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I 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 economi

by spraak 7y ago

I 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 ago
The 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 ago
  There 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 ago
      No, 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
      The carrying capacity of the planet is fixed relative to our current level of technology. Efficiently applying that level of technology can make the difference between shortage and plenty. Of course so can technological change, but it's not like efficiency is just some dumb irrelevancy.
    - noja 7y ago
      > People need to get over the idea of efficiency and centrally planned. People need to get over the idea that a free market is the solution to everything?
      - AnimalMuppet 7y ago
        For food distribution, historically, a free market beats central planning, hands down.
        lurquer 7y ago
        That's not true. In central planned economies, the members of the Party eat very well. /sarc
        SomeOldThrow 7y ago
        Not at all; free market fails to feed people daily. Even in the heartland of captialism we had plenty of bread lines during the great depression. To be clear I’m not advocating centralized planning, or any specific planning method. I’m simply pointing out the free market has specifically failed at food distribution. Or at least, you're going to need to contort the definition of success to get the free market to meet it.
    - yorwba 7y ago
      It's not necessary, but efficiency makes prospering easier by lowering the required effort. If efficiency weren't important, nobody would every bother to optimize (aka. plan) anything. Also note that planning and central planning aren't synonymous. A central planning process makes more efficient use of planning resources, but that doesn't help if the plans it produces are themselves inefficient because they're based on five-year-old statistics someone faked for their personal gain. So far, decentralized planning seems to be more robust overall, and the additional decision-making overhead is small compared to the cost of actually moving things around. In that sense, it's not even the case that food distribution is currently unplanned; a great deal of effort goes into determining what quantities of various foods should be transported to warehouses all over the world in order to meet future demand. The problem is just that the planners are optimizing their own profit, and keeping the largest possible number of people well-fed isn't profit-maximizing currently.
    - SomeOldThrow 7y ago
      Well, based on current distribution of resources, unplanned isn’t going so well either. What’s your suggestion?
  - cryptoz 7y ago
    > iirc we have enough now for 9 billion people I just don't know what this means. Do we have enough food to feed 9B people for one day? For their whole lifetimes? I think the statistic is too vague to mean anything. I maintain that we do not have processes in place to feed 9B people for their expected lifespan. If we used our current processes, food sources, diets, etc to feed 9B people, there would be so much disruption in the environment that the situation (being able to feed 9B people with existing food) would not last for the lifetime of those people. Perhaps I am wrong - but climate predictions for year ~2100 are pretty intense wrt. changes in crop production and such. I just don't think "we have enough [food] now for 9B people".
    - sarbaz 7y ago
      It pretty clearly means that the amount of food produced every day is the amount of food that 9B people consume every day. Market forces will cause the types of food produced to be diverse enough to consist of a sane and reasonable approximation of a healthy diet, so I don't think that counterarguments along the lines of "we can feed 9B people if you think living off corn counts as feeding" apply here. Modern agriculture is incredibly efficient. I am completely sure that if our modern techniques were fully implemented across the developing world, we would be able to feed another 4B people with ease.
      - cryptoz 7y ago
        > It pretty clearly means that the amount of food produced every day is the amount of food that 9B people consume every day. I don't think that's all very clear to start with, but if that's what it means then I still don't consider it a useful metric; it's a local maxima that is reducing our ability to talk about long-term sustainable planning. "Market forces" are largely ignoring the changing climate and food production's part in that. I don't think it's useful to only think about the daily food production and daily food requirements, since our real requirements are to plan to eat for a lifetime, not just one day at a time. > Modern agriculture is incredibly efficient. I think this is only true for narrow definitions of efficient. Modern agriculture is extremely inefficient in terms of pollution and sustainability. If we implemented your idea of modern techniques globally I think we'd be in for a faster-than-expected change in climate that could put large swathes of that new infrastructure and land use at risk.
- booboolayla 7y ago
  >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. One of these days we will face the unpleasant facts that: 1. Not all cultures/societies are equal 2. Some cultures/societies are incapable of sustaining themselves due to multiple _internal_ factors, and end up in a vicious cycle of population rises and violent decreases. Blaming the Western culture might do well for your goals of re-inventing the Western society according to 19th century economic theories, but it won't help anyone in the real world. All the problems of unsustainable societies will stay firmly in place, but you sure will be able to inflict damage on your own societies.
Merrill 7y ago
The production of food by farmers, ranchers and fishermen is only a small part of the food system. There are all the agribusinesses that provide inputs to the farmers, such as farm machinery, fuel, pesticides, herbicides, etc. After the food is produced there is a system of buyer and wholesalers that acquire the raw materials, processors that fabricate food products, and distributors, wholesalers, retailers, restaurants, etc. that deliver the food to consumers. Only about 5% of the total cost goes to the farmers, and they are probably only about 5% of the sustainability issue.
seamyb88 7y ago
You were under the correct impression. In "wealthy" countries, we throw enough food out to feed the world many times over. In not even trying to feed those we have just cast aside, we have still produced enough food. But we're not going to just give people food, that would be left wing extremism and that's wrong.

