World food crisis: Production must rise by 50%, says UN chief

World food crisis: Production must rise by 50%, says UN chief

www.guardian.co.uk

World food production must rise by 50% by 2030 to meet increasing demand, the UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, told the UN food summit today.

He urged a quick resolution of world trade talks and said nations must minimise export restrictions and import tariffs to alleviate the food crisis.

(visit the link for the full news article)

Increasing food output by 50% is a pretty tall order. I have seen reports that basically state that we have maxed out food production already and we are producing 40% more than is natural due to petroleum based fertilizers.

I will be interested to see how they plan on doing this, although I am assuming they are going to try to present GM crops as our savior.

With companies like Monsanto in charge of the GM crops, I don't have a lot of faith in hitting those numbers. I think we will be more likely to reduce demand by 50% if you know what I mean.

www.guardian.co.uk
(visit the link for the full news article)

Wow that is a tall order with rising sea levels threatening some rice producing area around the world plus with all of the genetically altered crops. Not to mention the dead zones around the worlds ocean due to the nitrates used in modern agriculture. We are in trouble IMHO.

reply to post by LDragonFire


Yeah, it isn't very encouraging. We have alread overfished the oceans, our beef is getting recalled in record numbers. Where exactly do they think this will come from? What insanity are they going to put in place in an attempt to achieve this and what further corruption will it breed?

reply to post by LDragonFire


maybe
maybe not
As global warming continues areas that are not good for farming now may do to the change in weather patterns may become productive as more condensation falls in newer areas like in the south west US

IMO it is far more likely that more and more of the world population will die from starvation than world food production rising by even 10 percent.

Or maybe people should stop having so many children. If we all just had one child (like China) we would literally halve the world population. This would only be a good thing in the long term, even if it would be damaging for the economy short term. I don't buy the whole arguement that forcing people to have one child is immoral, it's clearly the most moral arguement in this case. We force people not to poop in the street, I don't see how that is much different, it's still reducing freedoms but for the greater good.

reply to post by monkey_descendant

Or maybe people should stop having so many children. If we all just had one child (like China) we would literally halve the world population.

I agree that would be a responsible thing to do. One problem though is that the people who are smart enough to do this voluntarily would quickly be overrun by the less intelligent population. *See Idiocracy (www.imdb.com...)

I think here in the US we'll be fine but with rising oil prices transportation of foodstuffs will cause shortages some areas. Africa seems to be killing itself off and I don't think we can justify aid to people that can grow their own but refuse to put the effort into it.

mikell

reply to post by Karlhungis


Maybe governments ought to carry out campaigns to educate people about ecology and overpopulation. A bit like warnings on cigarette packs: babies lead to the earths destrUcti0n!

In order for Nature to balance itself out alot of people must die. There are just too many humans on this planet. PERIOD

Originally posted by Frank Black
In order for Nature to balance itself out alot of people must die. There are just too many humans on this planet. PERIOD

Who do you suggest goes first? I vote for the politicians, but I don't think that will make much of a dent.

The people who created Teletubbies, The Spice Girls, Paris Hilton, damn there are so many choices its like being a kid in a candy store lol

I don't doubt that with the development of GM/GE crops it will be possible to better meet the increasing global demand for food . The problems that I see preventing this from happening are a lack of political will to develop GM/GE crops in parts of the western world along with corruption and political instability in some of the areas that need food the most .

There is also a couple of other issues . The first is that increasing the global supply food may ease prices and not suit those who are out to make a profit . In that sense food has quiet a bit in common with Oil. The other issue is if the GM/GE crops would be affordable . They may end up cost prohibitive much like the cost of medication in much of the world . I could see China under cutting any US corporate interests by giving out such crops in return for influence in parts of the world such as Africa.

Doesn't seem all that unreasonable to me.

Here are the agricultural production numbers for the past year, taken from the World Profile .pdf on the FAO website:


Cereals 2,227,980
Meat 265,105
Fruits & Vegetables 1,392,253
Roots & Tubers 711,682
Pulses 61,706
Oilseeds & Nuts (oil eq.) 146,353
Sugar Crops 1,533,272
Tobacco 6,565
Fibre Crops 28,782

(all values in 1,000s of tonne)

Sugar crops - cane, beet, and corn (I presume they include corn sweetener production in these numbers) would seem to me to be most logical place to shift production. How much of the 50% increase could be met by simply shifting sugar beet production to potato? Perhaps the solution is simply to come to terms with the global sweet tooth...

reply to post by mikellmikell


The US is more or less self-sufficient in the production of staple food products, so yes, we should weather it better than many other nations. There are others that are as well.

Additionally, the food that is available will go to the countries that can afford to pay higher prices for it, meaning that any of the third world nations that must import large amounts of food will bear the brunt of most of the shortage that occurs.

