Quote:
Originally Posted by Ret10Echo
Jacques Diouf, director-general of the Food and Agriculture Organisation, told heads of state and governments gathered in Rome that ”nobody” understood why cereals had been diverted from human consumption ”mostly to satisfy a thirst for fuel vehicles”.
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Sir, statements such as this one by Mr. Diouf, are breathtaking - but not in a good way.
The problem is not the effort to create biofuels. The problem is deeper. The agricultural system is rooted (pun intended) in fossil fuels, and has been since 1943. There is even a term for it - the Green Revolution, circa 1968.
The principles of modern, mechanized agriculture promulgated by the Green Revolution, did increase crop yields a great deal - but at a price. We had to use fossil fuels to accomplish the goal.
Now, we consume about 10 calories of oil for every 1 calorie of food we eat. Thus, as oil goes higher, we see feedback into food costs as everything from tractor fuel to truck transportation increase in price.
This means that if fuel availability declines, crop production is likely to decline too. It seems that Mr. Diouf has not considered that.
Green Revolution info
Eating Oil reference
Quote:
Originally Posted by The Reaper
Wouldn't it be easier to produce less people, especially in undeveloped countries?
Here is a clue. Food shortages are nature's way of telling you that you have more people than the food necessary to support them. Crop failures are understandable anomalies. Ever rising populations with increasing demands are not.
Maybe food importers should look to fixing their problems?
TR
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Yes, Sir, absolutely true.
I suspect that the food importers will never recognize the problem. The original goal of the Green Revolution was to reduce global hunger, which now exists again. The methods used did increase crop yields - but population increased from 2.5 billion in 1950, to about 6.5 billion today. People expanded their numbers to match the available resources, when wisdom might have suggested more restraint.
Population Numbers
The problem becomes one of "overshoot". If population continues to increase as resources decline, the most likely outcome seems to be a sharp reduction in numbers. While I acknowledge that people are not reindeer, the example of St. Matthews island is interesting. Their numbers went from 29 to 6000 - and then back to 42. Thousands starved.
St. Matthew's Island
This is part - and not a small part - of the issue with oil and declines in availability. It is part of almost everything we do, use - and eat.
I came across an interesting piece in IEEE Spectrum, an electrical engineering magazine. The world uses about a cubic mile of petroleum each year. To replace that, we would need to build 52 nuclear power plants...
every year for 50 years. I believe this serves to illustrate the magnitude of the problem, as well as why we might not wish to remain sanguine about solutions and innovation.
IEEE
I've attached the graphic from the IEEE piece.