by spraak 7y ago

I 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 ago

The 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 ago
There 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 ago
    No, 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
    The carrying capacity of the planet is fixed relative to our current level of technology. Efficiently applying that level of technology can make the difference between shortage and plenty. Of course so can technological change, but it's not like efficiency is just some dumb irrelevancy.
  - noja 7y ago
    > People need to get over the idea of efficiency and centrally planned. People need to get over the idea that a free market is the solution to everything?
    - AnimalMuppet 7y ago
      For food distribution, historically, a free market beats central planning, hands down.
      - lurquer 7y ago
        That's not true. In central planned economies, the members of the Party eat very well. /sarc
      - SomeOldThrow 7y ago
        Not at all; free market fails to feed people daily. Even in the heartland of captialism we had plenty of bread lines during the great depression. To be clear I’m not advocating centralized planning, or any specific planning method. I’m simply pointing out the free market has specifically failed at food distribution. Or at least, you're going to need to contort the definition of success to get the free market to meet it.
  - yorwba 7y ago
    It's not necessary, but efficiency makes prospering easier by lowering the required effort. If efficiency weren't important, nobody would every bother to optimize (aka. plan) anything. Also note that planning and central planning aren't synonymous. A central planning process makes more efficient use of planning resources, but that doesn't help if the plans it produces are themselves inefficient because they're based on five-year-old statistics someone faked for their personal gain. So far, decentralized planning seems to be more robust overall, and the additional decision-making overhead is small compared to the cost of actually moving things around. In that sense, it's not even the case that food distribution is currently unplanned; a great deal of effort goes into determining what quantities of various foods should be transported to warehouses all over the world in order to meet future demand. The problem is just that the planners are optimizing their own profit, and keeping the largest possible number of people well-fed isn't profit-maximizing currently.
  - SomeOldThrow 7y ago
    Well, based on current distribution of resources, unplanned isn’t going so well either. What’s your suggestion?
- cryptoz 7y ago
  > iirc we have enough now for 9 billion people I just don't know what this means. Do we have enough food to feed 9B people for one day? For their whole lifetimes? I think the statistic is too vague to mean anything. I maintain that we do not have processes in place to feed 9B people for their expected lifespan. If we used our current processes, food sources, diets, etc to feed 9B people, there would be so much disruption in the environment that the situation (being able to feed 9B people with existing food) would not last for the lifetime of those people. Perhaps I am wrong - but climate predictions for year ~2100 are pretty intense wrt. changes in crop production and such. I just don't think "we have enough [food] now for 9B people".
  - sarbaz 7y ago
    It pretty clearly means that the amount of food produced every day is the amount of food that 9B people consume every day. Market forces will cause the types of food produced to be diverse enough to consist of a sane and reasonable approximation of a healthy diet, so I don't think that counterarguments along the lines of "we can feed 9B people if you think living off corn counts as feeding" apply here. Modern agriculture is incredibly efficient. I am completely sure that if our modern techniques were fully implemented across the developing world, we would be able to feed another 4B people with ease.
    - cryptoz 7y ago
      > It pretty clearly means that the amount of food produced every day is the amount of food that 9B people consume every day. I don't think that's all very clear to start with, but if that's what it means then I still don't consider it a useful metric; it's a local maxima that is reducing our ability to talk about long-term sustainable planning. "Market forces" are largely ignoring the changing climate and food production's part in that. I don't think it's useful to only think about the daily food production and daily food requirements, since our real requirements are to plan to eat for a lifetime, not just one day at a time. > Modern agriculture is incredibly efficient. I think this is only true for narrow definitions of efficient. Modern agriculture is extremely inefficient in terms of pollution and sustainability. If we implemented your idea of modern techniques globally I think we'd be in for a faster-than-expected change in climate that could put large swathes of that new infrastructure and land use at risk.
booboolayla 7y ago
>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. One of these days we will face the unpleasant facts that: 1. Not all cultures/societies are equal 2. Some cultures/societies are incapable of sustaining themselves due to multiple _internal_ factors, and end up in a vicious cycle of population rises and violent decreases. Blaming the Western culture might do well for your goals of re-inventing the Western society according to 19th century economic theories, but it won't help anyone in the real world. All the problems of unsustainable societies will stay firmly in place, but you sure will be able to inflict damage on your own societies.

Merrill 7y ago

The production of food by farmers, ranchers and fishermen is only a small part of the food system. There are all the agribusinesses that provide inputs to the farmers, such as farm machinery, fuel, pesticides, herbicides, etc. After the food is produced there is a system of buyer and wholesalers that acquire the raw materials, processors that fabricate food products, and distributors, wholesalers, retailers, restaurants, etc. that deliver the food to consumers. Only about 5% of the total cost goes to the farmers, and they are probably only about 5% of the sustainability issue.

seamyb88 7y ago

You were under the correct impression. In "wealthy" countries, we throw enough food out to feed the world many times over. In not even trying to feed those we have just cast aside, we have still produced enough food. But we're not going to just give people food, that would be left wing extremism and that's wrong.