Essay by Eric Worrall
A global green campaign is in progress to reduce farm acreage and eliminate food waste, to prevent climate change and over-exploitation of natural resources.
We’ve overexploited the planet, now we need to change if we’re to survive
Patrick Vallance
Fri 8 Jul 2022 21.30 AESTAddressing the twin challenges of carbon emissions and biodiversity loss requires political will and leadership. Ambitious commitments must be made
The relationship between humans and nature is under intense and increasing strain. The report released today by Ipbes, the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (akin to the IPCC reports on climate change), provides compelling evidence that humans are overexploiting wild species and habitats. Harmful activities, including habitat destruction, poor farming practices and pollution, have altered ecosystems significantly, driving many species past the point of recovery. In Great Britain alone, of the 8,431 species assessed in the 2019 State of Nature report, 1,188 are threatened with extinction. Globally, there are an estimated one million at risk, with biodiversity declining at a faster rate than at any time in human history.
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The climate crisis is exacerbating the issue. Many species simply cannot adapt to the scale and pace of changing temperatures. For example, warming seas and ocean acidification are devastating coral reefs around the world. This year, the Great Barrier Reef suffered its sixth mass bleaching event since 1998 with more than 90% of reefs affected. In many cases, when an ecosystem loses biodiversity, it becomes less able to store carbon, contributing to further climate change. We have a vicious cycle: climate change leads to biodiversity losses, which in turn leads to further climate change. As governments around the world develop plans to reduce carbon emissions and conserve biodiversity, the message is simple: we must solve both problems together.
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There are also simple day-to-day things we can do to benefit our environment; for instance, reducing food waste. Currently about 30% of all food produced globally goes uneaten, meaning a significant proportion of the resources, and importantly the land used to grow, process, pack and transport it, is wasted and less able to support biodiversity.
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Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/jul/08/climate-crisis-biodiversity-decline-overexploited-planet-change-to-survive-aoe
Some greens have been pretty explicit about what they expect from us, with a proposal to genetically engineer gut flora, so people can metabolise and enjoy the taste of completely rotten food.
The UN spells out their expectations, in their food waste FAQ.
Key messages
- There is never room for food loss and waste!
- Reducing food loss and waste, provides a powerful means to strengthen the sustainability of our food systems and improve planetary health.
- Increasing the efficiency of our food systems and reducing food loss and waste, necessitates investment in innovation, technologies and infrastructure.
- Recovery and redistribution make good use of surplus food and contribute to improving access to food for the food insecure, preventing food waste and ensuring economic, environmental and social benefits.
- Diverting food waste to composting is better than sending it to a landfill, but preventing food from being wasted in the first place is an even better way to lessen the impact on the environment.
- Realising and maximising the positive impacts of reducing food loss and waste, requires good governance and human capital development, as well as collaboration and partnerships.
Read more: https://www.fao.org/international-day-awareness-food-loss-waste/en/
I believe it is no coincidence that the Dutch government is attempting to force a 30% reduction in lifestock. The Dutch are completely serious about implementing this green madness, they have no hesitation confronting farmers with lethal force when the farmers object to the deliberate financial destruction of their businesses. Maybe they figure that when food production is reduced, they won’t need so many farmers.
Once arable farmland and our food supply has been cut, my guess is politicians will explain its our fault if we go hungry. We should have listened when they told us to reduce our food waste to zero. Maybe they’ll help us out, and offer us some of those genetically engineered gut bacteria, so we can don’t have to discard the mouldy bits.
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Entirely rotten article
There you go . . . you spoiled it for me.
Remember that Ehrlich fellow decades ago, moaning on about famine and mass starvation? Then fertilizers and modern farming put paid to his claims. Now the Watermelons want to restrict those farming practices thereby killing off a few billion people — and chortling as they tell us it’s to save the planet from weather and that we should eat garbage food. It’s hard not to believe that mass death isn’t the point here.
The Netherlands and Canada export food; if farms don’t produce, somebody is not eating.
Ethics is a relativistic, selective, often opportunistic religion (i.e. behavioral protocol)… cargo cult, really, and primary enterprise of human rites in secular societies through time, space, and diverse blocs.
It looks like it’s already too late to prevent idiot Western policy prescription from creating global extreme poverty and famine, even if we stopped this global marxist putsch today. A major depression is now unavoidable.
