Food output must rise 70%

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by workhorse, Feb 7, 2012.


  1. workhorse

    workhorse Monkey+

    The United NationsFood and Agriculture Organization has said global food output must rise 70 percent by 2050 to feed a world population expected to grow to 9 billion from 7 billion now and as increasingly wealthy consumers in developing economies eat more meat. Food prices tracked by the FAO climbed to the highest ever a year ago on surging grain prices.
    “You don’t have to be a reviving bull on commodities to believe that the era, which went from the 50’s, 60’s to 70’s and early 80s, of ever decreasing food prices in real terms has probably come to an end,” Paul Conway, vice chairman of Cargill, said at the Kingsman sugar conference in Dubai yesterday. The conference is continuing through tomorrow when Jacob Robbins, managing director of global sweeteners at The Coca-Cola Co., are among the scheduled speakers.
    The FAO food-price index averaged 228 points last year, 23 percent more than in 2010 and above the 200 points recorded in 2008, when food riots erupted from Haiti to Egypt. Prices since then have declined 11 percent by December.
    Cargill, based in Minnesota, trades all kinds of farm commodities, including cocoa, soybeans, corn, sugar, meat, wheat and ethanol. Conway is based in Cobham, England. Wheat has doubled since the end of 2005, raw sugar is twice the price in December 2008 and orange juice climbed to a record last month.
    Group of 20 farm ministers agreed to a plan last year in June to set limits on export bans and create a crop database to tackle what French President Nicolas Sarkozy called the “plague” of rising food prices.
    Hungry People

    As many as 925 million people already faced hunger worldwide in 2010, based on the FAO’s estimates. In response to the 2008 food price crisis, countries from India and Egypt to Vietnam and Indonesia banned exports of rice, a staple for half the world. Russia in 2010 banned cereal exports after the country’s worst drought in at least half a century destroyed crops and cut production, sparking a surge in grain prices across the world. Ukraine also restricted exports.
    The desire to produce all the food needed locally is “complete nonsense,” Conway said. Export bans in 2008 were a consequence of the desire for self-sufficiency, he said. “That disrupted international trade and we believe exacerbated food price rises in that year,” he said.
    The FAO’s index of 55 food items fell 2.4 percent to 210.99 points in December from 216.1 in November. The gauge slipped 4.1 percent in October, the biggest drop since March 2010, after rising to a record 237.9 in February. The January index is set for release on Feb. 9. rest of article at Era of Food Prices Always Falling Seen at End as World
     
  2. chelloveck

    chelloveck Diabolus Causidicus

    And the men with silly caps and dresses

    And the men with silly caps and dresses still persist with the insane notion that God hates condoms and birth control pills...When demand for food exceeds production...food prices will rise, that's a no brainer. It would make better sense to reduce demand, by reducing population growth...some clerics it would seem would prefer famine and starvation as a much more acceptable and natural way of population control than contraception and the education of women.....go figure.

    Rising food prices is yet another good reason and motivator to becoming self sufficient and growing your own produce.
     
  3. Witch Doctor 01

    Witch Doctor 01 Mojo Maker



    I was going to make a catty comment about priests molesting childeren but thats not fair to all my good catholic friends... i will make the comment that people in need are more willing to accept the leadership of those who provide for their needs... (welfare state + democrats, Papal leader ship in poor countries...etc)... it's all about power
     
  4. Espada

    Espada Monkey+

    In the old days, (even before I was born !), a family's "social security" was its offspring, for when parents got too old and decrepit to work. And even then, very few of maybe ten children born lived to maturity, so an area's population remained more or less steady.

    Now, with Western medical help, most of those ten children born in Third World countries live to reproduce their own ten children. Same goes for the "third world" residents of the United States. How many people do you know and associate with who have more than two or three children ? They don't breed more than they can feed and educate.

    I have no sympathy at all for people, wherever thay are, who don't feel the same, and act accordingly. For decades, Western entities have been all over the Third World, preaching birth control, and handing out devices and chemicals to implement same, but to 99 % no avail. Third World countries are infinitely better at producing hungry mouths than they are at increasing food production, even with massive Western aid in that area.

    So now the UN says we have to increase our capacity to feed those people ? Why am I not surprised.
     
  5. TnAndy

    TnAndy Senior Member Founding Member


    And let's even assume we can.

    What about the next doubling ?

    If you've never grown bacteria in a Petri dish, here's what happens. You start with a few, that double, and they double, and everything rocks along just fine until that LAST double....at which time they run out of food and space, and the whole dish turns to a soupy grey mess of dead bacteria.

    Lesson for the world in that dish.
     
  6. Witch Doctor 01

    Witch Doctor 01 Mojo Maker

    lets hear it for geometric propagation...
     
  7. ghrit

    ghrit Bad company Administrator Founding Member

    Rah! Rah!! Sis boom bah!!

    Without it, Ponzi would have never had it so good.
     
    VisuTrac likes this.
  8. fedorthedog

    fedorthedog Monkey+++

    Thye watch the cycle of nature expanding beyond its resources and then starving off and then they decide it is the one natural law they must follow.
     
