Food crisis looms warn scientists

[OKIsItJustMe]

http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2010/02/12/2816954.htm

Food crisis looms warn scientists

Friday, 12 February 2010 | Stuart Gary
ABC

A new report by Australian researchers claims far more needs to be done if we're to feed the estimated 9 billion people who will be living on the planet by 2050.

The report, by Professor Mark Tester and Professor Peter Langridge of the Australian Centre for Plant Functional Genomics at the http://www.adelaide.edu.au/">University of Adelaide, appears today in the journal http://www.sciencemag.org/">Science.

"The simple fact is while food production has increased by 32 million tonnes a year, an annual increase of 44 million tonnes a year is what's actually needed to meet the food targets for 2050 set down by the http://www.fao.org/wsfs/world-summit/en/">World Summit on Food Security," says Tester.

"But this represents a 38% increase over historical improvements in food production, and it needs to be sustained for the next 40 years.

...

[HBravo]

1. Sorry, calling fear mongering bs on this. nt

[DCBob]

5. Science is one of the most respected and professional journals in science..

Ignore this at your own peril.

[OKIsItJustMe]

6. Yeah, Science Magazine is notorious for "fear mongering"

:sarcasm:

http://www.sciencemag.org/special/foodsecurity/

Special Online Collection: Food Security

In the 12 February 2010 issue, http://www.sciencemag.org/special/foodsecurity/#section_in-science">Science examines the obstacles to achieving global food security and some promising solutions. News articles introduce farmers and researchers who are finding ways to boost harvests, especially in the developing world. Reviews, Perspectives, and an http://podcasts.aaas.org/science_podcast/327_5967_797/foodsec_hoddinott.mp3">audio interview provide a broader context for the causes and effects of food insecurity and point to paths to ending hunger. A special http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/327/5967/887b">podcast includes interviews about measuring food insecurity, rethinking agriculture, and reducing meat consumption. And http://www.sciencemag.org/special/foodsecurity/#section_in-science-careers">Sciencehttp://www.sciencemag.org/special/foodsecurity/#section_in-science-careers ">Careers looks at interdisciplinary careers associated with food security. Science is making access to this special section FREE (non-subscribers require a http://www.sciencemag.org/subscriptions/indiv_register.dtl">simple registration).

...

[Goldstein1984]

7. What do you have against fear?

Our political/economic/social system is based on the manipulation of the many by the few through the use of fear.

We commit war crimes out of fear.

We sacrifice our liberties out of fear.

We mortgage our children's future out of fear.

We elect third-rate power-hungry leaders out of fear.

We prop up failing institutions with incompetent leadership out of fear.

We send the children of the poor to die for the interests of the wealthy out of fear.

[HBravo]

8. To all

www.epa.gov/oecaagct/ag101/landuse.html

[Goldstein1984]

10. Sorry. It's not that simple

It's also about climate and water resources and petrochemical use (as fuel and for fertilizer production) and distribution.

In the Midwest, states are already prohibiting the drilling of new wells because the aquifers are declining with the current level of cultivation. I have a personal friend in Nebraska with several thousand new acres purchased for corn and soybean production, but he can't farm it because the state won't let him drill more wells to supply more pivot irrigation systems.

It isn't just about arable land, or even yield per acre of arable land.

[HBravo]

12. True, but this hypothesis was made with todays technology not

tomorrows.

[OKIsItJustMe]

15. This hypothesis assumes a continuous improvement in production

...

"The simple fact is while food production has increased by 32 million tonnes a year, an annual increase of 44 million tonnes a year is what's actually needed to meet the food targets for 2050 set down by the http://www.fao.org/wsfs/world-summit/en/">World Summit on Food Security," says Tester.

...

[HBravo]

22. An average of increases in production

I know this site has a lot to disseminate but www.nass.usda.gov/Publications/Ag_Statistics

Also need to take into affect the market place as a number of acres of crops are disked up because it is cheaper to do this and take the crop insurance than to harvest it.

