Sustainability

Yes I believe it to be a real problem
I used to be on the fringe of the food supply business and some 10 years ago I was at a meeting to discuss future needs trends & supplies on a global basis, it was scary then so I guess its more so now.

Its a HUGE issue & far more complex than a few words on these pages can do justice to

The need for ever growing & larger quantities, cheaper, wider seasonality, is forcing more & more modern methods, hydroponics, GM, new super fertilizers; the details are just far to numerous & complex for the average Joe Soap to comprehend, including me.

Just a few snippets: Intense production means doing something artificial & that upsets the ecosystem be it local or vast tracks of land that actually cause global effects.
Deforestation is short term, once exposed the forest soils are only good for a few crop cycles.
Intense cattle rearing in the deforested areas soon become bare soils with wash out and/or dust bowls.
Palm oil is predominately used for bio-mass & ends up as bio-diesel or part of other materials that are not always food.
Intense animal rearing or milk production in Europe / UK / USA causes huge effluent & infrastructure issues locally.
Check out mass chicken production, some factories might even turn you instant veggie
- Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall is on the right track.

What to do ???
First thing is to stop & reverse the human population growth - but quickly
But this obvious solution appears to be unacceptable to many for some reason that I don't understand
Next is to embrace a few new ideas, shoot some holy cows & get realistic - we need less animal protein - including milk & more veggie based foods, more GM, more efficient production of locally traditional foods & accept seasonal availability voids.

I guess that's upset the apple cart enough, lets hear some other opinions.

I agree with most of what you say Mike.

Intense, modern farming, relies heavily on oil (eg fertilizers and fuel for machinery).

Any ideas to reduce food production dependency on oil?

Cheers

Don

Hi Don, I see it as I said in the post, problem is its far more complex & some items actually could end up with negative impact.
But per your question - some of this could easily move towards less petrochemical dependency

More veggie based foods (not going veggie) is almost a win-win.
We don't need so much animal products, we could easily move to more veg & less meat protein. And I don't mean going veggie, a 6oz steak is just as tasty as a 10oz, do I really believe that expensive yoghurt makes me more healthy.
Animals take up a lot of space & can give poor returns per hectare. Some logic exists in the better utilisation of land unsuitable for tillage - hill farms etc - but these do not produce the cheap meat or milk demanded by the masses. But intense chicken & pig rearing on flat arable land does seem a bit daft.

More acceptance of GM
Its really time to get this done. We eat more GM food than HM Gov is willing to face up to, so lets have a grown up debate on this.
GM does not need to mean intense mono-culture. GM crops can & are planted with wild hedgerow margins & this is done now & very successfully.
It can produce more or it can produce the same or even less per hectare.
What GM does is reduce the chemicals - some noxious - and/or application cycles & the diesel fuel used for this

More efficient production of local traditional foods
This is a real big one & too much to mention - A big change would be the supermarkets insistence on perfect presentations - clone like apples for one example out of thousands. The waste of the less than perfect apple is nothing short of criminal, more gets wasted than eaten. And lets not get into the best by & sell by dates (yet)
Broccoli (calabrese) nice as it is & so perfectly presented is another big waste; its a big cabbage that takes months to grow & we eat the little flower head. many do not make the perfect look & get wasted, pig food or ploughed back in. Calabrese come from the south of Europe. British broccoli is a white cauliflower that can (like broccoli) can be made to produce most of the year locally & its also nice to eat - not waste - the tight fitting green leaves around the head.

