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I really think technology like this is energy misapplied or wasted. It's overly zoomed in on individual plant's performance, where actually addressing human cre

by spraak 9y ago

I really think technology like this is energy misapplied or wasted. It's overly zoomed in on individual plant's performance, where actually addressing human created problems in ecosystems and the environment on a whole seems much more important. It's like trying to harden the security on your house while living in a dangerous neighborhood instead of just moving somewhere else.

DubiousPusher 9y ago
Except that we can't "move somewhere else." Or so least no one has provided a valid plan for such a "move". We have massively increased yields and cultivated nearly all the best land just to keep pace with the human population boom. By all accounts, that boom will continue for some time until it peaks and the only viable way to feed that many people is to increase yield density. If we can grow that density even faster than the pace of population growth we may even be able to turn back some of that land and mitigate the vast habitat destruction we've perpetrated on the biosphere. IMO, supporting GMOs is one of the most environmentally concious things you can do.
- craftyguy 9y ago
  > By all accounts, that boom will continue for some time until it peaks and the only viable way to feed that many people is to increase yield density. We could also work to reduce the peak. You know, fight the illness, not the symptoms?
  - icelancer 9y ago
    Eugenics and population control fell out of favor a few decades ago. Gonna be hard to bring that movement back into vogue.
    - craftyguy 9y ago
      Not sure why you jumped straight into that, but how about starting with birth control?
      - icelancer 9y ago
        Birth rates are already massively dropping in the countries that can afford it, use it, and have no religious objections to it. This is not a technological problem.
  - DubiousPusher 9y ago
    Nations and NGOs are doing this. Many are working very hard to spread contraception and reproductive hygiene. The growth has been significantly curbed by this effort with peak population estimates being revised down several times. But many societies have difficult to breach social norms regarding even talking about sex. social norms are very hard to change and we've made amazing progress in just a century. But it's possible we've reached something like a hard limit on how quickly we can change people's beliefs. I for one haven't heard of any new revolutionary psychology that will help move this along faster. We have to tackle this problem from all sides.
  - mirimir 9y ago
    Population is increasing fastest in the least developed areas. And without economic development, it generally doesn't work to tell people to have fewer kids. And parts of Africa seem stuck. I don't really know why.
- candiodari 9y ago
  But ... doing all these "science is evil" changes to law would make a few tens of thousand very rich people feel slightly better about themselves, what they eat and what "they achieved", and yes, it will starve hundreds of thousands, and make food more expensive for no benefit for hundreds of millions (and thus make those millions poorer), but they will never see those people. > IMO, supporting GMOs is one of the most environmentally concious things you can do. True. Other observations one might make is that the "greenness" of small parks in San Francisco really have no significant influence over how green the world is, and campaigning for them has much less to do with environmentalism than with "more tax-funded house-value-increasing toys for me NOW ! FOR THE GOOD OF THE EARTH !".
- supermatt 9y ago
  There is substantially more land allocated to crops used for animal fodder than human consumption. We should probably be focusing on reducing/eliminating animal agriculture instead of further increasing farming intensity.
  - zaarn 9y ago
    CRISPR could potentially enable lab-grown meat, which would address this issue. Such meat would not have any of the potential ethical problems some people might have with the addition of not requiring the vast amount of tech to keep a normal animal healthy until it gets to the slaughterhouse (antibiotics for one)
  - saalweachter 9y ago
    There is definitely some opportunity in reducing meat consumption, I want to say that up front. Specifically, grain-fed beef is the one to reduce. In many other cases, meat production may be the best use of the available resources. Three specific cases to consider: First, not all land can support crops. There is a lot of marginal land in the world that can support pasture land, but not corn or cabbages. This is more common in the third world than in the US, although the US has some historical grasslands we've been irrigating the heck out of. Second, some animals can capture calories humans can't, or are unwilling to. Pigs can eat food scraps or no-longer-fresh produce. Third, not all animals are equally inefficient. Cows are the ones that are 10-to-1 on their calorie efficiency (although if those are 10 calories of grass, it's still a bargain). Pigs are closer to 3-to-1. You still save a fair bit by reducing the amount of grain-fed pork in the world, but it isn't as dramatic as the savings from beef. Chickens are like 1.8-to-1. That makes them basically competitive with soybeans as a protein source; you can plant 2/3 an acre of corn and 1/3 an acre of soybeans and feed it to chickens to get as much protein as 1 acre of soybeans, plus you get an organic fertilizer from them. From a pure environmental standpoint, there is no reason to ever stop producing chickens.
    - tintor 9y ago
      Is organic chicken also 1.8-to-1?
- hvidgaard 9y ago
  I have to find the book and accompanied sources, but it's not so much that yields have improved. It's the labor needed to get those yields have decreased dramatically. I personally believe that reliance of chemicals to keep weeds, insects, fungus, and bacteria at bay has gone too far. It's fine for targeted use, but today we're just dousing crops to keep the yields up, and feed animals antibiotics "preventively" with the side effect of greatly increased growth.
  - DubiousPusher 9y ago
    Just one example. https://www.agry.purdue.edu/ext/corn/news/timeless/yieldtrends.html https://www.agry.purdue.edu/ext/corn/news/timeless/yieldtren... Also, if you truly are bothered by the quantity of chemicals we use in our agriculture, you should strongly support GMOs. A lot of GMO research goes into creating crops that need less and fewer of these chemicals applied.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
gravelc 9y ago
No one who is involved in this kind of work thinks it's the solution to all environmental/production/health woes. Such technologies are however part of a holistic approach. Additionally, things like climate change (including what's already in the pipeline) are so rapid, that similarly rapid responses are paramount. We could stop generating CO2 today, and traditional plant breeding practices would still struggle to cope with maintaining yield due to the inertia in the system. What we need are effective technologies and and a focus on addressing ecosystem/environment problems, not or.

