5 ms·

Is the world’s food system collapsing?

27 points by prakash 18y ago

davidw 18y ago
Doom and gloom titles are such linkbait:-/ Oh, and BTW, no: http://www.economist.com/finance/displaystory.cfm?story_id=11374623 http://www.economist.com/finance/displaystory.cfm?story_id=1...
- blogimus 18y ago
  One thing to keep an eye on, though, is the spread of ug99 and the potential effect on wheat production: http://www.ars.usda.gov/Main/docs.htm?docid=14649 http://www.ars.usda.gov/Main/docs.htm?docid=14649
- hello_moto 18y ago
  While it's true, doom-n-gloom title can also be used to trigger human's fear. Take rice as an example. Right now fund managers are "toying" the price of rice by: 1) Buying all of them in the market 2) Hold it from circulation 3) Spread the doom-n-gloom via newspaper and stuffs by saying that "Rice is scarce". 4) In turn, we, regular people, got so scared and bought rice at a higher price. 5) Fund managers sell these rice at higher price 6) Time goes profit comes 7) Once they had enough, they'll return the price to a stable point. Don't you love George Soros?
  - davidw 18y ago
    Sources? Mine say that only 5-7% of rice is even traded across borders, so I think your story looks a bit dubious: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rice#World_production_and_trade http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rice#World_production_and_trade http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rice_shortage http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rice_shortage
  - 1gor 18y ago
    I like George Soros and hate demagogues.
edw519 18y ago
While we are consumed with worring about our "carbon footprints" and "miles per gallon", I wonder what an analysis of our "accomplishments per calorie" would reveal. Scary times, indeed. <returns to sofa with bag of chips>
- donw 18y ago
  You could drive your personal quotient through the roof if you switched to celery...
wumi 18y ago
PG says he likes going after big, bad corporations and monopolies ... A YC company to revolutionize the food industry?? :)
- eru 18y ago
  You'd have to sideline a lot of regulation and subsidies. But it might just be doable.
  - mtts 18y ago
    Actually, regulation and subsidies can be good for food production. They give farmers a fighting chance against big food corporations, which helps the food supply because while a small farm may not be profitable without government subsidies, it is better at producing more calories per square meter of land under cultivation. Take, for example, green house tomatoes. They grow to enormous sizes exceedingly quickly so they're profitable, but, as anyone who's ever grown a single tomato plant on a balcony can testify, they have absolutely zero taste and rather limited nutritional value compared to the real thing. Likewise, as was touched upon in the article, high quality poultry is far more nourishing than industrially produced chicken breasts that consist mostly of water. Government subsidies allow farmers to continue producing high quality produce locally, even if it is in a manner that is, from a free market point of view, inefficient.
    - anamax 18y ago
      How many govt regulations favor the politically weak over the politically powerful? I like computer games more than tomatoes. Why shouldn't the govt subsidize my preferences? I've no objection to you buying whatever food, from whatever source, you'd like, but why shouldn't you pay for it? I'm perfectly willing to take the same deal wrt my food, video games, etc.
      - mtts 18y ago
        The point is that food is not video games. Food is a necessity for survival, unlike video games, and one that isn't best produced by the free market. If farmers are not subsidized, you get things like the current food crisis: big companies squeeze out poor third world farmers, then food becomes more expensive to produce so the big companies, who care about profit more than farming, decide to produce less of it to drive up prices, resulting in a food shortage in the third world, one that the third world can't solve anymore because its farmers are bankrupt (short version). Add to that the fact that the food produced by free market forces is often of dubious quality and nutritional value and it becomes clear, to me, that maybe farm subsidies are the lesser of two evils. I agree with you, however, that the government shouldn't subsidize video games. Or most other things.
ivankirigin 18y ago
If fertilizer were made from Oil, I'd be concerned. But other, more abundant hydrocarbons power the green revolution.
- joshwa 18y ago
  Well, one major component is Natural Gas or Coal: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haber_process http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haber_process > The Haber process now produces 100 million tons of nitrogen fertilizer per year, mostly in the form of anhydrous ammonia, ammonium nitrate, and urea. 3-5% of world natural gas production is consumed in the Haber process (~1-2% of the world's annual energy supply). That fertilizer is responsible for sustaining one-third of the Earth's population... This actually doesn't take into account the energy to bring the components to the high temperatures required, either, usually supplied by electricity. The output: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UAN http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UAN
