Originally posted by chaswrayI am not convinced yet.
[b] I think, but not certain, the United States and Canada alone produce enough meat and grain to feed the world three times over.
Originally posted by pradtf
[b]the food is already available and in abundant quantitiies, jan.
I would love to see some numbers to back up these statements.
To add some more spice to the thread :
http://www.fao.org/ag/magazine/0111sp.htm
http://www.fao.org/docrep/003/w2612e/w2612e04a.htm
http://www.fao.org/docrep/004/w1690e/w1690e09.htm
The projection of world population is 9-10 billion by 2050 where it will level out according to this article in the usa today.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/
2003-12-09-worldpop-usat_x.htm
**Note where it says that if the fertility rate stays the same as it is right now, about 2.7 children per woman, the population will level out at 300 something TRILLION. There are also high, medium, and low estimates shown- the 9-10 billion is the mid estimate.
Okay, here is the full study. Enjoy.
World Agriculture:Towards 2010
http://www.fao.org/docrep/v4200e/V4200E00.htm
And another excellent doc :
The state of food insecurity in the world 2003
ftp://ftp.fao.org/docrep/fao/006/j0083e/j0494e00.pdf
So you have something on your mind when preparing your x-mas turkey 😀 😀 😀
Your post makes sense especially this part.
Then when all is said and done you can go to the doctor and be diagnosed with obeisity, high blood pressure or heaven forbid..high chlorestorol!! But don't worry the drug companies will gladly sell you the latest designer drug to combat these conditions at top dollar.
And just think, it all could be avoided with the investment of a little time, buying the simple foods and preparing them ...[text shortened]... ndustry. Yes I bite the hand that feeds me😲
PS: Please forgive my bad spelling and grammar🙄[/b]
Big G.
Originally posted by Nohuphey nohup! what are you picking on the freethinkers for? just a day ago, you were picking on the religionaires. and come to think of it you were picking on me too 😀
Really ?
I am not sure if i should take your post seriously, i've noticed some freethinkers demonstrating a very strange sense of humour on the forums 🙂
richjohnson's point is a pretty good one in my opinion because at one time the population of the earth really was 3.5 billion. it doubled to your figure of 7 billion. so unless someone has a deus ex machina somewhere - it's going to double again, regardless of what the 'forecasts' say 🙂
btw, that is a great link you provided to World Agriculture:Towards 2010!
anyway, you wanted to see some figures for all the food that's thrown away, so let's do some calculations using grain. i'm pretty sure i've done things right, but it's late so do check my efforts to confirm (just remember that for the stuff below (1 ton - 1000 kg):
let's look at the stats taken from State of the World 1997 published annually from WorldWatch (http://www.earthsave.org/environment/rxenviro.htm):
The average American requires 800 kilograms of grain a year, the great bulk of it consumed indirectly in the form of beef, pork, poultry, eggs, milk, cheese, yogurt and ice cream. The average Indian, in contrast, gets by with 200 kgs of grain a year, almost all of it consumed directly. The world's healthiest people...live at an intermediate position, using perhaps 400 kgs of grain, the so-called Mediterranean diet...Two billion tons [metric] of grain (slightly more than all the world's farmers currently produce) could support 5 billion people eating a Mediterranean diet (400 kgs grain/year), 2.5 billion Americans (800 kgs grain/year), or 10 billion Indians (200 kgs grain/year). (34-5) (http://www.earthsave.org/environment/rxenviro.htm)
now let's do a bit of simple calculating assuming that the world grain production is 2 billion tons. now if the entire world lived on an 'indian diet' they would all be fat since there aren't 10 billion people on the planet (just a little paradoxical joke). however, if everyone ate the 'mediterranean diet' then we would have 1.9 billion people not eating grain since the world population was 5.9 billion in 1997. ok, but everyone doesn't eat the that diet either. in fact, if you take the population of the US at close to 300 million (actually 272 million in 1997) you are using up (300 million x 800kg) 240 000 000 000 kg or only 0.24 billion tons that's nowhere near the 2 billion tons they are talking about.
ok so now we have the US population fed and still have 1.76 billion tons left over. ya, i know they aren't all going to eat this 'well' but let's say they do. in fact, let's feed another 300 million in the rest of the world the same so now we use up another 0.24 billion tons and still have 1.52 billion tons left. now that's a lot of grain, so a la mediterranean let's feed twice as many or 1200 million x 400 kg requiring 480 000 000 000 kg or 0.48 billion tons. now we have fed 1800 million or 1.8 billion people really well using .96 billion tons of grain.
so what we have is more than 1 billion tons left to give to about (5.9 - 1.8) 4.1 billion people (notice that my unusually equitable distribution has already fed 30% of the global population very nicely). now the rest can't all obviously eat the 400 kg diet, but there is more than plenty to go around, right? in fact, even on just the indian diet you are looking at being able to feed at least .8 billion people that don't even exist (1 billion ton feeds 5 billion people on indian diet)!