Accept seasonal availability voids.
Tomatoes at Christmas taste like ??? water (that's being so-o polite) But at what cost, kw/hr light & heat ??
All year round green beans & similar ??? Seems like we could do something easily with this
Problem is we will still need stuff transported, food needs to get to the supermarkets & corner shops. The supermarket maxi-cube refrigerated articulated trucks (N.B. not juggernauts) Joe Bloggs Transport & similar will be on our roads whatever, we all need to eat, even veggies do that, self sufficiency is fairyland; so supplying shops with food means transport - period.
Apples, out of season, come from Australia, NZ, SA, banana's come from Caribbean etc.. These all get transported by ship & that believe it or not is more efficient than anything in transport by a significant margin.
But the air transport stuff of perishable products could be radically reduced provided we accept some foods will not be available all year round. The down side however is reducing the dependency on production in places like East Africa reduces efficiently & increases cost of these production centres, and more worrying is that it adds to the poverty problems of the developing world.

Thats it, I'm done, I need to recycle my soapbox

quote:

Originally posted by Mike-B:
What to do ???
First thing is to stop & reverse the human population growth - but quickly
But this obvious solution appears to be unacceptable to many for some reason that I don't understand.

There was a letter in one of our local papers recently where an advocate of cycling (as a means of transport Vs car driving) defended their position as one that helped assure a future world that was better (environmentallY) for their children. This person has it wrong IMO. The decision to place children into a future world is more environmentally destructive than any transport choice they could make.

As I consume my way through life, and take more than my fair share of resources from the finite pool, I can console my conscience to some extent that it ends with me. No open-ended line of descendants that will inevitably consume the planet into chaos and collapse.

The centuries of industrialisation, unsustainable development and consumption will just appear as a miniscule blip on the timeline of the planet, whether or not there is anyone around to ponder such things.

quote:

Originally posted by Mike-B:

What to do ???
First thing is to stop & reverse the human population growth.

Stop population growth - unlikely; reverse it? - who are you going to kill?

Forget oil - go nuclear.

You will have to deal with religion first.

Contraception is evil and wrong.

never mind just let the little buggers starve to death after they have been born.

As a Child 45 years ago i have been seeing images of starving children in many parts of the world since that time.

Yet here we are 45 years later still seeing these same terrible images.

It seems we will breed until we have mass starvation all over the world.

IMHO the next world conflict will be over arable land.

I am worried that some suggest many of us will still be here in 2050, that would make me 95.

We should also stop artificially prolonging life spans.

Or we could revisit:

SOYLENT GREEN

David

quote:

et here we are 45 years later still seeing these same terrible images.

This is because the governments and the people of these country`s would/will not listen and are possibly lazy as well preferring to hold out cupped hands instead

"I am worried that some suggest many of us will still be here in 2050, that would make me 95."

Great i would like to live that long so i could see my boy`s [16 month old] children as i came to fatherhood late [ i am forty ]

I got a masters in Landscape Architecture, big environmental focus, SUSTAINABILITY, I started having nightmares about it. Every project had to have that word in it. We were given grief for driving alone or getting a cup of coffee in styrofoam but the cafeteria or food truck wouldn't change in the school. Then I asked the head of Dept. if he carpooled or he'd tried to get to a meeting using the bus? For some strange reason the other students went silent and he didn't answer in a long awkward silence.

I too will not have children and many of those married I know only have 1 or 2. However, the end position is that when yer old you'll have to look out for your own care by strangers. I take care of 89 yo parents, they're so thankful but even mom says they've lived too long as many residents in their place say. But it's a fabulous place with ocean and valley views in CA.

I keep my footprint as small as possible in a 1 BR apt. in LA close to everything I want to do, don't commute, try to recycle, try to buy local produce. Only thing I splurge on is buying exotic stereo kit from Britain. HA!

I start from two basic principles.

1. We, as a species, want to continue indefinitely (well, long-term).
2. We want all of our species to enjoy a happy life.

At present, IMHO, there are too many of us to acheive the second of these principles, within the limits of our current technology/igenuity.
War, famine, pestilence etc will take care of the first principle, assuming we don't make any sensible intervention.

Based on some of the posts above, it is clear that a fair number of the Forum don't agree with my first principle. Nothing wrong with this, but you don't have my vote. Self-extermination isn't on my agenda.