[OKIsItJustMe]

23. Now, what if we cannot even maintain current production rates?

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=115&topic_id=230058&mesg_id=230064

...

The researchers note that the impacts of climate change on agriculture and human health already are apparent. They point to the 2003 heat wave in Europe, which caused just a 3.5-degree rise in the average summer temperature but killed 30,000 to 50,000 people. Gaining much less attention was the resulting 20 percent to 36 percent decrease in the yields of grains and fruit that summer.

...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=115&topic_id=229961&mesg_id=229961

...

"You're looking at a 20 percent to 30 percent decline in production yields in the next 50 years for major crops between the latitudes of southern California or southern Europe to South Africa," said David Battisti, a University of Washington atmospheric sciences professor.

...

[HBravo]

24. Edited previous post

[DCBob]

13. Irrigation is the biggest limiting factor, not land.

Farmers already are sucking the aquifers dry in many parts of the world.

[Goldstein1984]

19. Water resources are definitely the limiting factor

And climate change is going to make water resources even less predictable. Look at Western Australia.

I'm an environmental scientist/engineer, not an environmentalist, so I tend to be overly detached and objective (to a fault, I'm told). I'm not an optimist counting on the limitless potential of the human imagination (Look at the Copenhagen Climate Summit if you want to shoot that theory down real fast). Neither do I enjoy preaching doom and gloom just for the joy of robbing people of hope.

The truth is, very basic mathematics says a lot about our future. The U.S. has about 5% of the world's population; we consume about 25% of the world's fossil fuels; we produce about 25% of the world's waste (including greenhouse gases). With zero change in population, when the rest of the world lives like us, we'll need five planets. If we are able to double the efficiency of our system (very unlikely), we'll still need a couple of planets.

We have huge hurdles to overcome if developing nations are to continue developing, if we want to maintain our standard of living, and if population is going to continue to grow.

Looking at the failure of Copenhagen, I seriously doubt we have the collective will and organization to solve what is a global problem.

Did I say I wasn't a pessimist?

[tom_paine]

26. I got my degree in Environmental science, but wound up in molecular biology

I see what you see. Even the basic math itself and population estimates, unless some massive new form of "technical fix", the only one that comes to my mind of sufficient magnitude at this point being fusion, hot or cold.

I have been know to ask people, "What is the possibility of, and it would still have to become a technical reality, even HALF the world's major cities to be powered by relatively pollution-free fusion reactors in 20 or even 50 years?"

The response is usually silence, with the sound of people's gears in their heads clicking over to another subject out of sheer denial. The math of it all is brutal, and not just the population aspect.

In front of all of that is the lunatic way the tools of psychology, marketing, PR, and advertising has insinuated itself almost literally into every aspect of our lives. Not just manifested in the popular scientific illiteracy and lack of critical thinking required for the Climate Denial Industry to flourish so successfully, but in the Inverted Totalitarian nation the old USA has become, so carefully managed at a propaganda level by these same principles in the service of the wealthy Corporate Aristocracy of Empire.

Mere science hasn't a chance against such a cacophonous, nonesensical carnival of idiocy that passes for our National Dialog and our National Mind. Like blowing on a flute at a heavy-metal concert, it can't even be heard by the person standing next to you. Ironically, it was science and scientists, research and researchers, who handed these tools (as usual) to the spoiled sociopathic aristocracy that has more or less ruled humanity, with brief exceptions, for all of our history.

Life's fully of ironies, eh?

I don't know if you have ever talked with GliderGuider, but he has many unique perspectives about a number of issues, and you might enjoy conversing with him.

[Goldstein1984]

27. "...cacophonous, nonsensical carnival of idiocy..."

I was educated first as a biologist, then as an environmental engineer. It isn't unusual for people with scientific educations to find themselves moving around in subdisciplines. The fundamental skills of a scientist are an empirical world view, analytical abilities, communication skills (usually writing), and a variety of scientific experience and knowledge.