yet "Approximately 790 million people in the developing world are still chronically undernourished" (http://www.globalissues.org/TradeRelated/Facts.asp)
so this is weird. here i have fed 30% of the world population really well and can still feed the rest quite adequately and still have enough leftover for another 0.8 billion, yet we have nearly 0.8 billion starving. what's going on? seems to me that all this food just isn't being stored in the bellies of those who need it.
i think the stuff is being thrown away.
and here's what else is going on (http://www.globalissues.org/TradeRelated/Facts.asp - the numbers are footnotes on the site):
Half the world -- nearly three billion people -- live on less than two dollars a day. 1
The GDP (Gross Domestic Product) of the poorest 48 nations (i.e. a quarter of the world's countries) is less than the wealth of the world's three richest people combined. 2
Nearly a billion people entered the 21st century unable to read a book or sign their names. 3
Less than one per cent of what the world spent every year on weapons was needed to put every child into school by the year 2000 and yet it didn't happen. 4
51 percent of the world's 100 hundred wealthiest bodies are corporations. 5
The wealthiest nation on Earth has the widest gap between rich and poor of any industrialized nation. 6
The poorer the country, the more likely it is that debt repayments are being extracted directly from people who neither contracted the loans nor received any of the money. 7
20% of the population in the developed nations, consume 86% of the worlds goods. 8
The top fifth of the world's people in the richest countries enjoy 82% of the expanding export trade and 68% of foreign direct investment -- the bottom fifth, barely more than 1%. 9
In 1960, the 20% of the world's people in the richest countries had 30 times the income of the poorest 20% -- in 1997, 74 times as much. 10
An analysis of long-term trends shows the distance between the richest and poorest countries was about :
3 to 1 in 1820
11 to 1 in 1913
35 to 1 in 1950
44 to 1 in 1973
72 to 1 in 1992
11
"The lives of 1.7 million children will be needlessly lost this year [2000] because world governments have failed to reduce poverty levels" 12
The developing world now spends $13 on debt repayment for every $1 it receives in grants. 13
A few hundred millionaires now own as much wealth as the world's poorest 2.5 billion people. 14
"The 48 poorest countries account for less than 0.4 per cent of global exports." 15
"The combined wealth of the world's 200 richest people hit $1 trillion in 1999; the combined incomes of the 582 million people living in the 43 least developed countries is $146 billion." 16
"Of all human rights failures today, those in economic and social areas affect by far the larger number and are the most widespread across the world's nations and large numbers of people." 17
"Approximately 790 million people in the developing world are still chronically undernourished, almost two-thirds of whom reside in Asia and the Pacific" 18
"7 Million children die each year as a result of the debt crisis. 8525038 children have died since the start of the year 2000 [as of March 24, 2001]." 19
For economic growth and almost all of the other indicators, the last 20 years [of the current form of globalization, from 1980 - 2000] have shown a very clear decline in progress as compared with the previous two decades [1960 - 1980]. For each indicator, countries were divided into five roughly equal groups, according to what level the countries had achieved by the start of the period (1960 or 1980). Among the findings:
Growth: The fall in economic growth rates was most pronounced and across the board for all groups or countries.
Life Expectancy: Progress in life expectancy was also reduced for 4 out of the 5 groups of countries, with the exception of the highest group (life expectancy 69-76 years).
Infant and Child Mortality: Progress in reducing infant mortality was also considerably slower during the period of globalization (1980-1998) than over the previous two decades.
Education and literacy: Progress in education also slowed during the period of globalization.
20
"Today, across the world, 1.3 billion people live on less than one dollar a day; 3 billion live on under two dollars a day; 1.3 billion have no access to clean water; 3 billion have no access to sanitation; 2 billion have no access to electricity." 21
The richest 50 million people in Europe and North America have the same income as 2.7 billion poor people. "The slice of the cake taken by 1% is the same size as that handed to the poorest 57%." 22
The world's 497 billionaires in 2001 registered a combined wealth of $1.54 trillion, well over the combined gross national products of all the nations of sub-Saharan Africa ($929.3 billion) or those of the oil-rich regions of the Middle East and North Africa ($1.34 trillion). It is also greater than the combined incomes of the poorest half of humanity. 23
A mere 12 percent of the world's population uses 85 percent of its water, and these 12 percent do not live in the Third World. 24
in friendship,
prad
To quote Prad "I think the stuff is being thrown away"
I manage a small perishable department (seafood) in a small chain of stores (118) operating in 3 states, PA, West Virginia, and MD. Everyday my dept. on average throws away $75 worth of product.