  9. Redneck Rebel

    Redneck Rebel Monkey++

    Even then they won't change, they'll simply say God brought forth famine upon the Earth to punish us wicked sinful creatures and to purge evil pagans like myself from the lands.
     
  10. Seawolf1090

    Seawolf1090 Retired Curmudgeonly IT Monkey Founding Member

    All population explosions eventually crash and implode. Soon, it'll be our time.
     
  11. Midnightblue72

    Midnightblue72 Monkey++

    Four words, four simple little words. "Soylent Green is People."
     
  12. Seacowboys

    Seacowboys Senior Member Founding Member

    The scariest thing about this, to me, is that Monsanto has recently purchased it's own private Army of mercenaries. They bought the former "Black-Water".
     
    VisuTrac and chelloveck like this.
  13. oldawg

    oldawg Monkey+++

    Put the heirloom seeds down NOW and back away!
     
  14. chelloveck

    chelloveck Diabolus Causidicus

    Blackwater a strategic acquisition??

    Monsanto has seen which way the winds are blowing...and they understandably want to be the last ones standing....and if a few black ops are required on the way???? Hell, I wouldn't be surprised at all if there were also a few ex company men working for them too....as consultants of course.

    Once upon a time, city states employed merceanaries to protect their interests....nowadays multinational corporations wield power and influence that the Medicis couldn't even hope to dream of. Instead of Milan, Florence and Venice, now Monsanto, ExxonMobil, General Electric, JP Morgan Chase, et al are the commercial powerhouses of our age. Why wouldn't they want to beef up their security? Particularly when things are likely to get a little messsy...and we know how responsive the poor overstretched under paid LEO's are likely to be when things go pear shaped in a big way. My bet is that Blackwater will be better equipped and bombed up than some EU member countries.
     
    tulianr, Sapper John and Seacowboys like this.
  15. Seacowboys

    Seacowboys Senior Member Founding Member

    You hit the nail on the head there, Chelly.
     
  16. TheEconomist

    TheEconomist Creighton Bluejay

    Its all about crop yield baby! Shouldn't be a problem.
     
  17. Seawolf1090

    Seawolf1090 Retired Curmudgeonly IT Monkey Founding Member

    Yeah, we can increase crop yields - using more petroleum products. Fuel to power the machines and transport vehicles, chemicles for the fertilizers, insecticides and God-knows-what Monsanto is doing.......

    So, increasing food production will require more oil use - perhaps one reason the UN/NWO is so adamant on reducing OUR personal fuel use. Gotta save it to 'feed the poor'......?

    The ONLY way to stave off the inevitable crash is to limit the birthrate of the Third World NOW! But that leads to folks screaming about prejudice and tromping on 'rights'........

    Our world is heading for a crash, bigtime.
     
  18. Seawolf1090

    Seawolf1090 Retired Curmudgeonly IT Monkey Founding Member

    tulianr and strunk like this.
  19. chelloveck

    chelloveck Diabolus Causidicus

    Interesting web article, SW

    The 3 million pounds of food, is heavily weighted towards animal protein, which is probably the hardest source of nutrition for many peoples of the world to come by. The system is intensive, and highly efficient, recycling nutrients and byproducts extensively. I am not sure that the system is as effective in producing carbs, fats and sugars proportionally to the amount of animal proteins, but it sure as hell would beat UN famine care packages.

    Would such systems solve the worlds food supply needs...possibly.....even if this kind of technology was universally employed, would it prevent starvation world wide?....probably not. Control food production, food storage, and most importantly...food distribution...and you control the people. Just ask any Ukrainian in their 80's and older. Having said that...everyone having their own set up similar but on a smaller scale as that which was described, IS doable without high tech facilities and at quite modest expense in initial infrastructure setup and ongoing system maintenance. Naturally local government needs to support such enterprises, otherwise NIMBY HOAs will squash such sensible attempts at self sufficiency by claiming that a home owner aquaponic setup is "smelly, unsightly, and will lower the value of adjoining properties by looking "different"".
     
  20. strunk

    strunk Monkey+

    And yet we use our land to grow increasingly more meat (which is incredibly less land-efficient than plant crops) and fuel. We grow plant crops to feed to the meat-bearing critters, or to put biodiesel in the John Deere or ethanol in all the cars (whether we want it or not).

    So much goes into making High Fructose Corn Syrup, which goes right to your favorite junk food.

    I've been rather enjoying "discovering" the produce department at the supermarket, which is now where I spend the bulk of my grocery budget. I can see that this is heading towards a collision course with a bigger garden (and get that grocery budget waaaay down).

    What ever happened to the Victory Garden? It was a damned good idea in its day, and I think it's time for that value to return to western society. I see my neighbors spending so much time caring for their flowers and hedges, things that just look tidy but don't feed anyone. Me? I'd rather rip out the hedge and put in a row of potatoes. Tear up the flower bed and lay in some cabbage, carrots, leeks, and kale.

    It's becoming increasingly obvious that we can't look to agribusiness to keep us fed.
     
    tulianr and Seawolf1090 like this.
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