On Tue, Jan 29, 2013 at 4:04 PM, Matt Mahoney <[email protected]>wrote:
> On Tue, Jan 29, 2013 at 2:40 PM, Logan Streondj <[email protected]> > wrote: > >> You can still buy non-GMO and organic food. There is a market for it > >> because some people don't trust the technology. But the fact that it > >> costs more tells me that the technology works. > >> > > Perhaps you aren't aware of the massive subsidies that go into making it > cheaper. > > There aren't any subsidies for organic produce. > > I agree that farm subsidies such as price supports and ethanol tax > credits are bad policies. But how is this the fault of GMO foods? > Should we make ethanol from low yield organic maize rather than BT > corn? > I was merely replying to your point of why it is that organic produce seems to be more expensive. > > > Even here in Toronto, Canada, a lady that was growing over 200 native > plants, > > was fined and had her plants forcibly mowed/destroyed. > > In the U.S., the number 1 crop by land area produces no food: grass. > But why would people want to grow food in their yards? Technology has > made food cheap. Agriculture is 6% of the world economy and 1.5% in > the U.S. In 1800, it was most of the world economy. Most people were > sustenance farmers, and we could only produce enough food to support 1 > billion people. Should we return to the old ways and let the other 6 > billion starve? > Point is that we have new methods of agriculture or agro-ecology which are much more efficient than 1800's and "conventional" and can feed more people for less energy. We'd be able to feed more people, more securely than current methods, while also benefiting the environments biodiversity and people nutritional diversity. > > > monocroping and "war on nature" (tractors chemicals) style agriculture > is extremely low-density and high-cost, using up more calories of energy > than it produces., > > So? It takes 0.7 TW of food energy to support the world population, or > 100 watts per person. That is 5% of our total energy consumption of 15 > TW. Potentially there is 160,000 TW of solar power reaching the Earth. > Given how little of this power is converted to food energy on farms, > it seems there is a lot of room for improvement through technology. > Providing an incentive for this technology requires that food energy > be more valuable than equivalent oil or electricity, which is the > case. > But we aren't using renewable energy to harvest the produce and make the chemicals, it's non-renewable resource that pollute which are being used. Which in turn are destroying the land and water which produce the precious food. There are "new" technologies as you might like to call them, such as new forms of food and manure composting, which can allow for a much more integrated approach. Yes, it takes more knowledge, intelligence and distributed information networks to use agro-ecology on a large scale basis, but the information technology is becoming available at a rapid pace. Even farmers in Africa now have cell phones, which may be usable to help teach them about the new environmentally-friendly agro-ecological practices. > -- > -- Matt Mahoney, [email protected] > > > ------------------------------------------- > AGI > Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now > RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/5037279-a88c7a6d > Modify Your Subscription: > https://www.listbox.com/member/?&; > Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com > ------------------------------------------- AGI Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/21088071-f452e424 Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=21088071&id_secret=21088071-58d57657 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
