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It would very much surprise me if the net lives were a loss instead of a significant gain, so yes this would be an interesting statistic. For instance, its bec

It would very much surprise me if the net lives were a loss instead of a significant gain, so yes this would be an interesting statistic. For instance, its because of many of the practices of "Big Agriculture" that world hunger has dropped so massively in underdeveloped countries over the last 30 years. With even a 10% decline in Asia ( since 92 ), thats about 450 million people who aren't living under malnourished conditions who were doing so 30 years ago.

yongjik 9y ago
I believe improved nutrition in developed countries can be largely attributed to crops and vegetables (after all, meat is usually an inefficient nutrition source). But antibiotics are being used to produce meat faster. I'd be surprised if there's a big overlap between antibiotics usage and reduced world hunger.
Iv 9y ago
Can't agree more. The craziness is not that we do intensive agriculture, it is that we need it and we still do not question our demographic growth. Some fire-brand ecologists want to go back to "traditional" ways outside of the paths of modern intensive agriculture but fail to realize that traditional agriculture both have a higher ecological footprint and is much more labor intensive. If you want to lower the impact of intensive agriculture, promote contraception and demographic decrease.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- bsder 9y ago
  > If you want to lower the impact of intensive agriculture, promote contraception and demographic decrease. You don't need to promote demographic decrease (you might need to do something about the Catholic church, though ...). All you really need to do is improve the opportunities for women. Once women have opportunities and don't need to worry about 4 of 5 children dying, suddenly they don't want to be pregnant so often. Many of the most advanced countries are already under replacement level. I believe the US would be, as well, if it weren't for immigration.
  - Iv 9y ago
    Well, I think we still need to promote the merits of bringing the population down because when you read about countries arriving below replacement level, it is almost universally presented as a negative thing and government try to fight that by giving natalist incentives. No, couples who decide to have more children are not helping society. They are draining its resources. If you want kids, have only one and give her/him all the education and resources you can.
    - manmal 9y ago
      If you consider resource scarcity as an engineering problem, then removing consumers is only one solution. The other is to just increase the amount of resources available. Re parents with many kids are draining resources - this holds true for countries like India, but certainly not regions like Europe. Here, farmers are paid by the EU for letting fields lie fallow, because there is only so much produce that is consumed in the EU. Also, consider the amount of food thrown away by supermarkets, which could be used if we were content with eating crooked looking cucumbers. An argument might be that those extra kids still deplete scarce resources by proxy, e.g. oil.. but as we are slowly transitioning to solar and wind power, this might almost entirely go away.
      - kpil 9y ago
        We can't increase the population forever,in unless we go full Culture-tech, and even then it's not "forever." Meanwhile, while it looks as if most continents are going in the right direction, we need to stop the extremest religious/political warrior movments prevalent in North Africa, Middle East and South East Asia. Eg. In Somalia, a lot of men want 20 kids, and while I can't personally understand why, it's encouraged by religious leaders. It's apparent that Somalia itself won't sustain that in only a generation. This can only lead to conflicts, presumably with richer regions. There are so many pear-shaped scenarios to go to from there, but I leave to your own imagination what a highly industrial neighbouring region could come up with if cornered. Hint: that region have only minor concerns about locking down the borders, setting up incentives that leads to that whole ships filled with people and kids drowing. Ther might be some public lamenting but no policy changes.
- aoeuasdf1 9y ago
  Your comment is a huge non-sequitur. The article is about antibiotics. The top-level comment is about antibiotics. Nothing of what you said applies to antibiotics.
alkonaut 9y ago
Obviously there are good practices and bad ones. Giving antibiotics to healthy livestock is one of the worst. solution: don't eat any meat from countries where this is allowed. Yes this is a bit of a hassle if you happen to live in one of those places but it might be possible to at least find organic meat that isn't given antibiotics when healthy. Buy that.
- petre 9y ago
  Or you can grow your own chicken if you live in the country. It's not a very labour intensive task and they also eat most of the vegetable waste from the household.
  - alimw 9y ago
    These 'solutions' won't do much to slow the development of antibiotic-resistant bacteria unless everyone does the same.
    - alkonaut 9y ago
      If a large enough fraction wants antibiotic free meat of course the fraction of producers making it will adjust accordingly. More importantly, as the fraction of producers who do use antibiotics shrinks, so does the resistance for legislation banning it altogether. This is already done in many countries so should be doable everywhere.
petre 9y ago
I don't buy the ending world hunger bs. It's all about profits and an excuse to continue antibiotic doping of livestock. Indians, Morrocans survive very well on veggies and grains. They also eat very healthy compared to other people in developed countries who eat McDonalds and KFC.
- brians 9y ago
  If you ignore water purity and access issues, parasites, and lead.
  - ant6n 9y ago
    We do ignore these to make the point that growing meat doesn't solve world hunger, but growing plants does.
rectang 9y ago
I once called in to an NPR radio show on organic produce to make a similar point about pesticides: that pesticides were a net public health boon because they made fresh produce affordable. So if anyone is receptive to your argument it ought to be me. But I'm not buying it. Public nutrition does not require that we sacrifice antibiotic effectiveness for incrementally cheaper meat.

yongjik 9y ago

I believe improved nutrition in developed countries can be largely attributed to crops and vegetables (after all, meat is usually an inefficient nutrition source). But antibiotics are being used to produce meat faster. I'd be surprised if there's a big overlap between antibiotics usage and reduced world hunger.