by spraak 9y ago

DubiousPusher 9y ago

Except that we can't "move somewhere else." Or so least no one has provided a valid plan for such a "move". We have massively increased yields and cultivated nearly all the best land just to keep pace with the human population boom. By all accounts, that boom will continue for some time until it peaks and the only viable way to feed that many people is to increase yield density. If we can grow that density even faster than the pace of population growth we may even be able to turn back some of that land and mitigate the vast habitat destruction we've perpetrated on the biosphere. IMO, supporting GMOs is one of the most environmentally concious things you can do.

craftyguy 9y ago
> By all accounts, that boom will continue for some time until it peaks and the only viable way to feed that many people is to increase yield density. We could also work to reduce the peak. You know, fight the illness, not the symptoms?
- icelancer 9y ago
  Eugenics and population control fell out of favor a few decades ago. Gonna be hard to bring that movement back into vogue.
  - craftyguy 9y ago
    Not sure why you jumped straight into that, but how about starting with birth control?
    - icelancer 9y ago
      Birth rates are already massively dropping in the countries that can afford it, use it, and have no religious objections to it. This is not a technological problem.
- DubiousPusher 9y ago
  Nations and NGOs are doing this. Many are working very hard to spread contraception and reproductive hygiene. The growth has been significantly curbed by this effort with peak population estimates being revised down several times. But many societies have difficult to breach social norms regarding even talking about sex. social norms are very hard to change and we've made amazing progress in just a century. But it's possible we've reached something like a hard limit on how quickly we can change people's beliefs. I for one haven't heard of any new revolutionary psychology that will help move this along faster. We have to tackle this problem from all sides.
- mirimir 9y ago
  Population is increasing fastest in the least developed areas. And without economic development, it generally doesn't work to tell people to have fewer kids. And parts of Africa seem stuck. I don't really know why.
candiodari 9y ago
But ... doing all these "science is evil" changes to law would make a few tens of thousand very rich people feel slightly better about themselves, what they eat and what "they achieved", and yes, it will starve hundreds of thousands, and make food more expensive for no benefit for hundreds of millions (and thus make those millions poorer), but they will never see those people. > IMO, supporting GMOs is one of the most environmentally concious things you can do. True. Other observations one might make is that the "greenness" of small parks in San Francisco really have no significant influence over how green the world is, and campaigning for them has much less to do with environmentalism than with "more tax-funded house-value-increasing toys for me NOW ! FOR THE GOOD OF THE EARTH !".
supermatt 9y ago
There is substantially more land allocated to crops used for animal fodder than human consumption. We should probably be focusing on reducing/eliminating animal agriculture instead of further increasing farming intensity.
- zaarn 9y ago
  CRISPR could potentially enable lab-grown meat, which would address this issue. Such meat would not have any of the potential ethical problems some people might have with the addition of not requiring the vast amount of tech to keep a normal animal healthy until it gets to the slaughterhouse (antibiotics for one)
- saalweachter 9y ago
  There is definitely some opportunity in reducing meat consumption, I want to say that up front. Specifically, grain-fed beef is the one to reduce. In many other cases, meat production may be the best use of the available resources. Three specific cases to consider: First, not all land can support crops. There is a lot of marginal land in the world that can support pasture land, but not corn or cabbages. This is more common in the third world than in the US, although the US has some historical grasslands we've been irrigating the heck out of. Second, some animals can capture calories humans can't, or are unwilling to. Pigs can eat food scraps or no-longer-fresh produce. Third, not all animals are equally inefficient. Cows are the ones that are 10-to-1 on their calorie efficiency (although if those are 10 calories of grass, it's still a bargain). Pigs are closer to 3-to-1. You still save a fair bit by reducing the amount of grain-fed pork in the world, but it isn't as dramatic as the savings from beef. Chickens are like 1.8-to-1. That makes them basically competitive with soybeans as a protein source; you can plant 2/3 an acre of corn and 1/3 an acre of soybeans and feed it to chickens to get as much protein as 1 acre of soybeans, plus you get an organic fertilizer from them. From a pure environmental standpoint, there is no reason to ever stop producing chickens.
  - tintor 9y ago
    Is organic chicken also 1.8-to-1?
hvidgaard 9y ago
I have to find the book and accompanied sources, but it's not so much that yields have improved. It's the labor needed to get those yields have decreased dramatically. I personally believe that reliance of chemicals to keep weeds, insects, fungus, and bacteria at bay has gone too far. It's fine for targeted use, but today we're just dousing crops to keep the yields up, and feed animals antibiotics "preventively" with the side effect of greatly increased growth.
- DubiousPusher 9y ago
  Just one example. https://www.agry.purdue.edu/ext/corn/news/timeless/yieldtrends.html https://www.agry.purdue.edu/ext/corn/news/timeless/yieldtren... Also, if you truly are bothered by the quantity of chemicals we use in our agriculture, you should strongly support GMOs. A lot of GMO research goes into creating crops that need less and fewer of these chemicals applied.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]

gravelc 9y ago

No one who is involved in this kind of work thinks it's the solution to all environmental/production/health woes. Such technologies are however part of a holistic approach. Additionally, things like climate change (including what's already in the pipeline) are so rapid, that similarly rapid responses are paramount. We could stop generating CO2 today, and traditional plant breeding practices would still struggle to cope with maintaining yield due to the inertia in the system. What we need are effective technologies and and a focus on addressing ecosystem/environment problems, not or.