Yes folks, we'll be able to feed the soon-to-be 7 billion people on this planet...

[trotsky]

by building magical indoor skyscraper farms, all organic, using energy that the fairies bring us. Oh and don't ask me who is going to invest in building these skyscraper farms in the places that need them most, like inner cities. The leprechauns and wood sprites will provide.

[EvolveOrConvolve]

1. I saw a show on skyscrapers like that

(maybe on the History/Hitler channel?) that they were building in Japan or Singapore or somewhere in Asia. I wondered who the hell was going to invest in something like this that's not likely to provide any return to the investor.

But, I didn't think about magical fairies - you must be a level 60 Woo-Master.

[Tumbulu]

2. You know, your post had me thinking last night

the question is why does anyone think it is their obligation to feed anyone but themselves?

Seriously, have you ever farmed?

I am an organic farmer and I think on my 130 acres I produce enough food to feed maybe 30 people over and above my own family (that is because the hay I grow goes to feeding sheep and chickens and so if it were vegans it would feed perhaps 3000). And I provide wildlife habitat to innumerable species. And my farm cleans up probably the waste (in the compost I buy) from probably 5000 chickens and 500 people's yards. And my soil is improved every year so that yields in time will go up a bit. But not by much. Not enough to feed billions of people.

But, why is it my obligation to feed you or anyone else? I bought my land with my own money. I take the money that I make from my farm's products and buy nutrients for my farm and my sheep and chickens and pay utilities and taxes and try to invest every year in a few more energy saving devices for the farm. The food I produce is healthy for me and my family and customers and it is sustainable. So, where did I sign a contract that I would take on the job of feeding billions of people?

I did not. And I say whoever wants to eat should grow their own food or pay a very good price for it because it is a hell of a lot of work to do so. The idea that food should be cheap is ridiculous if you have ever been standing in a field with a hoe looking at all the weeds. Cheap food is based on exploiting something or someone.

[TZ]

4. Interesting points all.

Something to think about.

[trotsky]

5. Well, sure.

Farming is a job. No one is under any obligation to make you a computer, a car, a house, or anything else. But we choose to do something we're good at, or know how to do, in order to earn money to pay someone else to acquire those things.

No one asked you to feed billions of people. But the fact is, there are billions of people to feed. If you won't do it, someone else will have to, or billions will starve. And as you say, organic farming is a hell of a lot of work. But if you don't want to work harder than you do, no one's forcing you. Maybe I missed your point.

[Tumbulu]

6. My point is that there is no correlation

between choosing farming as a profession and taking on an obligation to feed an ever increasing population.

Someone else does not have to do it and my guess is that someone else won't. The average age of the US farmer is 66 or something like that. Farming is very hard and low paying. Only people who are in love with rural life and agriculture choose such a profession.

I am getting older and doing less each year. Most all the other farmers I know are facing the same reality. Younger people simply are not able or willing to work as hard as my age group does for such small returns financially. I think that unless there are a lot of people who choose to farm as a vocation, there will not be enough food. It is ridiculous to assume that farmers are the slaves of the urban and suburban population.

The statistics on farming is quite grim. The average income of US farmers is ~ 25K, so in most families one spouse has an outside job that pays benefits and keeps the farm afloat during the inevitable hard times. Would you work at your job 90 hrs a week for $25 k a year without health care?

[trotsky]

7. Oh hell yeah.

You will get no argument from me that farming isn't a back-breaking, poorly compensated, thankless profession. Both sides of my family were farmers.

But this again leads to the inevitable - that organic farming isn't going to work on a large scale. High tech farmers with machines, *gasp* GMO crops, and targeted fertilizers/pesticides/herbicides are a necessary evil to feed the massive numbers of people we have. Can we minimize the environmental stress caused by such farming methods? Absolutely, and I think GMOs are a large part of that solution.

[The Green Manalishi]

8. The problem is that we have massive numbers of people

I wonder how many people planet earth could support if all food were to be raised organically?

GMO crops don't bother me, the behavior of Monsanto and their ilk does.

[realisticphish]

9. that is indeed a major problem

i have no citations, so this is entirely off the top of my head, but I heard one advocate say that organic crops could easily feed "500 million people" Which i'm sure is a great comfort to the other 5.5 billion

[trotsky]

10. The number I've seen thrown about...

is 1 billion. The maximum ecologically sustainable population of humans on earth. We have been trashing the environment for a long time to stay well above that number, and either technology needs to save us or nature will be doing some "natural selection" on us.