Achieving both of my principles depends very much on achieving and maintaining sustainability.
Could we persude the global poulation to limit offspring and gradually reduce the population?
Can technolgy/igenuity keep ahead of population growth?

Cheers

Don

I think both your premises are wrong.

The "species" does not think but if it did it would only require continuing existence happy or unhappy.

Derry,

I didn't say that the "species" wanted....

I said what I wanted.......and presumed that enough other members of the species would be like-minded to justify the "we".

I acknowledged that some of the Forum members have already indicated ambivolence about the future existence on mankind.

When talking about sustainability, it seems important to me, to establish why we consider sustainability is so important. My two principles simply capture why I think sustainability is important.

I am aware that not everybody will agree with my two principles. I imagine that quite a few people will only be interested in short-term sustainability eg the next 5 years, or the duration of their life-span. I'm aware that many people are only interested in themselves and couldn't give a s***t about anybody else.

Cheers

Don

Dear Don,

As you know from previous posts of mine on this 'ere Forum, you know that this is subject dear to me.

The trouble is that population control is not an easy subject to address, and I have no idea this side of unacceptable Fascism or Communism, how this can be achieved. Education would be a start, but the PC experts would soon shoot down that notion, so the real future is one of certain catastrophe. Northern Europe is likely to be better equipped to survive the early stages of the inevitable disaster, and my only hope is that at 50 this year, I shall be dead and gone before fortress Europe falls to the inevitable armageddon ...

ATB from George

PS: I find the subject unutterably difficult to discuss

quote:

PS: I find the subject unutterably difficult to discuss

I agree.

China has/is trying to limit population growth. I don't know if it is proving successful, or whether it is proving acceptable, or whether it could be copied in India, Brazil, Europe etc.

Alternatively, do we have enough ingenuity to make better use of existing resources or to invent the use of new resources currently lying dormant.

On a more practical note (or is it mundane?) I read yesterday about a businessman who has reared "super" bulls that sire cows and produce milking cows that yield 15,000 litres milk pa for the same input as a conventional cow that yields 5,000 litres pa. The beef cattle only need 5lb of feed for every lb of beef produced (standard beef cattle need 10lb of feed). His "super" pigs only need 3lb of feed per lb of pork compared to the 6lb eaten by a normal pig.

His expanding market is China.

Cheers

Don

Hi George, don't blame Don this time, I started this one.

Yes I agree its difficult, horrible or worse to contemplate.
But if the population keeps growing & we continue to live off the finite resource that is our planet, then simple logic tells anyone that one of these has to change or we face some kind of events that will probably reduce the population somewhat dramatically.

We cannot continue to grow the population while thinking we can find a way to better manage the planet earth resource, that surely will lead to us all living off pill type food & pre-planned age or health related euthanasia.
We must either stop and reverse the population growth or find an addition sustenance resource, I don't see much hope for either, but it will eventually come down to one or the other.

quote:

Originally posted by Don Atkinson:
Derry,

I didn't say that the "species" wanted....

I said what I wanted.......and presumed that enough other members of the species would be like-minded to justify the "we".

Cheers

Don

By all means say what you think, but do not use "we" in such a context when you mean "I" - it does lead to confusion.

quote:

do not use "we" in such a context when you mean "I" - it does lead to confusion.

the context was clear enough!

Cheers

Don

We are the only species that consciously contemplates the long-term future of our existence as a species. This is a big deal. We do now have the collective capability to make decisions that would ensure the long-term survival of our species. Problem is, we won't. We're far too selfish with respect to our own consumption, and even more selfish when it comes to passing on our personal genes. We will continue to selfishly compete for increasingly scarce resources until it all ends in chaos and collapse.

When I posted my 2 x principles above, I was hoping to find how many of us really consider the happiness of others to be important.

Personnaly, I don't think enough people do consider it important. As winky indicates, its more a case of evry man for himself - and it will lead to tears. But not, IMHO, the end of mankind. But to be a surviver will need wit and ingenuity.

