2 ms·
IMHO it's simple: current farming depends on oil. Oil will, sooner or later, be very expensive. If nothing changes, food will by extension become very expensive
by m_eiman 10y ago
IMHO it's simple: current farming depends on oil. Oil will, sooner or later, be very expensive. If nothing changes, food will by extension become very expensive too: sooner or later we will need to grow food without the use of oil.
Now the question is:
* should we learn how to do this now, at a comfortable pace while we still have oil-based food as a backup, where wealthy individuals can opt to support this essential research by buying organic food,
* or should we wait until the oil's all but gone and there's a Malthusian event looming?
To me the choice is easy. At worst I'm paying more than "needed" to eat, at best we're able to phase out another reliance on oil in an orderly manner.
- jeromenerf 10y ago> IMHO it's simple: current farming depends on oil Valid point, though everything depends on energy, oil being one of the main sources. Not the only matter at hand though soil degradation, pesticide resistant pests, water pollution, ... We actually have no quantitative problems for now: we waste over 30% of the food production, part of it being expensive food (meat, bananas, etc). See http://www.fao.org/save-food/en/ http://www.fao.org/save-food/en/ So yeah, we can afford some optimizations while researching for sustainable solutions.