Iv 9y ago

Can't agree more. The craziness is not that we do intensive agriculture, it is that we need it and we still do not question our demographic growth. Some fire-brand ecologists want to go back to "traditional" ways outside of the paths of modern intensive agriculture but fail to realize that traditional agriculture both have a higher ecological footprint and is much more labor intensive. If you want to lower the impact of intensive agriculture, promote contraception and demographic decrease.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
bsder 9y ago
> If you want to lower the impact of intensive agriculture, promote contraception and demographic decrease. You don't need to promote demographic decrease (you might need to do something about the Catholic church, though ...). All you really need to do is improve the opportunities for women. Once women have opportunities and don't need to worry about 4 of 5 children dying, suddenly they don't want to be pregnant so often. Many of the most advanced countries are already under replacement level. I believe the US would be, as well, if it weren't for immigration.
- Iv 9y ago
  Well, I think we still need to promote the merits of bringing the population down because when you read about countries arriving below replacement level, it is almost universally presented as a negative thing and government try to fight that by giving natalist incentives. No, couples who decide to have more children are not helping society. They are draining its resources. If you want kids, have only one and give her/him all the education and resources you can.
  - manmal 9y ago
    If you consider resource scarcity as an engineering problem, then removing consumers is only one solution. The other is to just increase the amount of resources available. Re parents with many kids are draining resources - this holds true for countries like India, but certainly not regions like Europe. Here, farmers are paid by the EU for letting fields lie fallow, because there is only so much produce that is consumed in the EU. Also, consider the amount of food thrown away by supermarkets, which could be used if we were content with eating crooked looking cucumbers. An argument might be that those extra kids still deplete scarce resources by proxy, e.g. oil.. but as we are slowly transitioning to solar and wind power, this might almost entirely go away.
    - kpil 9y ago
      We can't increase the population forever,in unless we go full Culture-tech, and even then it's not "forever." Meanwhile, while it looks as if most continents are going in the right direction, we need to stop the extremest religious/political warrior movments prevalent in North Africa, Middle East and South East Asia. Eg. In Somalia, a lot of men want 20 kids, and while I can't personally understand why, it's encouraged by religious leaders. It's apparent that Somalia itself won't sustain that in only a generation. This can only lead to conflicts, presumably with richer regions. There are so many pear-shaped scenarios to go to from there, but I leave to your own imagination what a highly industrial neighbouring region could come up with if cornered. Hint: that region have only minor concerns about locking down the borders, setting up incentives that leads to that whole ships filled with people and kids drowing. Ther might be some public lamenting but no policy changes.
aoeuasdf1 9y ago
Your comment is a huge non-sequitur. The article is about antibiotics. The top-level comment is about antibiotics. Nothing of what you said applies to antibiotics.

alkonaut 9y ago

Obviously there are good practices and bad ones. Giving antibiotics to healthy livestock is one of the worst. solution: don't eat any meat from countries where this is allowed. Yes this is a bit of a hassle if you happen to live in one of those places but it might be possible to at least find organic meat that isn't given antibiotics when healthy. Buy that.

petre 9y ago
Or you can grow your own chicken if you live in the country. It's not a very labour intensive task and they also eat most of the vegetable waste from the household.
- alimw 9y ago
  These 'solutions' won't do much to slow the development of antibiotic-resistant bacteria unless everyone does the same.
  - alkonaut 9y ago
    If a large enough fraction wants antibiotic free meat of course the fraction of producers making it will adjust accordingly. More importantly, as the fraction of producers who do use antibiotics shrinks, so does the resistance for legislation banning it altogether. This is already done in many countries so should be doable everywhere.

petre 9y ago

I don't buy the ending world hunger bs. It's all about profits and an excuse to continue antibiotic doping of livestock. Indians, Morrocans survive very well on veggies and grains. They also eat very healthy compared to other people in developed countries who eat McDonalds and KFC.

brians 9y ago
If you ignore water purity and access issues, parasites, and lead.
- ant6n 9y ago
  We do ignore these to make the point that growing meat doesn't solve world hunger, but growing plants does.

rectang 9y ago

I once called in to an NPR radio show on organic produce to make a similar point about pesticides: that pesticides were a net public health boon because they made fresh produce affordable. So if anyone is receptive to your argument it ought to be me. But I'm not buying it. Public nutrition does not require that we sacrifice antibiotic effectiveness for incrementally cheaper meat.