  - ivankirigin 18y ago
    Natural Gas and coal are good to go for centuries. That's my point.
xirium 18y ago
From the article: In his treatise, Malthus couldn’t envisage any innovations for increasing yield beyond “dressing” the soil with cattle manure. In the decades after he wrote, farmers in England took advantage of new machinery, powerful fertilizers, and higher-yield seeds, and supply rose faster than demand. I believe that due to mechanised food production and distribution, it takes 10 calories of oil to put one calorie on your plate. If oil becomes more expensive then food becomes more expensive. In a global market, the poorest lose. Governments have ringfenced rice for domestic consumption and supply and demand has cause huge rises in export prices. There's no safeguard to prevent this happening next to potatoes or wheat.
bigtoga 18y ago
And this is on YC why? Stop upvoting/commenting/clicking on these and maybe they'll go away.
- mtts 18y ago
  Because hackers might also care about the world around them, that's why.
  - davidw 18y ago
    Bad answer. That opens up the site to anything and everything. I care deeply about the ongoing Giro d'Italia, and if all goes well, will go watch a stage in the near future, but I wouldn't post daily results on this site. Nor would I attempt to inflict my own political and economic views on the other users. Were we all to do that, the site would rapidly degrade.
    - edw519 18y ago
      I thought it was an excellent answer. Hacker News IS my portal now, and if an occasional piece not directly related to hacking spawns excellent discussion among my peers, great. That's something I'd probably find nowhere else. As far as the "appropriateness" of submissions, just trust the rest of us to prudently use our up arrows. Sure, stupid stuff will get through, but a small price to pay for good content and discussion. Oh, and go ahead and submit a Giro d'Italia post. Not sure it would see too many upvotes.
      - davidw 18y ago
        Are any of these discussions actually that interesting? They all seem to turn into "market-will-fix-everything libertarians vs OMG evil corporations!!! types". Ok, that's a little bit of a caricature, but not too far off the mark, and in any case the whole thing is a slippery slope into territory that's not really about hacking or hackers or startups.
    - mtts 18y ago
      I disagree with you, of course, but finding a fellow cycling fan here on HN is cool. And I do agree with you that HN shouldn't cover the Giro. That's taking it too far (but I do think an occasional piece on a major geo-political issue is no problem at all).
hugh 18y ago
Usually I hate these one-word unjustified responses, but today I'm gonna have to go with: No. I wish I could provide some kind of rebuttal of the points made in the article, but unfortunately the article really doesn't seem to make any points. It's just a series of quotes from crazy people who tell us we're all going to die without providing much justification other than "climate change, man!" Oh, okay, there's a fair point about overfishing. "All of these authors agree that the entire system of Western food production is in need of radical change, right down to the spinach. Roberts opens with a description of E.-coli-infected spinach from California, which killed three people in 2006 and sickened two hundred others." Another of my pet peeves is when people criticize the "Western" system of doing something without providing any contrast with an "Eastern" way of doing it. Is the Eastern system of food production better? Are there fewer cases of food poisoning from contaminated food in Asia? I don't think so.
- ibsulon 18y ago
  So, then, there weren't food riots in Haiti? We aren't seeing inflation in food costs squeeze out the bottom 20% of the world?
  - helveticaman 18y ago
    Malthus is coming back after his 250 year vacation. http://www.economist.com/books/PrinterFriendly.cfm?story_id=9644636 http://www.economist.com/books/PrinterFriendly.cfm?story_id=...
- jacobolus 18y ago
  > It's just a series of quotes from crazy people who tell us we're all going to die Actually none of them say that, nor are any particularly crazy. What they do say is that the global agricultural system is slow to react to changes, and when it does, it often dramatically overreacts, which can cause large-scale famine. They also say that “western” society has promoted an incredibly wasteful agricultural system which produces vast quantities of extremely unhealthy food, in the process sickening consumers and destroying landscapes. Anyway, going directly to the sources (e.g. Pollan: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/28/magazine/28nutritionism.t.html?pagewanted=all http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/28/magazine/28nutritionism.t....) is more useful than this New Yorker article. > Another of my pet peeves is when people criticize the "Western" system of doing something without providing any contrast with an "Eastern" way of doing it. It's just a way of lumping Western Europe and the US behind one generic name. In this case, the contrast is not with an “Eastern” way, but with a “developing country” way.
DaniFong 18y ago
"First, the underlying cause of any shortage is the lack of a free market, since genuine shortages cannot appear in a free market." What?