The touchiest subject of all: population control. I’m sure if people were allowed to give negative stars I would win a few with what I am about to post. Sustainability is something that us energy-aware types have been calling for since at least mid last century. Exponentially growing animal populations, with no feedback system of environmental awareness, always end up consuming the food supply and then dying off. It happens in a Petri dish, it can happen in Gaia. Though the food supply is assumed a constant in the Petri dish, it can be replenished in Gaia, however this only means that rather than the entire population dying, only a major portion of it needs to.

Those of us who believe the world is already over-populated are often looked down upon as trying to ‘play the hand of God’, or we are some sort of demons trying to control the population, or all sorts of other beliefs. However, if one objectively and scientifically looks at the situation in our Petri dish, one can see that some of us de-population types are simply striving for a sustainable population density based on the idea of continuing the species in an advanced technological state over a more extended period of time than a non-self-imposed-feedback scenario would permit.

Granted, the planet itself has built in mechanisms for population control, but none of them are really based on human self-aware feedback mechanisms, but rather chance natural events (unless one takes the view that some of those natural events are themselves caused by conscious entities imposing their will on the planet.) For simplicity, let us take an even split with two different types of feedback systems being defined: natural feedback, and human-induced feedback. An example of a non-feedback based natural event, taking as assumption that humans can’t control these events at will (though this is up for debate obviously): Earthquake, tornado, flood, etc. Example of a feedback based natural event/process: food runs out, population responds by culling through starvation.

Now, many of us take the view that properly controlled human-imposed feedback mechanisms could alleviate stress on the planet and make life more tolerable for those of us left after a massive initial cull. However, ‘properly controlled’ is a major issue, and from what I can tell is the real hold-up to acceptance of the idea. So that leaves us with behind-the-scenes action that is quite inefficient. Examples of human induced feedback currently, and quite ineffectively, being used: One-child policies, man-made diseases, food supply control, price control, and overall energy control. Unfortunately, internal competing interests complicate the issue to a severe extent, to the point where specific examples must each be analyzed individually for context. Anyhow, it is not like we are going to say flat out to the welfare mom producing a child every 9 months that she and her offspring need to die, so instead disease is introduced. You are not going to tell a population of several million, or billion in our case, that they need to die, so instead food shortage is introduced to that part of the population (you can bet your butt that the elites in control will never see a food shortage without a massive natural event.)

But why use these inefficient means when it would be much quicker to simply perform a massive cull? Because you will never convince people to give up their lives, and you shouldn’t really try to. Because those in charge are not AS barbaric as many of you want to believe, OR they simply haven’t yet engineered a way to make it happen while looking innocent themselves. I take the later view: it is a goal to be achieved, but they won’t come out and explain it as I am doing here, and there are internal competing interests slowing down the process.

3 stages towards sustainability, concurrently being enacted at different rates of implementation:

1) Population Reduction (the most horrific and evil looking stage)
2) Population Prevention (less barbaric than stage 1)
3) Expansion to other planets/habitats Off-world. (even less barbaric than the previous stages)

It is my opinion that we won’t reach stage 3, won’t even be allowed to reach it as a species, until we achieve sustainability on our own planet through proper implementation of stages 1 and 2. Granted, the above analysis is a vast simplification, and many details have been left out to save time. My overall point is that sustainability is a good thing. It is being poorly attempted, and might require a massive cull to curb the exponential increase if option 3 is not being allowed yet at this time. Granted again that this analysis is being done from the purely physical viewpoint: that we are an animal population, not controlled by higher entities other than those confining us to the planet. If it is indeed the case that we are all here as a test and that aliens/Jesus is coming back to save those worthy, then I don’t know what to tell you. Breed at will? I for one refuse to bring a child into the state of the world today. Most people have kids for their own selfish reasons without thinking about society, the planet, or the children themselves and what they will endure. Save the children! Don’t have any (until such time as it is deemed sustainable by people smarter than you.)

If we ever get to a ctitical stage where massive numbers of humans are dying from starvation we would simply have to alter what plants we choose to cultivate.

Instead of the multitude of choices available to us now, we will have farmers focus on just the basics, soy beans, wheat, corn, rice,...ect. Whatever the climate can support.

Yes we may have to do with out many of the things we are accustomed to.
Forget the baby carrots, snow peas and watermelons, We will be forced to grow these in our own backyard gardens if we want them, but we will leave the farmers, both Corporate & private to produce the basics necessary for survival.
I don't really forsee any of this happening though. One of these days a pandemic will cull the majority of mankind. No proof of this, just my own opinion.





[edit on 3-6-2008 by Sparky63]

The problem with population control is that it has to be enforced.
We may think it's all well and good, logical and practical as long as it is directed toward the "other" guy.

Bring it home to our own front door and ask for volunteers to "assume room temperature" for the greater good of humanity and you have failed program. It simply will not work.

Free will and self determination have to be subverted in order for this to succeed. We are not programmed for that.

[edit on 3-6-2008 by Sparky63]

Wow this is an interesting thread and it goes quite well with jackinthebox thread about the powers that be wanting population reduction by dec 2009. Question why is this coming up all of a sudden? I think this statement is being used for a pretext for something big and needs to be taken VERY seriously. Start stockpiling people.