No, not much, but it would feed a few people. So multiply that times, say every retail grocery store in the U.S. And remember that's just a small department, seafood, which nationwide accounts for about 1% of total store sales. We haven't even discussed the heavy hitters...meat, produce, bakery, deli and dairy- frozen food.
Yes the world can be fed without science meddling into it. They've already "helped enough", thank you!
Regards,
Charle
Great post Prad !
It s great to see the great injustices in the world pointed out in
such documented way.
I will check your maths after consuming and digesting my 7000 christmas kilocalories 😀
However, i still remember seeing a lot of paragraphs in all these studies strongly warning against reducing the food problem to a 'distribution' problem. The problem is far more complex.
In theory you might be right. But from a pragmatic view other solutions are needed.
By the way most freethinkers i know have the (bad?) habit of scrutinizing the assumptions of other freethinkers 😀
Most models say world population will stabilize around 9 000 000 000.
Let 's hope so.
If it kept growing humanity could have played all possible chess positions in the end and Russ would be forced to close this site.
Kindest,
Jan
By the way, i like your post as well Chaswray !
Your 'eyewitness report' reveals maybe more than these scientific reports.
And the 'superweeds' you mentioned made me think twice about genetically engineered food.
Why not open a separate thread on obesitas and the pharmacy industry ?
Or open a thread on small farms vs mass production ?
Thirty years ago I could cross the street and get fresh eggs and fresh milk. Now i have to check the news daily to see if no food chain problem made it to the supermarket.
Kindest,
Jan
Originally posted by NohupAgreed, China has been very successful in controlling her population (although the questionable means used to accomplish this might be made the subject of another thread). I just did a bit of googling and I see that the growth rate of world population is slowing down - good news indeed! I hope that the total stabilizes at ~9-10B as predicted, but I'm not overly confident that it will.
Really ?
I know a lot of countries where people are very well fed and where the population is not growing at all...
And i know some other countries ( China ) were they have very strict state regulated birth control.
In other countries st ...[text shortened]... s demonstrating a very strange sense of humour on the forums 🙂
As for your dig at the 'freethinkers', I have to admit that some of my fellow clan members seem to go off the deep end now and then, but please don't hold that against the rest of us. When I was in Brussels I met a very rude man who I believe purposefully gave us the wrong directions, but I do not hold that against you or other Belgians.
Happy Holidays,
Rich
Originally posted by chaswrayAnother huge source of waste is the catering business. During school I worked for a few different catering companies, and I was shocked at the amount of food that gets tossed after a large banquet or the like. Once we asked if we could take some of it to a local food bank, but the mgmt was afraid of getting sued if anyone got sick.
To quote Prad "I think the stuff is being thrown away"
I manage a small perishable department (seafood) in a small chain of stores (118) operating in 3 states, PA, West Virginia, and MD. Everyday my dept. on average throws away $75 worth of product.
No, not much, but it would feed a few people. So multiply that times, say every retail grocery stor ...[text shortened]... science meddling into it. They've already "helped enough", thank you!
Regards,
Charle
IOriginally posted by NohupHi Jan,
By the way, i like your post as well Chaswray !
Or open a thread on small farms vs mass production ?
Thirty years ago I could cross the street and get fresh eggs and fresh milk. Now i have to check the news daily to see if no food chain problem made it to the supermarket.
Kindest,
Jan
Thank you for you kind words and that great game of chess BTW😀
I'd love to see a thread on small farms. Unfortunately due to agribusiness and mass production they don't exist anymore in any great amount.
Thirty years ago the government told the small farmer grow just one crop (you don't put all your eggs in one basket) and we'll guarantee a price for it. They also told these farmers that certain banks would give them low interest loans with very flexible terms.
Well due to weather conditions or a glut in that one crop the farmers that grabbed for that pot of gold lost their farms, farms that had been in the family for many many years. The banks then sold these farms to Monsanto or ConAgra for pennies on the dollar. They are being worked by migrant workers or people making minimum wage. People who don't care about what you eat. They might squat and eliminate on the head of lettuce you saw at the grocery store today.
Next to go will be the little Mom and Pop grocery store where you got those fresh eggs, they can't compete against the chain conglomerates.