I now work as "Director of Environment, Health, Safety and Training" for a large corporation. It pays about twice what academia pays, and about three times what government pays. I ensure that our company stays in compliance with environmental and safety laws and regulations, develop management systems, develop and deliver training, and serve as general advisor to the Corporate President on science and engineering aspects of potential investments. In that last capacity, they refer to me as "The Snake Oil Detector."

I see the state of the nation much as you do. Generally scientifically illiterate in a day and age when scientific literacy of the electorate is critical; divided and squabbling about mere opinion without regard to fact in most cases; easily manipulated by politicians who are themselves easily manipulated by a ruling class composed of a self-interested and wealthy few.

The division we see in America is not an accident, it's a method of control. I especially find all the preaching about party politics to be an illusion, since the two party platforms have never in history been so close together. I find the militarism to be most offensive. Andrew Bacevich, in his "The New American Militarism" describes all of the historical factor and social dynamics leading to where we are now, but it sickens me to see and otherwise intelligent persons accept the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the even more repugnant practices of torture, extraordinary rendition, extrajudicial extermination, a general suspension of due process, and an erosion of the rights defined in the U.S. Constitution.

This is why I say that I doubt the population will reach 9 billion, and it probably can't be sustained at 6.6 billion if we don't change the way we live. Our economic, political and social systems are houses of cards. They will not stand the winds of Climate Change. And I just don't see the collective organization, will, or even intelligence to solve the problems we are creating.

I am, in this regard, very pessimistic. One reason that my wife and I are developing a dual presence in Alaska and another nation; we want to be able to offer our children and grandchildren assistance and refuge as things deteriorate. My grandparents brought brought their family from Germany to the U.S. because it made sense at that time. We can do something similar. Patriotism is a foolish emotion that allows one to be easily manipulated.

[azul]

11. good post. Fear itself is fearsome.

"While others say don't hate nothing at all. Except hatred."
-Bob Dylan

[Goldstein1984]

21. The thread went elsewhere, but...

that was my point.

I keep hoping my sarcasm will shine through without the little flag.

[Dead_Parrot]

30. We have nothing to fear but fear itself!

Well, that and the impending collapse of the biosphere and a stream of quasi-religious conflicts over dwindling supplies of water, hydrocarbons and food that along with starvation reduce our population by an order of magnitude and plunge us into a new middle ages.

[MrsCorleone]

25. I tend to agree. Fear mongering brought to you by Monsanto, Syngenta, Cargill et al.

Not necessarily saying there aren't legitimate concerns here, I'm just sick to death of the big BioAgs capitalizing on "food insecurity".

[OKIsItJustMe]

2. Adapt agriculture to cope with climate, population

http://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/news/article/22823

Adapt agriculture to cope with climate, population

Date: 2010-02-11
Contact: Pat Bailey, UC Davis News Service
Phone: [phone]
Email: [e-mail]

DAVIS — The looming threats of global climate change and population growth call for sweeping changes in how the world produces its food and fiber, warns a group of prestigious scientists, including an expert in plant genetics at the University of California, Davis.

The research team, led by Nina Federoff, science and technology adviser to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, suggests that there is a "critical need to get beyond popular biases against the use of agricultural biotechnology," as well as explore the potential of aquaculture and maximize agricultural production in dry and saline areas. Their recommendations will appear as a perspective piece titled "Radically Rethinking Agriculture for the 21st Century" in the Feb. 12 issue of the journal Science.

The researchers note that the impacts of climate change on agriculture and human health already are apparent. They point to the 2003 heat wave in Europe, which caused just a 3.5-degree rise in the average summer temperature but killed 30,000 to 50,000 people. Gaining much less attention was the resulting 20 percent to 36 percent decrease in the yields of grains and fruit that summer.

"That dramatic drop in yield is just a foreshadowing of the challenges that lie ahead for agriculture during the 21st century, as temperatures rise and another 3 billion people are added to the global population," said UC Davis plant pathologist Pamela Ronald, a co-author on the perspective piece. Ronald and her laboratory are working on developing a new generation of crops that can better resist diseases and tolerate environmental stresses, including flooding.

