but rather prefers not to take sides in the matter, probably because it would divert attention from the main issues he wants to discuss. In some of his texts he has expressed some amount of skepticism about this association too. His main arguments relate to the deteriorating soil and its local climatic effects (some of which he has proven can be reversed by appropriate use of livestock).
bladeshearerJack Maloney says:
October 13, 2011 at 9:13 am
Citing Norman Borlaug’s ‘Green Revolution’ is troubling. Among the unintended consequences of Dr. Borlaug’s ‘revolution’: family farming in places like Mexico is being displaced by industrial-scale farming, requiring accelerated use of fossil fuels, costly patented hybrids, chemical fertilizers and pesticides, increased water use and groundwater pollution. Mechanization is also displacing farm workers, driving rural-to-urban migration and sending Latinos northward into the US. Similar impacts are occurring in India, Africa and South America. Increasing crop production without regard to these effects simpy destabilizes rural areas as it enables further population growth.
Meanwhile, America keeps burning food for biofuels, driving up food costs around the world. Judging by past performance, I’d be extremely cautious about bright new ideas from NASA and NSF.===============
agreed,
I add the borlaug fix actually didnt Fix much..within a short time people forgot about food shortage and had more kids..and then the green revolution crops showed flaws, like now the worlds wheat /other etc that had the african resistance strain to old rust varietys whops they all related! and now we get african UG99
monocrop culture and chemicals have limited and dubious value.
ever seen Joel Salatins farm? no imported chem /fertilisers, healthy land and animals.
search polyfacefarm and watch. viable and efficiant and NOT hitech GM.
when serious independant Human trials of GM are done and published..then theyd be worth a look at. a 90day trial on a limited volume of animals at best is NOT proof of safety.
the agricorps are NOT our friends, theyre in it for profit above all.
and Nature..lost cred a while back supporting AGW
It appears that much of the reason that there is not enough food around the world is more political than anything else. Since the 20th century begain, the rate of food growth has expanded around 30% more than the population growth (if memory serves). This is from the U.N.’s own estimates.
So it appears that we have more than enough food to avert the deadly famines so endemic in many 3rd world countries. That is, if we can get the deadly politics of hate out of the way and let the free market do its work.
A good example of what not to do is Zimbabwe. 30 years ago it was the bread basket of africa. Since Robert Mugabe took over, it has become the basket case of africa.