There are more reasons for the downfall of the "food chain", but that's another post or two or maybe more🙄
Again thanks for the kind words
Regards
Charlie
From the Encyclical "Redemptor Hominis" of John Paul II:
http://www.vatican.va/edocs/ENG0218/__PG.HTM
The man of today seems ever to be under threat from what he produces, that is to say from the result of the work of hís hands and, even more so, of the work of his intellect and the tendencies of his will. All too soon, and often in an unforeseeable way, what this manifold activity of man yields is not only subjected to "alienation", in the sense that it is simply taken away from the person who produces it, but rather it turns against man himself, at least in part, through the indirect consequences of its effects returning on himself. It is or can be directed against him. This seems to make up the main chapter of the drama of present-day human existence in its broadest and universal dimension. Man therefore lives increasingly in fear. He is afraid that what he produces-not all of it, of course, or even most of it, but part of it and precisely that part that contains a special share of his genius and initiative-can radically turn against himself; he is afraid that it can become the means and instrument for an unimaginable self-destruction, compared with which all the cataclysms and catastrophes of history known to us seem to fade away. This gives rise to a question: Why is it that the power given to man from the beginning by which he was to subdue the earth98 turns against himself, producing an understandable state of disquiet, of conscious or unconscious fear and of menace, which in various ways is being communicated to the whole of the present-day human family and is manifesting itself under various aspects?
From the Encyclical Redemptor Hominis of John Paul II
http://www.vatican.va/edocs/ENG0218/__PH.HTM
If we make bold to describe man's situation in the modern world as far removed from the objective demands of the moral order, from the exigencies of justice, and still more from social love, we do so because this is confirmed by the well-known facts and comparisons that have already on various occasions found an echo in the pages of statements by the Popes, the Council and the Synod103. Man's situation today is certainly not uniform but marked with numerous differences. These differences have causes in history, but they also have strong ethical effects. Indeed everyone is familiar with the picture of the consumer civilization, which consists in a certain surplus of goods necessary for man and for entire societies-and we are dealing precisely with the rich highly developed societies-while the remaining societies-at least broad sectors of them-are suffering from hunger, with many people dying each day of starvation and malnutrition. Hand in hand go a certain abuse of freedom by one group-an abuse linked precisely with a consumer attitude uncontrolled by ethics -and a limitation by it of the freedom of the others, that is to say those suffering marked shortages and being driven to conditions of even worse misery and destitution.
This pattern, which is familiar to all, and the contrast referred to, in the documents giving their teaching, by the Popes of this century, most recently by John XXIII and by Paul VI,104 represent, as it were, the gigantic development of the parable in the Bible of the rich banqueter and the poor man Lazarus105. So widespread is the phenomenon that it brings into question the fìnancial, monetary, production and commercial mechanisms that, resting on various political pressures, support the world economy. These are proving incapable either of remedying the unjust social situations inherited from the past or of dealing with the urgent challenges and ethical demands of the present. By submitting man to tensions created by himself, dilapidating at an accelerated pace material and energy resources, and compromising the geophysical environment, these structures unceasingly make the areas of misery spread, accompanied by anguish, frustration and bitterness106.
And here is the latest :
World agriculture:
towards 2015/2030
http://www.fao.org/docrep/004/y3557e/y3557e00.htm
Give me a few days , i will read it completely and i will add
my findings to this thread after. Most probably i will find quite some paragraphs on genetically engineered food ...
But this quote i would like to feed you already :
" Nevertheless, the production task facing world agriculture is massive. By 2030, an extra billion tonnes of cereals will be needed each year. "
Originally posted by Nohup]And here is the latest :
And here is the latest :
World agriculture:
towards 2015/2030
http://www.fao.org/docrep/004/y3557e/y3557e00.htm
Give me a few days , i will read it completely and i will add
my findings to this thread after. Most probably i will find quite some paragraphs on genetically engineered food ...
But this quote i would like to feed you already :
" ...[text shortened]... culture is massive. By 2030, an extra billion tonnes of cereals will be needed each year. "
World agriculture:
towards 2015/2030
Jan thanks for the link, very interesting report. Just to quote a few lines from the summary:
"This study suggests that world agricultural production can grow in line with demand, provided that the necessary national and international policies to promote agriculture are put in place. Global shortages are unlikely, but serious problems already exist at national and local levels and may worsen unless focused efforts are made."
And:
"Biotechnology offers promise as a means of improving food security and reducing pressures on the environment, provided the perceived environ-mental threats from biotechnology itself are addressed. Genetically modified crop varieties - resistant to drought, water-logging, soil acidity, salinity and extreme temperatures - could help to sustain farming in marginal areas and to restore degraded lands to production. Pest-resistant varieties can reduce the need for pesticides.
However, the widespread use of genetically modified varieties will depend on whether or not food safety and environmental concerns can be adequately addressed. Indeed, the spread of these varieties, in the developed countries at least, has recently slowed somewhat in response to these concerns, which must be addressed through improved testing and safety protocols if progress is to resume.
Meanwhile, other promising technologies have emerged that combine in-creased production with improved environmental protection. These include no-till or conservation agriculture, and the lower-input approaches of integrated pest or nutrient management and organic agriculture."
Sustainable agriculture is the answer, but that just my opinion. And I practice what I preach here on my little farm. No chemicals, no hybrid seed, no pesticides. Haven't quite figured out "no till" yet, but I'm working on it
😴
Regards,
Charlie