27 points by prakash 18y ago

Doom and gloom titles are such linkbait:-/ Oh, and BTW, no: http://www.economist.com/finance/displaystory.cfm?story_id=11374623 http://www.economist.com/finance/displaystory.cfm?story_id=1...

blogimus 18y ago
One thing to keep an eye on, though, is the spread of ug99 and the potential effect on wheat production: http://www.ars.usda.gov/Main/docs.htm?docid=14649 http://www.ars.usda.gov/Main/docs.htm?docid=14649
hello_moto 18y ago
While it's true, doom-n-gloom title can also be used to trigger human's fear. Take rice as an example. Right now fund managers are "toying" the price of rice by: 1) Buying all of them in the market 2) Hold it from circulation 3) Spread the doom-n-gloom via newspaper and stuffs by saying that "Rice is scarce". 4) In turn, we, regular people, got so scared and bought rice at a higher price. 5) Fund managers sell these rice at higher price 6) Time goes profit comes 7) Once they had enough, they'll return the price to a stable point. Don't you love George Soros?
- davidw 18y ago
  Sources? Mine say that only 5-7% of rice is even traded across borders, so I think your story looks a bit dubious: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rice#World_production_and_trade http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rice#World_production_and_trade http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rice_shortage http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rice_shortage
- 1gor 18y ago
  I like George Soros and hate demagogues.

edw519 18y ago

While we are consumed with worring about our "carbon footprints" and "miles per gallon", I wonder what an analysis of our "accomplishments per calorie" would reveal. Scary times, indeed. <returns to sofa with bag of chips>

donw 18y ago
You could drive your personal quotient through the roof if you switched to celery...

wumi 18y ago

PG says he likes going after big, bad corporations and monopolies ... A YC company to revolutionize the food industry?? :)

eru 18y ago
You'd have to sideline a lot of regulation and subsidies. But it might just be doable.
- mtts 18y ago
  Actually, regulation and subsidies can be good for food production. They give farmers a fighting chance against big food corporations, which helps the food supply because while a small farm may not be profitable without government subsidies, it is better at producing more calories per square meter of land under cultivation. Take, for example, green house tomatoes. They grow to enormous sizes exceedingly quickly so they're profitable, but, as anyone who's ever grown a single tomato plant on a balcony can testify, they have absolutely zero taste and rather limited nutritional value compared to the real thing. Likewise, as was touched upon in the article, high quality poultry is far more nourishing than industrially produced chicken breasts that consist mostly of water. Government subsidies allow farmers to continue producing high quality produce locally, even if it is in a manner that is, from a free market point of view, inefficient.
  - anamax 18y ago
    How many govt regulations favor the politically weak over the politically powerful? I like computer games more than tomatoes. Why shouldn't the govt subsidize my preferences? I've no objection to you buying whatever food, from whatever source, you'd like, but why shouldn't you pay for it? I'm perfectly willing to take the same deal wrt my food, video games, etc.
    - mtts 18y ago
      The point is that food is not video games. Food is a necessity for survival, unlike video games, and one that isn't best produced by the free market. If farmers are not subsidized, you get things like the current food crisis: big companies squeeze out poor third world farmers, then food becomes more expensive to produce so the big companies, who care about profit more than farming, decide to produce less of it to drive up prices, resulting in a food shortage in the third world, one that the third world can't solve anymore because its farmers are bankrupt (short version). Add to that the fact that the food produced by free market forces is often of dubious quality and nutritional value and it becomes clear, to me, that maybe farm subsidies are the lesser of two evils. I agree with you, however, that the government shouldn't subsidize video games. Or most other things.

ivankirigin 18y ago

If fertilizer were made from Oil, I'd be concerned. But other, more abundant hydrocarbons power the green revolution.

joshwa 18y ago
Well, one major component is Natural Gas or Coal: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haber_process http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haber_process > The Haber process now produces 100 million tons of nitrogen fertilizer per year, mostly in the form of anhydrous ammonia, ammonium nitrate, and urea. 3-5% of world natural gas production is consumed in the Haber process (~1-2% of the world's annual energy supply). That fertilizer is responsible for sustaining one-third of the Earth's population... This actually doesn't take into account the energy to bring the components to the high temperatures required, either, usually supplied by electricity. The output: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UAN http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UAN
- ivankirigin 18y ago
  Natural Gas and coal are good to go for centuries. That's my point.