...

[Goldstein1984]

3. I don't believe there will be 9 billion people by 2050

I'm not even sure I believe there will still be 6.6 billion people by 2050.

What really bothers me is that this whole scenario assumes that people breed like vermin, limited by food supply, incapable of self-regulation. Why begin with a the premise that human beings lack the intelligence and self-determination to look at limited food supplies and make a decision not to contribute to a population that will outstrip that resource?

I think people as a whole are not as stupid as the behavior of our leaders suggests. The people we're letting run the show are third-rate power-hungry opportunists. We can do better.

[OKIsItJustMe]

9. "... this whole scenario assumes that people breed like vermin, limited by food supply..."

No, if that were true then the population projection would be much higher, much faster.

The projection of 9 Billion assumes a continued decrease in "fertility" as more countries "develop."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population
http://esa.un.org/unpd/wpp2008/index.htm

[Goldstein1984]

16. Good point, but I wasn't talking about the population estimate...

although I did specifically say I don't believe it will turn out that way, so I'm responsible for the confusion.

I meant the article implied that more food was the only solution, rather than creating less demand by controlling population.

Personally, I'm rooting for the "UN Low" represented in the graph. I think both my grandchildren and the other creatures that share this planet with us will be much better off.

Bjorn Lomborg has a great discussion of population in his book, "The Skeptical Environmentalist." His central point where population is concerned is that it isn't so much the quantity of human life in question, but the quality of life resulting from the quantity we choose. Yes, we can, if we can also get a handle on water resources, energy, and distribution, feed a larger population. However, quality of life will also be affected. Natural areas will end up looking like Nebraska--nearly entirely under cultivation.

I live in Alaska because the population density is, on average, very low. I can hike almost anywhere without fences being in the way, and I can find places within twenty minutes of my home that show no evidence that humans even exist. When we lived in Nebraska, we could drive for hours without finding a place that wasn't fenced in for agriculture. What Nebraskans call a campground Alaskans call a block party. It just depends on your threshold of acceptable development, and your willingness to sacrifice quality for quantity.

(My apologies to Nebraskans. We don't live in California or New Jersey for similar reasons.)

Even with genetically-modified crops increasing yield-per-acre, food production requires land, agriculture displaces natural habitat, and reduced habitat results in reduced biodiversity.

I choose a future where the human population doesn't go down in geological history as the cause of Earth's Sixth Great Extinction.

I hope it's painless, but I'm really hoping on the UN Low.

[OKIsItJustMe]

18. About the "UN Low" estimate

That graph is based on the 2004 estimates. If I recall, the 2008 estimates said (in essence) "that ship has sailed."
http://www.un.org/esa/population/

[Goldstein1984]

20. Ouch. Quite a change from 2004

I wonder what their 2012 estimates will look like?

I just don't see those numbers.

[tama]

32. Totally possible

It's not so much the number of people but the consumption mania.

A planetary economy based on sustainable horticulture (permaculture) could sustain 20 billions and more. Intensive horticulture that adds to fertility of soil and biodiversity gives much more to eat per acre than industrial agriculture.

But not meat eaters and industrial agriculture and consumerism destroying soil and waters, where it takes 10 calories of fossile energy to put 1 calory on table.

So we know what works and what doesn't. Old self destructive habits just die very slowly, and can do a lot of killing while dying.

[Nihil]

38. Unfortunately, it holds more truth than most people choose to admit.

> people breed like vermin, limited by food supply, incapable of self-regulation.
> Why begin with the premise that human beings lack the intelligence and
> self-determination to look at limited food supplies and make a decision not
> to contribute to a population that will outstrip that resource?

Experience.
Observation.
Self-limiting phenomena.

The people who have "the intelligence and self-determination" and who
"make a decision not to contribute to a population" take precisely those
"intelligent and self-determining" genes out of the gene pool.

The remaining pool is thus less intelligent, more sheep-like and even
more over-populated with the destructive form.