[The Green Manalishi]

12. That is the figure I remember from college

about 1984 or so. GMO crops were not quite so ubiquitous, nor was discussion of them as central back then.

We can only live on borrowed time for so long.

[Tumbulu]

11. It is not a given that conventional farming will be able to feed

this ever growing population at all.

Currently gmo's have reduced the yields of all major crops. So why are they grown? IMO it is because the gmo varieties to date have reduced labor and thus cost so that the yields per acre have not gone up, but the profit per acre may be the same and there is reduced need for outside labor. Since labor is the hardest thing to find out in rural areas, these varieties have had a fit with the farmers of today who are ready to retire, or at least do a lot less.

The conventional farmers in this country have lots of land, wonderful equipment and a labor pool that keeps dwindling to draw upon. The kids of these farmers tend to leave the farms, or if they stay, they switch to organic as it is a better way to live on one's own farm.

People drawn as adults to become farmers (that is those who did not grow up on farms) tend to be drawn to organic. If you have ever lived in a rural area you would know why people don't want to use chemicals on their own farms. The make you sick, everyone has a relative that died of a cancer that they believe came from exposure to an ag chemical, and they are tricky to handle safely, among many other downsides.

So, the largest growing population of people entering farming are organic farmers, or those wanting to go organic if they had a market. Whose goals include being sustainable stewards of their lands as well as feeding people. But they do not feed people at the expense of their own health, their soil's health and vitality, nor the general environment. Organic farmers in this country also have access to wonderful equipment, and many organic farms are centers of innovation on many levels, technical and mechanical.

But, I really do not think that the issue is organic or conventional as much as it is that I do not think that anyone will be able to feed the world's human population unless the human population begins to value agriculture enough to become farmers themselves. The small percentage of the population of the US currently farming is not enough.

[trotsky]

13. But conventional farming is the only thing that's kept up so far.

Currently gmo's have reduced the yields of all major crops.

Do you have a cite for that? As I understand it, GMOs to this point have been focused on introducing resistance to pesticides/herbicides (or manufacturing their own), which both increase yield (by reducing loss) AND reduce chemical use. And also, the development of products like Golden Rice to help better meet the nutrition needs of a populace where other food crops can't be grown as effectively.

The discussion about people entering farming is only tangentially related here, I think.

The small percentage of the population of the US currently farming is not enough.

Considering that US farmers make not only enough food for our entire population (excluding those who are restricted for economic reasons), but enough to export all around the world, we may have plenty of farmers. However, I'd like to see it become a more profitable endeavor. And it can be, if you target a higher income population desiring organic food, willing to pay a premium price for it. But that model just can't feed the world.

[Tumbulu]

14. I agree that modern agriculture has kept up so far

and by modern I refer to large scale agriculture aided by mechanization. Mechanization has brought the most significant changes in agricultural yields along with modern plant breeding- and by this I mean since the early 20th century when plant breeding became a cornerstone of the land grant universities. Farm advisors have also had a tremendous positive impact on agricultural yields in the US.

There are plenty of very large modern organic field crops produced (grains, soybeans, cotton) that have similar yields to the conventional, but higher costs and risks, thus higher selling prices. Organic is not only small and local.

There are plenty who argue that small scale production is actually the way to go to improve yields and soil health. If you read Wendell Berry it is hard not to be convinced that this is the way to go . And it is hard to not become a farmer yourself.

The gmo yield data is often cited in the ag presses and among farmers. I just did a search and found many links, but the better ones require a subscription. The discussion among the farmers who buy the gmo seeds is that having the herbicide resistance is a big advantage for them time wise and this is what no one has enough of. So, it matters not too much that the yield is less. It is better to produce a tad less than give up entirely and close the farm. This is what I have been hearing all these years.

I do really think that not having enough farmers will become a serious problem for the country over the next 30 years. I know that the USDA is trying very hard to encourage people to start farming. I am glad that they are trying, but it is a very hard row to hoe.

That's it for me tonight, got to go out and check on my ewes and get some sleep.