xirium 18y ago

From the article: In his treatise, Malthus couldn’t envisage any innovations for increasing yield beyond “dressing” the soil with cattle manure. In the decades after he wrote, farmers in England took advantage of new machinery, powerful fertilizers, and higher-yield seeds, and supply rose faster than demand. I believe that due to mechanised food production and distribution, it takes 10 calories of oil to put one calorie on your plate. If oil becomes more expensive then food becomes more expensive. In a global market, the poorest lose. Governments have ringfenced rice for domestic consumption and supply and demand has cause huge rises in export prices. There's no safeguard to prevent this happening next to potatoes or wheat.

bigtoga 18y ago

And this is on YC why? Stop upvoting/commenting/clicking on these and maybe they'll go away.

mtts 18y ago
Because hackers might also care about the world around them, that's why.
- davidw 18y ago
  Bad answer. That opens up the site to anything and everything. I care deeply about the ongoing Giro d'Italia, and if all goes well, will go watch a stage in the near future, but I wouldn't post daily results on this site. Nor would I attempt to inflict my own political and economic views on the other users. Were we all to do that, the site would rapidly degrade.
  - edw519 18y ago
    I thought it was an excellent answer. Hacker News IS my portal now, and if an occasional piece not directly related to hacking spawns excellent discussion among my peers, great. That's something I'd probably find nowhere else. As far as the "appropriateness" of submissions, just trust the rest of us to prudently use our up arrows. Sure, stupid stuff will get through, but a small price to pay for good content and discussion. Oh, and go ahead and submit a Giro d'Italia post. Not sure it would see too many upvotes.
    - davidw 18y ago
      Are any of these discussions actually that interesting? They all seem to turn into "market-will-fix-everything libertarians vs OMG evil corporations!!! types". Ok, that's a little bit of a caricature, but not too far off the mark, and in any case the whole thing is a slippery slope into territory that's not really about hacking or hackers or startups.
  - mtts 18y ago
    I disagree with you, of course, but finding a fellow cycling fan here on HN is cool. And I do agree with you that HN shouldn't cover the Giro. That's taking it too far (but I do think an occasional piece on a major geo-political issue is no problem at all).

hugh 18y ago

Usually I hate these one-word unjustified responses, but today I'm gonna have to go with: No. I wish I could provide some kind of rebuttal of the points made in the article, but unfortunately the article really doesn't seem to make any points. It's just a series of quotes from crazy people who tell us we're all going to die without providing much justification other than "climate change, man!" Oh, okay, there's a fair point about overfishing. "All of these authors agree that the entire system of Western food production is in need of radical change, right down to the spinach. Roberts opens with a description of E.-coli-infected spinach from California, which killed three people in 2006 and sickened two hundred others." Another of my pet peeves is when people criticize the "Western" system of doing something without providing any contrast with an "Eastern" way of doing it. Is the Eastern system of food production better? Are there fewer cases of food poisoning from contaminated food in Asia? I don't think so.

ibsulon 18y ago
So, then, there weren't food riots in Haiti? We aren't seeing inflation in food costs squeeze out the bottom 20% of the world?
- helveticaman 18y ago
  Malthus is coming back after his 250 year vacation. http://www.economist.com/books/PrinterFriendly.cfm?story_id=9644636 http://www.economist.com/books/PrinterFriendly.cfm?story_id=...
jacobolus 18y ago
> It's just a series of quotes from crazy people who tell us we're all going to die Actually none of them say that, nor are any particularly crazy. What they do say is that the global agricultural system is slow to react to changes, and when it does, it often dramatically overreacts, which can cause large-scale famine. They also say that “western” society has promoted an incredibly wasteful agricultural system which produces vast quantities of extremely unhealthy food, in the process sickening consumers and destroying landscapes. Anyway, going directly to the sources (e.g. Pollan: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/28/magazine/28nutritionism.t.html?pagewanted=all http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/28/magazine/28nutritionism.t....) is more useful than this New Yorker article. > Another of my pet peeves is when people criticize the "Western" system of doing something without providing any contrast with an "Eastern" way of doing it. It's just a way of lumping Western Europe and the US behind one generic name. In this case, the contrast is not with an “Eastern” way, but with a “developing country” way.

DaniFong 18y ago

"First, the underlying cause of any shortage is the lack of a free market, since genuine shortages cannot appear in a free market." What?