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In the Netherlands, a group of scientists is working on feeding 11 billion
- buboard 7y agoOne-child policies could solve the problem and it's as taboo as bug-eating, yet it receives barely any coverage
- ben_w 7y agoThat solves one problem and creates another, as our current economy assumes at least as many new young people to support the elderly as now. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying the problem is insurmountable, but it does actually need to be dealt with somehow rather than just hoping tech will save us when we need it — that approach works fine right up until it fails catastrophically.
- ricree 7y agoOne child policies where? Most of the developed world has stagnant population growth. Do you suggest imposing those restrictions elsewhere? Via what means, and how do you intend to enforce this within those countries?
- AndrewGaspar 7y agoThey're taboo because they're abhorrent. I don't suppose you've spent a lick of time thinking of the implications of enforcing such a ban?
- vasco 7y agoWhy is it abhorrent to not have your own kids? There's plenty of them already that need families if you want to scratch that itch. Plus you can solve climate change AND road traffic!
- AndrewGaspar 7y ago> Why is it abhorrent to not have your own kids? Please explain to me how you plan to enforce your ban on people having more than one kid.
- buboard 7y agoTaxation
- AndrewGaspar 7y agoIf somebody chooses to have as many kids as they want to have, you're going to force them (and their children) into poverty?
- buboard 7y agoIf it comes to a point where overpopulation is equated with environmental pollution, yes
- papreclip 7y agoAgreed. Why is our vision of the future 50 billion people crowded nuts to butts, eating beans and bugs, riding rusty bicycles to work? We need to control the population.
- bargl 7y agoWhat predictions? If you believe in scientific modeling at ALL. AKA you think global climate change is scientifically sound, then you should probably look at the population growth predictions. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Projections_of_population_growth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Projections_of_population_grow...
- rhacker 7y agoI just clicked that link and all of the projections were aimed up, even if slowed. Current projections still put 11.8 B people by 2100.
- PeterStuer 7y agoMost likely global population figures are reflecting the sign of the times. There was a period of 'irrational exuberance' between 1998 and 2004 where the 2100 projections suddenly dropped to as low as 8.4 billion, but after that we have been reverting to the projections of the 1980's and 1990's of 11B+.
- pizza 7y agoI find it hard to believe we would reach 50 billion people within the next millennium without new and incredible resource extraction technologies that would make current food shortage problems look like a piece of cake.
- johnisgood 7y agoResource extraction... sure, but I think the issue is more that there will be no resources left to extract at some point. We are already wasting a lot of things, even something as basic as water.
- neaden 7y agoDid you know that Iran of all places was able to drastically lower their birth rate by providing free birth control and education? No forced abortion/sterilizations like China, just providing options to people.
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- yorwba 7y agoIndeed, the fast drop in fertility rates is strikingly similar: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.TFRT.IN?contextual=default&locations=CN-IR https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.TFRT.IN?contextu...
- Frondo 7y agoThat drop in birth rate isn't unique to Iran. It's one of the most well-studied phenomena in sociology. It has a name, too, the demographic transition. As you pointed out, educating women is considered a key part of ushering in the demographic transition. The Wikipedia page is pretty good: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_transition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_transition (Not a sociologist, but used to be married to one.)
- avocado4 7y agoChina ruined their future for the next few decades through 1 child policy. It's a demographic time bomb.
- tdb7893 7y agoIn most developed countries birth rates are dropping on their own. I would try decent sex education and access to free contraception before this route
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- jhcl 7y agoPersonally I like the insect idea, just processed so that they don't look like insects. Sorry, save that for a next, more open minded generation. I don't get the meat lookalikes. Is a plate of food without a piece of meat so abhorrent?
- royjacobs 7y agoNo, but you can either spend a ton of effort trying to convince meat eaters that "this other thing is also delicious", but they'll just ignore it. Instead, just replace their burgers/nuggets with something else that also looks like burgers/nuggets yet pretty much tastes the same, and you don't need to convince them.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- PeterStuer 7y agoIt has been done before, only with true garbage instead of bugs. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ObcsswhO83I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ObcsswhO83I
- tdb7893 7y agoThere's a lot of cultural inertia behind meat and it's incredibly difficult to get people to change their diet that drastically (they can't eat their favorite foods, they need to learn entirely new recipes) it's much much easier to just work with them and make good substitutes. I just went vegan and without it being a strong personal conviction I wouldn't have been able to do it.
- bryanlarsen 7y agoFeeding 11 billion people where a large portion of those people can only afford to spend $2/day on food? Very difficult. Feeding 11 billion people where everybody can spend $100/day on food? Very simple. If necessary (and it's not), we could build vast quantities of greenhouses and get orders of magnitude improvements in calories per acre. The environmental consequences of such high-intensity farming is another issue, of course.
- AndrewGaspar 7y agoThis is kind of a tail wagging the dog argument. If only everybody was rich then there wouldn't be any resource scarcity!
- jnurmine 7y agoIt's not only the greenhouses, it's the logistics of getting the food from the greenhouse to the mouth.
- cryptoz 7y ago> The environmental consequences of such high-intensity farming is another issue, of course. It's not another issue, it's the same issue. We're in this mess in the first place because nobody cares to price in the costs of the equation over time. We all want to eat for like a century, right? So why make price estimates that only work for ~10-20 years of unsustainable-climate-change-driving industry and then collapse when the climate changes and farming has to change too? Pricing the costs into the equation from the start makes your "very simple" point become still, "quite complex". The environment changing is a key fact in the pricing of things, and ignore-the-environment-in-first-estimates trope is a major flaw in how we think about problems.