Cheers

Don

quote:

Originally posted by Don Atkinson:

quote:

do not use "we" in such a context when you mean "I" - it does lead to confusion.

the context was clear enough!

Cheers

Don

Perhaps it is just me, but:

"1. We, as a species, want to continue indefinitely (well, long-term).
2. We want all of our species to enjoy a happy life."
suggests you were speaking for all mankind. No matter.

quote:

Originally posted by Derry:

quote:

Originally posted by Don Atkinson:

quote:

do not use "we" in such a context when you mean "I" - it does lead to confusion.

the context was clear enough!

Cheers

Don

Perhaps it is just me, but:

"1. We, as a species, want to continue indefinitely (well, long-term).
2. We want all of our species to enjoy a happy life."
suggests you were speaking for all mankind. No matter.

Clearly the second point is at least debatable.

Otherwise the disparity in wealth between the richest and poorest would not be such that poorest cannot eat in a way that is even up to povery levels - there would be more even sharing of wealth and resources.

The process of nature pruning the humman population has been with us for a very long time already. I suspect the problem of starvation among the poorest peoples of the world will only grow in scale as the overal human population continues to grow.

This not to speak for anyone, but is a simple observation.

ATB from George

Why do people keep saying to stop people copulating.

Its like built into the genes pretty much, what you gonna do?

quote:

Originally posted by garyi:
Why do people keep saying to stop people copulating.

Its like built into the genes pretty much, what you gonna do?

I think people are actually saying stop "populating". We're actually smart enough to distinguish between the act and outcome, and intervene. But yes, even populating is built into the genes as perhaps the main purpose of copulating. Hence the instinctive desire to have a baby. And the ridiculous (IMO) lengths some will go to to achieve this (IVF).

Ponder for a moment the motivation behind the statement "We want to have a baby". Why? The only rationally plausible reason is entirely selfish. There is no altruistic outcome that a rational person could believe of the decision to have a baby. It is all in the "We want" bit of the statement. A bit like "We want a new sofa". Casting our genes into the future is the absolutely most selfish thing we can do.

We're eating the future, but hey, whattaya gunna do?

moving on abit!

I think there is a fundamental problem with assuming that GM is the answer too. (I realise that there is an arguement that we have been 'gm'ing for years by selection but my veiw is this is specious.) Gm now is about immediate manipulation rather than manipulation over a period of time. It cannot be contained when used and depending on how it is actually done it ensures that new gm seed must be used every year as it is not self propergating.

We can actually grow huge amounts of food 'naturally' but we seem to be in this spiral of wanting ever cheap food ( which we then throw away/waste in huge quantities!). This then demands we grow things out of season, in places where we damage ecosystems, spain never mind africa, and which takes priority over self sufficientcy production.

Food has a value and generally this means some increase in its current price. Live with it! Otherwise water really will become the new oil in the years ahead.

Bring back Schumacher

now that should move the discussion on!
atb
james

OK, let try a different tack.

Why is anybody, bothered about sustainability or the environment?

Now, in MY case, I think its worthwhile looking further ahead than the next 5, 10, 50 or even 100 years. For reasons that I can't axplain (I think it must be in MY genes), I would like to think of MY line of decendents continuing a line of happy existence, ad-infinitum.

However, I wouldn't like this to be at the expense of the mutual happines of others.

So, I am keen to ensure that we (ie the 6bn people on this planet at the moment) don't deplete key resources on which we currently depend, before we have time to develop new resources, or better ways of using existing. In other words, I think sustainability is important.

Is anybody else bothered? If so why?

Cheers

Don

quote:

Originally posted by Don Atkinson:
Now, in MY case, I think its worthwhile looking further ahead than the next 5, 10, 50 or even 100 years. For reasons that I can't axplain (I think it must be in MY genes), I would like to think of MY line of decendents continuing a line of happy existence, ad-infinitum.

Should they be Lindisfarne fans as well, Don?