[ChadwickHenryWard]

22. Sounds to me like a market failure.

Food is extremely important to our, or any, society. The vicissitudes or the market are not doing a very good job at providing us the food we need, as evidenced by the huge subsidies paid to large agribusiness conglomerates. Food seems to me to be one of those very important parts of life that should not be left up to the capriciousness of the free market.

[ZombieHorde]

3. I wrote a paper on vertical farms/skyscraper farms for school.

The subject was sustainability. Since they are not real, the paper was super easy to write. My only sources were a youtube video and a picture on someone's website. The other students did a bunch a research, I just sat in front of my computer and made shit up.


At the end of the semester each student had to stand in front of the class and give an oral self review. I couldn't keep a straight face when I got to this paper.

[onager]

15. The Crystal Cathedral will help!!!

Does anybody else watch Life After People on the History Channel?

For those who don't, the show imagines what would happen if every human being suddenly disappeared from Earth. Some of it is pretty funny (raccoons will pig out unmolested in your kitchen). Some is very grim - after about a week, all over the world nuclear reactors lose their human-maintained control systems and go Chernobyl.

One show was called Wrath of God. It covered the fate of religious icons all over the world.

Including the Crystal Cathedral, Bob Schuller's famous spookery in Orange County, CA. Without humans to maintain it, the CC would soon turn into a giant greenhouse, with plant life running rampant.

Which only helps birds and animals, since there are no humans around.

In this episode, you also get to see the collapse of the Christ of the Andes, and the falling dome of St. Peter's Basilica.

Oh, and Da Vinci's Last Supper will fade away in just a few years. It's only visible now because of a massive intervention by technology. i.e., science.

Which of course, we can't trust AT ALL...

[trotsky]

17. That is one of the coolest shows on TV.

They do a great job with the CGI, making it look very realistic. Last night one was on that included the fate of the Cassini probe - assuming that it would crash into the moon Enceladus if not guided by humans to burn up in Saturn's atmosphere. Despite our best efforts, Earth microbes can be found on all our space probes, and they assumed those microbes would be able to take hold in the water underneath Enceladus' icy crust. Very interesting stuff.

[realisticphish]

18. not to mention

somehow, they manage to make it not depressing, but rather an emphasis on the incredible power of time and nature

[trotsky]

19. The one rule I take away from every single episode...

is that even a DROP of water is gonna get everything eventually.

[onager]

20. You guys might also enjoy...

"After Armageddon" on the History Channel, if you haven't seen it already.

I almost refused to watch because of the word "armageddon" in the title. But it is happily not about a Biblical armageddon. Not this time on the History Channel, at least, though it has run several programs on that over-ripe subject.

"Armageddon" in this case is a new flu strain that goes pandemic and wipes out millions of people. The show follows a typical Los Angeles family trying to survive and get out of the city.

Religion is only mentioned once, and negatively at that. One of the show's resident experts points out that one thing always happens after a huge natural disaster - a rise in loony religious cults.

And they ALWAYS look for scapegoats.

In the show, a preacher is shown ranting about "people who came from jungles and deserts, and ruined the America we once knew..." Etc.

As Gawd said to David Koresh - well done!

[SemiCharmedQuark]

16. Everything will be cool as long as we grow some pot.

Which is the only medicine that doesn't cause the autisms.

[ChadwickHenryWard]

23. I actually do think life would be a little better if we all grew some pot...

Not necessarily medicinally (though it has some applications.) Just in life generally.

[Q3JR4]

21. According to a book called Famine!--1975,

the maximum number of people we could support on this planet was around 3.5 billion.

"At a time when doom-sayers were hopping around saying everyone was going to starve, Norman was working. He moved to Mexico and lived among the people there until he figured out how to improve the output of the farmers. So that saved a million lives. Then he packed up his family and moved to India, where in spite of a war with Pakistan, he managed to introduce new wheat strains that quadrupled their food output. So that saved another million. You get it? But he wasn't done. He did the same thing with a new rice in China. He's doing the same thing in Africa - as much of Africa as he's allowed to visit. When he won the Nobel Prize in 1970, they said he had saved a billion people. That's BILLION! BUH! That's Carl Sagan BILLION with a "B"! And most of them were a different race from him. Norman is the greatest human being- and you've probably never heard of him."
-Penn Jillette, on the show Penn & Teller: Bullsh*t!

It's projected that we can feed 10 billion people on this planet with today's technology and that's mostly because of the work pioneered by men like Norman Borlaug.

Q3JR4.