I really don't think that "vermin" is over-stating the situation ...

[GliderGuider]

39. The "Idiocracy" effect.

That is exactly what made that movie so uncomfortable to watch.

We're probably a plague species.

ETA: and the influence of rationalism on fundamental human behaviour like reproduction is vastly over-stated IMO. Even smart, aware people succumb to biological urges.

[Nihil]

49. Also ...

... "The Age of Stupid" ... another film that was uncomfortably accurate ...

[Dead_Parrot]

4. Given the current use of fossil hydrocarbons and water...

...I rather suspect we'll be going in the other direction by 2050.

[Goldstein1984]

28. That's what I was arguing above.

Energy is going to be a limiting factor.

But I believe water is going to be even more limiting. Consider the condition of aquifers in the Midwest; the overexploitation of water from the Colorado River in the Southwest; the drought in Eastern Australia; the lack of fresh water in many areas of high population; the cost of desalinization...

I also believe that, not only are we unlikely to reach 9 or 12 billion, we will most likely be unable to sustain 6.6 billion when unpredictable circumstances and predictable circumstances we lack the collective intelligence and will to address are factored in.

[Dead_Parrot]

29. You get into resource footprints at this point

A fascinating little area: Take the available land area (about 12 billion hectares), then divide it by the requirements for your "lifestyle" and that's the maximum population you can sustain.

So, if everybody lives like an average Tanzanian (1 Ha/p), we can indeed manage 12 billion
If everybody lives like an average Nigerian (1.5 Ha/p), we can sustain our current population
If everyone lives like an average Albanian (2.6 Ha/p), we can sustain 4.6 Billion. This is also our current global average footprint.
If everyone lives like an average German (4 Ha/p), we can sustain 3 Billion. The is the highest population with a reasonable standard of living for everyone.
If everyone lives like an American (9 Ha/p) we're limited to 1.3 Billion.

[GliderGuider]

31. The footprint of food production is relatively constant compared to non-food consumption.

Which makes sense, given that people need a constant amount of food to survive.

The Footprints of Consumption

The one aspect of ecological damage that I believe is most directly tied to population levels is the damage attributable to food production. This is because people need an irreducible minimum number of calories to live, and unless food production practices change over time, a rising population will cause more ecological damage because more food must be produced.

The Footprint Network provides a data table in which the national ecological footprints are broken out for every nation for the year 2006. For each country the table lists the footprint requirements in a number of areas, including Carbon, Cropland, Grazing land, Forest land, Fishing ground and Built-up land.

To roughly determine the ecological footprint associated with food production I summed the entries for Cropland, Grazing land and Fishing ground. The table has also conveniently aggregated the numbers into three categories by income (low, medium and high). I was able to quickly determine how much of our Ecological Footprint comes from food production, and how much from non-food consumption. Here is what I found:

Allowing a constant EF for food, the actual sustainable standard of living, based on the remaining biocapacity after we feed ourselves, is actually lower than your figures:

  Population     Non-food EF (Gha)  Standard of living equivalent to:
--------------   -----------------  ---------------------------------
 1,000,000,000         10.8            Higher than the USA
 2,000,000,000          5.0            Denmark, Britain
 3,000,000,000          3.0            Germany, Poland, Japan
 4,000,000,000          2.0            Hungary, Botswana, Costa Rica
 5,000,000,000          1.5            Chile, South Africa
 6,000,000,000          1.1            Guatemala, Jordan, Cuba
 7,000,000,000          0.8            Liberia, Armenia, Colombia
 8,000,000,000          0.6            Kyrgyzstan, Peru
 9,000,000,000          0.4            Zimbabwe, Cameroon
10,000,000,000          0.3            Angola, Tadjikistan
11,000,000,000          0.2            Haiti
12,000,000,000          0.1            Lower than Haiti

[Dead_Parrot]

34. Should have known you'd have a page on it....

Still, ballpark close: not bad for a Sunday morning, and in the "acceptable quality of life" zone I'm about right :).

