On Thu, Jun 26, 2008 at 10:24:41AM +0530, Udhay Shankar N wrote: > In Australia a struggling farmer watches another harvest shrivel under > the country's worst drought on record.
Maybe people should look at the geological climate record for Australia. The continent is chronically drought-ridden, and oversalted. If you want to do sustainable agriculture in Oz, learn to desalinate seawater with solar power, and do drop irrigation. > Another new member of the Chinese middle-class finally has enough cash > to buy his first steak. > > And a U.S. agricultural executive decides to grow corn instead of > wheat to take advantage of the growing demand for biofuels. There's no growing demand for biofuels. There's just some agribusiness lobby which wants to subsidize a process the thermodynamics of which is negative. http://petroleum.berkeley.edu/papers/patzek/CRPS416-Patzek-Web.pdf http://www.theoildrum.com/node/3786 > Alone, none of these events would have been responsible for today's > troubled stock markets, rampant civil unrest, and increasing famine > and malnourishment for the world's poor. (See a video on the world > food crisis.) > > Together, they've caused the world's worst food crisis in a generation. Entirely self-fabricated. > In response to the "agflation," belt-tightening has become commonplace > even in affluent areas such as the U.S. and Europe. Affluent? Going rapidly. The demographics, loss of unemployment and lack of growth are making affluence a thing of the past. > These events often occurred in line with predictions about global > warming, the effects of which are expected in increase in coming > years. (Related: "Warming May Cause Crop Failures, Food Shortages by > 2030" [January 31, 2008].) "May"? > Many people also blame the prices on an increased use of biofuels in > developed nations—in particular ethanol produced from corn—due to > subsidies and changing fuel standards. Absolutely. Biofuels don't work. (With the possible exception of single-cell algae). > Government officials from several nations have claimed that biofuels > are only a small contributor to the price increases. But critics > counter that increasing food production in a time of crisis should > outweigh energy needs. > > Markets have panicked, with countries rushing to make large purchases > of grains and speculators also buying up stock in anticipation of even > more price increases. Many countries have since launched efforts to > stamp out hoarding and price-gouging and ensure the smooth flow of > food to consumers. Markets haven't panicked. Not yet. > So the only answer, experts say, is to increase the amount of food > grown on existing land, using more efficient methods—which will > require years of research and investment. I smell an agenda here. > Beginning in the early 1970s, after the last great food crisis, "there > was a big and sustained increase in investment in agricultural > productivity," Tyner explained. "Sustained"? Whom are they kidding? > New crop varieties and more efficient farming methods led to enormous > increases in output, he said, but those gains begin to slow down in > the '90s, helping to set the stage for the current crisis. When you can hold steady for a couple hundred years, let's talk about whether that's sustainable. > "We need to look long-term, because we've got a long-term problem," > U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Ed Schafer said at a recent press > briefing on food and fuel. What do they mean by long-term? 20 years? 30? > "If you look at how to deal with this, we need to convince other > nations in this world to increase yields. And that means the use of > biotechnology products. It means better water management, better Actually, it doesn't. Biological and biological-dynamical methods (specific organic agriculture) methods would do. They're moderately more labor-intensive, which would require more automation and robotics to scale well. > fertilizer management, and precision farming methods," he said. > > "If other countries do not increase yields comparable to those that we > see here in the United States, people are going to go hungry. It's > that simple." Given how much nonrenewable energy goes into agriculture in the US and the nonsustainability of the process (it kills the soil, pollutes the water table and the aquifiers) the world would be ill advised to copy the US model. -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org";>leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE
