Jones Beene wrote:
Not with the U.S. diet. We eat a tremendous amount of meat, and this
takes 10 times more starting plant food (mainly cattle feed).
Wrong (partially). We do eat too much meat here but not more than Europe,
where the 1/4 acre standard has been in place for a long time - and it
only takes 10 times more land IF you allow predominantly open-grazing . . .
It does not take 10 times more land. It takes 10 times more starting plant
food, mainly corn which is fed to cows. As you note, corn grows very
densely in North America, whereas most nutritious vegetable food and wheat
for people takes more space.
(Incidentally, corn is a terrible thing to feed to a cow. Cows are not
evolved to eat corn, and it causes terrible stomach upsets, misery and
disease which can only be treated with massive amounts of antibiotics,
which is causing yet another crisis.)
This issue of land use is complicated by another factor, which I described
in chapter 16. Even today, using conventional fission power or wind turbine
electricity, we could grow most of our food in indoor food factories. The
Cosmoplant factory uses a land area of 0.01 ha to grow as much lettuce as a
20 ha outdoor farm (a factor of 2000 improvement). This is just the start.
This is a first-generation factory. If we can synthesize meat and grow
plant food indoors we could probably reduce the surface area required to
produce food by a factor of 100,000 or so, in a walk. This would also,
ultimately, reduce the cost of food by a huge margin. Frankly, I consider
agriculture a thoroughly obsolete industry that is long overdue for
replacement, with or without cold fusion.
Even with our fertilizer intense production it takes more than 1/4th acre
to feed one American.
Wrong (partially). We simply do not us our land wisely now.
Without fertilizer, insecticide, irrigation and other intense energy inputs
agricultural productivity everywhere in the world plummet. If we run out of
oil before we find other sources of energy, the cost of food will go sky
high and agricultural productivity will fall drastically. The system
depends upon cheap fossil fuel energy, mainly oil.
But then again I am not a paranoid bug-specialist who fears immigrants,
nor do I like insects more than people - so yes, I am going to go to every
take every opportunity to show Pimentel for the foolish idiot that he is.
Plain and simple.
It isn't just Pimentel. You are also contradicting Jarad Diamond and
thousands of agricultural experts, biologists and ecologists worldwide say
that agriculture is not renewable, it is destroying the land, and that in a
few hundred more years land everywhere will look like it does in Iraq --
the former Golden Crescent. If you have read Diamond's books you will see
that he is no racist.
You are trying to make this out as if Pimentel is the only person the world
making these claims, or the only person who has come up with these numbers.
As I have repeatedly pointed out, that is untrue. You should at least
acknowledge that he is not the only person you disagree with.
You remind me of the anti-cold fusion debunkers who attack only
Fleischmann's first paper, and pretend that the other 3,000 papers were
never published. You should not personalize this discussion as an ad
hominem attack against Pimentel, regardless of what you think of his
politics. As I said, they bear no relevance to his conclusions. Actually,
for the most part he is merely quoting other people's conclusions and the
consensus of biologists and agricultural experts worldwide.
Of course there is considerable dispute amongst the experts about the
extent of the crisis, the rate at which land and water tables are being
destroyed, and so on. Pimentel (and others) usually quote the range of
estimates for these issues, including both optimistic and pessimistic numbers.
People like Pimentel have never considered the potential effect of indoor
food factories. You see many alarmist organizations and web sites about the
future of land use and population pressure, but I have not seen a single
one that mentions food factories. I doubt these people are even aware the
work at Tokai U., Cosmoplant, or New-Harvest.
- Jed