The coming winter in the NH will be brutal and upward spiraling prices for everything is already baked in. BoJo suddenly realized it and was flapping around aimlessly trying to get more nat gas and coal too late. Germany knows their horrible mistake too late. US will have new lawmakers in November and will likely be least affected (though it will be tough for them too). Canada, NZ, Australia and the rest of Western Europe are so disconnected from reality they just won’t know what’s hitting them.
“We’ve overexploited the planet, ” – apparently they think that there is an optimal exploitation level /sarc
“The relationship between humans and nature” says everything you need to know. Humans are part of nature, not apart from it. When you start with such an epistemological error the rest is crap.
Relationship counselling is available for the faithful
He seems not to know that more efficient modern farming has allowed rather a lot of marginal farm land to go back to scrub and forest.
Except for that scrubland that is brought back into production for ethanol (in the US at least) with commensurate degradation to water quality.
Yes. And modern agricultural practices also mean that a lot more of our food reaches the dinner plate (in a far better condition). Previously a much higher percentage was devoured by pests and lost to spoilage before we were confronted with limited choice of very sub-standard food that caused higher frequencies of food poisoning and GI cancers.
Modern agriculture provides us with more, better, diverse (spit, there’s that much-abused word), safer, cheaper food than at any time in history. Yet the glass is always “half-empty” according to the usual suspects. And no, I don’t work in the industry or take money from it. The problem with the Western diet is what we choose to eat, not what is available.
According to the greens I’ve talked to, any use of nature by man is exploitation.
If men are not starving, that’s proof of over exploitation.
So when do the greens start reducing their exploitation?
They have to overexploit so that they can run around and tell everyone else to stop exploiting.
Reducing food waste to zero requires two basic things. Transportation to move surplus to scarcity. Refrigeration for preservation. India loses over 1/4 of what is harvested for want of both. Both add GHG. Cannot have it both ways. More magical thinking by the truly dumb.
For fruit and veg, also CO2 storage.
You also need the extensive use of chemicals to kill rodents and insects that would eat that food before it can get to the humans.
They have the transportation part hobbled completely by the EPA regulations on diesel emissions and the requirement of DEF. Most of the Urea used to manufacture it came from Russia before sanctions were imposed.
Now add BlackRock Inc controlling most of the Urea and the only railroad that ships it, Union Pacific. Now the price of fertilizer has tripled and DEF shortages are predicted. This will definitely impact grocery store shelves, which as any millennial will tell you is where food comes from.
Seems like Russia and China have both had programs to minimize food waste. I’ve never heard either country being footed as models for the practice.
It requires modern polymer packaging materials too. Encourage single use plastic.
“More magical thinking by the willfully delusional” is more to the point. We’ve been warned that liberalism is a mental disorder; this proposal provides more proof.
Spot on that MDCs waste very little food whereas LDCs often starve not from the lack of food production but due to the lack of transport logistics and storage. It’s the use of fossil fuels that minimizes wastage and the need for even more agricultural land use but the Green numpties simply don’t get it.
Rather they obsess over chucking out some pitiful mouldy or out of date food from our fridges whilst tonnes of food goes rotten or is devoured by pests in the third world. They’ll still use those global statistics to push their barrow though the same as they’ll amalgamate global air pollution to frighten children with their evil propaganda.
There’s an army of fanatics out there, and while some of the troops may be ‘working’ pro-bono, their leaders are certainly getting paid, either directly or indirectly by taxpayers. If we ever get around to cutting back Fed government overreach in the US, priority also has to be given to defunding all the UN programs that espouse big government eco-nonsense.
Good one Frank…smaller government.
Get rid of EVERY program or federal department which REQUIRES employing liberals to tell other people how to think.
CRT, DEI, DEA, FBI, DOJ, EPA, DOE, etc. etc.
We do things differently…
“Older farmers in England will be paid to retire under a UK government scheme to bring new blood into the trade.
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Some older farmers are resistant to new “green” methods, Environment Secretary George Eustice believes, and he wants them to move on.”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-57149744
God forbid people who actually know what they are doing continue to farm.
The new green methods didn’t work out too well in Sri Lanka.
Ah but that was because they didn’t do it right /sarc
AND didn’t have enough of other people’s money to make it work.
The UN is a blatantly false disseminator of information filled with lying politicians and tyrants. It should be pushed out of the U.S. and put on neutral ground. I suggest Antarctica.