I'd strongly agree with the point you raise there about this being a somewhat rosy picture - degradation in the fishing grounds, soil productivity and biodiversity make this something of a moving target, and these are likely to accelerate if we go into an uncontrolled crash (something we seem to be charging straight towards at the moment).

[GliderGuider]

35. Something I'm morbidly curious about

is to what extent the various limiting factors will interact, and to what extent there will be a "Liebig's Law" effect, where one factor turns out to be fundamentally limiting despite slack in the others.

My candidate for a "Law of the Minimum" choke point in agriculture is probably water. I used to think it was hydrocarbons, but now I think we could probably manage a hydrocarbon shortage and keep producing food. Water may be a whole other kettle of endangered fish, since without water, agriculture is hooped. You can have all the mechanization, seed and fertilizer you want, but water availability puts a hard limit on yields. Since we're at risk from both aquifer depletion and shifting rainfall patterns from climate change I think water shortages could be the Fifth Horseman.

[Dead_Parrot]

36. Water is the most likely for a global limit

Short term, some areas are going to have bigger problems with soil quality - This is fixable with some TLC, but requires a drop in yield while that happens so, of course, no bugger is doing it.

The other one that vaguely troubles me is distribution: We shift millions of tons annually across fairly large distances, and have comprehensive local networks for gathering and end-point distribution. Lose these and people will wind up hungry regardless of our ability produce the food itself, and as they rely on a combination of fossil fuels and the global economy it really not something I'd like to bet my life on. There will probably be a lot of migration back into the producing regions in the near future, but there's going to be a limit to that...

[tama]

37. It's more complex

There are many different local ecosystems that humans and horticulture can adapt to and make into garden. There is an area in South-West Sahara that the local governement and UN had abandoned to desertification and the people to their own fortune. Enjoying their freedom to take responsibility the local people started planting trees with ancient simple methods and now there is a forest that provides for the needs of the people. Surprise surprise.

For plants to grow well or at all there are many many "laws of the minimum", as well as "laws of the maximum" interacting codependently, fixing attention on just one facter prevents seeing the whole. E.g. to have a miniclimate with adequate water a lot can be done to preserve water and increase the flow of H2O, windbarriers of trees, no open soil, using terasses to capture rainwater, multilayering with trees that bring up water from deeper soil and increase the humidity of local topsoil and atmosphere, etc, and all these strategies have other additional benign effects besides humic microclimate. All that needs to be done is to stop fighting nature by attempting to control it and start working with nature with sense of belonging. Doing less and letting nature provide.

[GliderGuider]

40. Yes and no.

Global situations are never as monolithic as a top-level analysis makes them seem. Each region will have different issues and call for different adaptations. However, it looks to me like the Achilles heel of industrial-style carbohydrate agriculture as it’s practiced in North America, Europe, China, Australia and India is in fact the water supply. In order to avoid that limit thiose regions may need to drastically alter their practices. If they don’t (and perhaps even if they do) a decline in yields is inevitable.

And when was the last time a significant portion of humanity stopped fighting nature? Fighting nature seems to be pretty deeply ingrained in us at this point.

[tama]

41. Industrial agriculture

is doomed anyway as totally unsustainable because of multiple factors, soil erosion, poisoning soil and waters, unsustainable water use, dependency of fossile energy etc. As a whole, it has fatally serious attitude problem - and as Einstein said, problems cannot be solved on the same level of thinking that caused the problem. In my language we have a saying "cannot see the forest from the trees", meaning that singeling out this or that factor does not help when holistic understanding is required.

My understanding is that the usual behavioral pattern of Homo Sapies, when settling new areas (Australia, America etc.), has been first population overshoot and after learning from that painfull experience and remembering by various means, stopping fighting nature and adapting to being organic part of larger organism, the local ecosystem. So this current collapse of alienated non-organic civilization is nothing new qualitatively, but the quantity may turn into quality in the way that this is the last one as global consciousness evolves on planetary scale.