- vfc1 7y agoJust throw a bunch of veggies in the microwave, add beans and some sauce, and done no need to eat processed insects. This idea that eating whole food plant based is hard and time consuming is a myth. Almost every veggie cooks unattended in the microwave in about 10 minutes, potatoes included.
- spraak 7y agoSmall bit of anecdata - the times when I've been most poor has been when I've eaten the most whole foods (and plant based, as I'm vegan). At those times I would nearly every day put rice and a type of bean (or variety of lentil) into the pressure cooker as my staple throughout the day. Alongside that I would have fresh fruits and steam some frozen or fresh vegetables. The biggest upfront investment was a B12 supplement, but spread over time it's cheaper than most foods. Since I didn't have the budget for highly processed things, I inadvertently ate super clean. So this has me thinking, there are already complex distribution channels for medicine for places in need; to that could be added a few key supplements like B12. As long as they are getting otherwise the main macronutrients met, it becomes easier for more people to eat WFPB, which in fact like me in times of poverty many people already do.
- spodek 7y agoEven faster and more delicious in a pressure cooker.
- jillesvangurp 7y agoPeople eating lots of meat is a fairly recent thing. In many cultures meat used to be at most a once or twice a week kind of thing as opposed to a big part of one or more meals you have every day these days. E.g. traditional Italian or Indian diets do not actually include a lot of meat. It's their popularized modern variations that tend to have a lot of meat. Insects are popular in places where meat is still relatively scarce/expensive. I'm sure it's a great source of protein if you are in need of protein and there's nothing else around. However, I prefer to eat things because they are delicious. I could probably feed myself on a shoe string budget by giving up most of the things I enjoy eating/drinking. But why would I want to? The trick is going to be feeding 11 Billion people in a way that is actually enjoyable. Insects are going to be a hard sell to someone who can afford a steak. On the other hand, shrimps, lobsters, etc. are just under water insects (or at least closely related). I don't particularly enjoy them but for lots of people they are kind of a delicacy and a completely normal part of their diet. A lot of these kind of things are learned behavior. Science giving us options is a good thing. But I'd say they need to focus more on the eating experience than on just the protein content/nutritional value. Things like texture, juiciness, umami, maillard reaction etc. All the reasons people like steaks basically. The kind of things that get foodies excited.
- spraak 7y agoI was under the impression that there already exists enough food in the world to feed everyone, and that it is actually a distribution (inequalities and economic) problem?
- cryptoz 7y agoThe title indicates ~4B more people than are alive today. Also, there is not enough food in the world to sustainably feed everyone. Current average diets for wealthy countries are driving climate change that is reducing the ability of less-developed countries to reasonably plan for crops and build their own sustainable food sources. It's not necessarily more food that's the problem so much as sustainable and low-cost food.
- SomeOldThrow 7y agoThere is enough food—iirc we have enough now for 9 billion people—it’s just a completely unplanned and inefficient use of resources from perspective of resource use. A large part of this is 100% western diet but I’d be skittish to finger it as a primary cause—I don’t think that’s useful. Also, not all food problems can be blamed on western climate change that we will always need to account for, like literal deserts in North Africa.
- wang_li 7y ago> completely unplanned and inefficient use of resources from perspective of resource use. People need to get over the idea of efficiency and centrally planned. These are not necessary qualities in order for humans to prosper.
- coldtea 7y agoNo, but the opposite are enough qualities for humans and the planet to perish, and thus far, we're doing a good job on the latter...
- maxerickson 7y ago
- godelski 7y agoI was under the impression that generic engineering (GMOs) were the way. That these are the industrial fertilizer of the 21st century. I'm not opposed to eating bugs, but we do have other options. Like there's also lab grown meat. All three sound like a good way to move forward.
- Merrill 7y agoWageningen has a large number of relevant courses available on edX.com. A while ago, I audited the three courses "Nutrition and Health: Food Risks", "Nutrition and Health: Macronutrients", and "Nutrition and Health: Micronutrients". They were excellent courses. Since then, they have added many courses on sustainable agriculture and sustainable development. https://www.edx.org/school/wageningenx https://www.edx.org/school/wageningenx
- Fnoord 7y agoI went to Wageningen University open day in ~1999, with school (4 VWO). After a speech by a professor, it was lunch-time. I didn't take lunch with me, assuming I could buy some there, but I barely had money with me as well. Well, they were serving two things for free as some kind of pilot or demo. It was grasshoppers with Italian spices and vegetables, and mealworms in white sauce. My co-students were laughing at me, but I tried both and actually liked both. After I went a second time, they no longer had grasshoppers, so I only got a portion of maelworms (I'm not a fan of white sauce). They had a good taste, kind of a nutty flavor. Only issue with the grasshoppers is that parts of them get stuck in your pockets. Fast forward, in this decade I ate insect burgers by a Belgian company called Damhert. Again, nutty flavor, and tasted well. In Africa, insects already get eaten as they're a cheap and reliable source of protein. Unfortunately, it isn't quite clear if insects suffer from pain. At the very least they don't have a CNS, like mammals do. There is even a Dutch "insect cookbook" [1] Maastricht University is also busy feeding 11 billion, with the in vitro burger (meat based on stem cells). Don't have a link at hand. While not strictly vegan (the stem cells are taken from a live animal), it is vegan in spirit as it reduces animal harm substantially. [1] https://www.bol.com/nl/p/het-insectenkookboek/9200000039719366 https://www.bol.com/nl/p/het-insectenkookboek/92000000397193...
- mipo5 7y agoThis is disgusting...