If they were serious about cutting down on the acreage used for farming, they would stop promoting using food for fuel production. Ethanol has limited use in modern vehicles.
It is useful to know what the corruptocrats are intending by these statements. They are signaling that they only want a small number of people in the future.
We already had one pandemic that was poorly managed in most of the world. As I have heard, the Marburg virus is making a resurgence.
I don’t think they are done causing global de-population.
South Georgia Island.
And, pray, tell me what the penguins there have done to deserve such UNpleasant neighbours?
Auto
Obviously, no one remotely involved in food production, transport, or sales had anything to do with writing this proposal.
According to the woke, taking a course in college makes one better educated compared to a lifetime of actually doing.
Worse than that, far worse. According to one rather woke friend of mine, going to college makes you more intelligent – she really does believe that. It’s both sad and frightening that people don’t know any better.
Of the total land area of or planet of 149 million sq. Km. only 11 million is cropland while 28 million is considered pasture/herd lands. Another 12 million is bush, 39 million is forest and jungle, about 1.5 million is within city limits, but some cities are less than half urban development. Animal husbandry is the best way to economically utilize those 28 million Sq. Km. And the other half of the land area of the planet is rocks, desert, and ice.
You will read that livestock takes up nearly 80% of global agricultural land, yet produces less than 20% of the world’s supply of calories, but that is because pasture land is often not economically cultivable cropland, at least until there is demand for the crop to be grown upon it and people are willing to pay more for the types of food that could be grown on that land, such as potatoes. In fact, several countries pay farmers to NOT grow crops on a percentage of their cultivated land in order to keep prices stable enough to ensure economic viability of agriculture in their country.
Given enough rain or irrigation, a considerable amount of the animal pasture and bush lands could be made into cropland without the need to develop any of the desert lands, although attempts to grow vegetation in the dessert gets inordinate media coverage.
People who believe mankind is limited by our present ability to produce food just aren’t in touch with reality. We could produce 3 times as much. At the present time, hunger is the result of failure to distribute the available food, usually due to political strife, poverty, or lack of roads, transportation, and markets.
http://en.worldstat.info/World/Land
https://ourworldindata.org/agricultural-land-by-global-diets
Excellent comment, DMacKenzie.
The greens “newly discovered” issue of food waste (as evidenced by trayless dining in school cafeterias and college campus vegetable gardens) is almost entirely ignorant of reality. For centuries, legions of professionals in agricultural research and development, engineering and technology, teaching/extension and agribusiness have been continually improving the variety, quality and availability of food from pre-production to the consumer. Spurred by personal enterprise and profit motive or even mere survival for subsistence farmers/ranchers, efficiency and waste minimization have been integral to their efforts. In the U.S., for over 150 years, states have had ag research and extension programs getting the latest technologies, ag chemicals, cultivars, and methods into the hands of farmers and ranchers. Those thousands of extension agents are the true environmental educators, producing literature, holding field days and seminars, and giving one-on-one advice across the fence post.
Greens are largely ignorant busybodies who sit in their urban, campus or basement offices saying tsk tsk and making lists of how bad everything is while sipping their fair trade lattés. If they had lived in my parents generation, many of them would be doing this instead:
Or this:
Or this:
By my rough calculations, the world could easily feed a trillion people. So population and food production / waste are not the limiting factors. Environmental activists and stupid politicians should get off the backs of our primary producers of food and energy. But they won’t. From their twisted and fevered minds, on the macro-level, population must be slashed by any means possible, just so long as they are among the privileged few allowed to survive. They rail against Putin’s war, yet they intend to cause far more suffering and needless death.
As noted already, their mantra is DIE, Diversity, Inclusion & Equity. They make their goal perfectly plain. Unknown to these foolish, hapless green-shirted foot soldiers (even Mikey Mann and Andrew Dessler), they are also to be swept aside by the rich, powerful and insulated WEF, Soros, et al.
Of course the Greens make no mention of the importance of well designed packaging in reducing food waste. At the same time other Green initiatives seek to eliminate packaging and thereby exacerbate the food waste problem. Greens seem to expect food waste to disappear by magic.
But, but, but composting and/or plowing back under is Granholm’s response to a potential lack of fossil fuel derived fertilizers and is good management, according to someone who has never farmed.