[GliderGuider]

42. Is there evidence for pre-columbian overshoot in North America?

I know about megafauna extinctions, but that doesn't really qualify as evidence of overshoot. Same question for Australia.

I agree that holistic understanding is required if we want to address the problem, and I agree about the attitude problem of industrial agriculture. Daniel Quinn calls it "totalitarian agriculture" for precisely that reason. However, predicting a widely applicable, highly probable breaking point, which is what I'm doing here, doesn't require a holistic perspective.

I'd like to think that some form of global consciousness will evolve, but I'd happily settle for a set of good strong taboos that keep us from fucking up other life too much more. On my off days I have no realistic expectation of either outcome, though.

[tama]

43. Hmm.

The megafauna extinctions probably don't qualify as irrefutable evidence of overshoot, but in context of other predator populations overshooting and collapsing it is a natural inference.

And I'm not saying water is not a hot issue - from what I hear, groundwater depletion is e.g. putting stop to tomato production in Southern Spain and making "Green Revolution" agriculture every day more and more hopeless in India. There are probably much more similar examples. Also the rush of megacorps to privatize remaining clean water resources seems to be intensifying.

Hmm. Water and global consciousness... the ethicality is certainly questionable but perhaps not outside discussion: ecoterrorism of adding entheogens in drinking water distribution systems?

[GliderGuider]

45. Entheogens in the water supply...

That has been discussed before. Back in the late '60 and early '70s some people spent some time calculating how much LSD it would take to treat a reservoir and change the consciousness of a city. But even those people weren't stoned enough to overlook the ethical issues...

I'm convinced that what caused TPTB to come down so hard on LSD was that people who took it had the nasty tendency to start laughing at them. TPTB are very serious folks, you know. Very serious indeed... :rofl:

[OKIsItJustMe]

44. You know, I've always thought of hydroponics as being a form of industrial agriculture

It seems particularly well suited to a water constrained future (that's why NASA has looked at it for use off-planet.)
http://www.nasa.gov/missions/science/biofarming.html

It also helps to address space constraints. Here's a group that's planning to grow hydroponic vegetables in the heart of New York City:
http://gothamgreens.com/

Hydroponics does have the disadvantage of requiring more construction than "dirt farming."

[tama]

46. Where I live

the police just raided few gardening shops selling small scale hydroponics gear, citing some new obscure law. I wonder why? Maybe it's connected, I hear that up hear in north parts of the globe many local greenthumbs are with great enthusiasmus creating hybrids of ruderalis with sativa and indica that would survive the harsh climate in the dirt...

But as for greenhouses, you are correct that they tend to need more input of fossile energy, but can be done also with low tech solutions and why not also low energy high tech solutions (e.g. LEDs instead of Sodium-Vapor lamps). The beauty is in the details.

[OKIsItJustMe]

47. Hydroponic police

Hydroponic methods are popular with http://www.google.com/search?q=hydroponic+marijuana">marijuana growers. (Maybe that has something to do with it?)

[azul]

14. Is it a food crisis already when 22,000 people are dying a day

from poverty?

Or is this a crisis of conscience and apathy disguised as political and distribution and self-help challenges?

[OKIsItJustMe]

17. The crisis is already upon us

http://www.fao.org/wsfs/wsfs-addresses/wsfs-mondayam/en/

[Nihil]

48. Nah, that's just a filler item on a slow news day ...

> Is it a food crisis already when 22,000 people are dying a day from poverty?

Besides, they're just brown folks who live in a foreign country that most
viewers couldn't find on a globe so why be concerned as long as it only affects
"those people"?

(Hell, half the viewers probably think that a globe is too damn "sciency"
for them as they're sure that the world actually *has* four corners ...)

[tama]

33. Topsoil and Civilization

Book classic by two American conservationists from 1955, Topsoil and Civilization, shows how all previous civilizations have fallen because of unsustainable agriculture and disrespect for natural balance. Downloadable from here: http://www.soilandhealth.org/copyform.aspx?bookcode=010113