Look madam, people have a financial incentive to reduce waste. Leave it at that. Round and round the circular reasoning goes.
As a former Governor to this long time Michigan resident,
I can assure you that Granholm knows a lot about natural fertilizers.
She has been spreading BS for years!
In composting the “dangerous greenhouse gas methane” is released into the atmosphere. In landfills it is collected and combusted to produce electricity.
So which is worse for the environment?
Back when I lived in the city(well to do suburb), every house invested in a large plastic composting thing. Over many years I never saw one emptied and compost put into the garden except mine. When they filled up they were left to rot.
Yes, but think how much virtue was signaled.
A phase three campaign pamphlet for overreach
The ABC’s of leftism
(A) Claim everything is wrong. or broken
(B) Claim that you must be in charge of fixing it
(C) Make everything you touch worse
“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary.”
― H.L. Mencken
Richard,
I like it, but I suggest there is a need to incorporate OPM; so, perhaps,
… (D) Spend huge amounts of Other People’s Money in achieving (C), above. . . .
Auto
Eliminate food waste- Quit turning it into ethanol…
Bill Gates and China buying farm land. Nitrogen is the new CO2 in calls for banning ….. already in process in the Netherlands and underway in Canada. Food processing plants burning up at an alarming rate all over America. Coincidental? The Socialists/Marxists/Communists are working their plan to control energy an food for the world.
A campaign to eliminate food would be a better description of their actions.
If there is no food surplus leading to “waste” the there is a deficit leading to hunger. There will never be a perfect equilibrium.
None of this is true, its jabberwocky. They are making claims that everyone could see but do not. Why is that, because there is nothing to see in what they say except it is not true.
Like in the old USSR while the average Russian had little food the rulers had all they wanted and had luxurious resorts set aside for themselves. That double standard can now be seen here with top politicians doing what they forbid citizens from doing.
Providing food to climatistas is a complete waste. We should eliminate that.
Far better to produce excess food, and not be able to consume all of it than to produce too little food and desperately consume the blighted potatoes, rotten tomatoes, and moldy rye. Excess food is sometimes “wasted” as in going to landfill, but that is largely because of elimination of other uses for it – such as pigswill. The less appetising outer leaves of the cabbage may be composted rather than eaten, but that is NOT a problem. Wasting enormous resources of time and energy to eliminate the waste of cheaply produced surplus food of marginal quality – refrigeration, transport, preserving – just to provide a sub-standard gruel forced onto the destitute IS a problem. Under normal market forces, the lower quality grains would go to animal feed, and only the worst would go to industrial alcohol production. Under the big green industrial complex, prime farmland is removed from food production so the elite can have fuel crops, and the poor can starve if there are not enough insects to feed them. Surplus is a good thing, and selecting the best quality to consume follows. Starvation is a BAD thing.
How are we going to stop the leaves from falling in the fall? Should they ALL be dumped in the — on Mars, or the moon? And potato skins after peeling, or will potatoes be banned? Crazy, Crazy, Crazy and getting worse every day!
AndyH
I am strongly inclined to dismiss ANYTHING that invokes “sustainablity.” Words can mean whaterever you want. Give me a formal, testable definition.
I can’t give you a definition because leftists are forever changing definitions of all terms useful to their political goals, but.
Example of “sustainable”: Renewable energy (unreliable) generation methods which themselves are 90% or more non-recyclable. When measuring on an economically recyclable scale, 95% or more non-recyclable.
So if something is “good” to a leftist it is “sustainable” regardless of the resources wasted and unrecoverable in implementing the system that is gooder than the old bad way.
Reducing/eliminating food waste is a good thing . . . preventing climate change is simply not possible.
It’s only a good thing if the value of the food saved exceeds the cost of saving it.
Ditto. Cost/benefit analysis, totally unnecessary to a leftist since they do every thing with other people’s money.
A campaign to elect abortion of the Green blight of environment, ecology, and rare Earth dumps? Progress… uh, one step forward.
“The UN spells out their expectations, in their food waste FAQ.”
I thought the UN’s position was that “ending hunger globally would be a disaster” as otherwise
there would be no one left willing to clean their toilets!
https://www.climatedepot.com/2022/07/06/un-journal-article-explains-the-benefits-of-world-hunger-ending-hunger-globally-would-be-a-disaster-who-would-clean-our-toilets/