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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 o

by 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.
- sarbaz 7y ago
  >I think this is only true for narrow definitions of efficient The definition I was going for is this: 2% of the US is currently employed in the agriculture sector. The US is also a very large exporter of agricultural products. So each ag worker produces over 50x more food than they consume. I think that's pretty amazing.
  - cryptoz 7y ago
    I don't think it's amazing to reach large local maxima for production efficiency when the major risks are ignored and we know about problems piling up that could dramatically reduce that efficiency in the future. I think targeting that definition of 'efficient' is a mistake, as it doesn't represent the true, whole-system consequences. The efficiency metric you quote just completely ignores the pollution from the industry, which is a part of the system you're studying. Passing the sound barrier wouldn't have been so amazing if the plane blew up just after.
- SomeOldThrow 7y ago
  > it's a local maxima that is reducing our ability to talk about long-term sustainable planning. I mostly agree with this, but it's still a useful talking point to illustrate the failings of the current distribution of food to people who need food. In a more general context it's a disingenuous data point to bring up that does have long term sustainability issues. The issue of which food we're producing where is a different part of industrialized food production that's also worth time discussing for sure, but not my aim here. Even if we were to move to a better way of generating food for 9 billion people (say, radically via not farming meat on industrial scales) the problem of food distribution would remain. It certainly remains and grows in importance if our supply contracts. However, I don't think there's dire concerns that we should contract our food output, just many characteristics of how we farm our food.

by sarbaz 7y ago

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.

sarbaz 7y ago
>I think this is only true for narrow definitions of efficient The definition I was going for is this: 2% of the US is currently employed in the agriculture sector. The US is also a very large exporter of agricultural products. So each ag worker produces over 50x more food than they consume. I think that's pretty amazing.
- cryptoz 7y ago
  I don't think it's amazing to reach large local maxima for production efficiency when the major risks are ignored and we know about problems piling up that could dramatically reduce that efficiency in the future. I think targeting that definition of 'efficient' is a mistake, as it doesn't represent the true, whole-system consequences. The efficiency metric you quote just completely ignores the pollution from the industry, which is a part of the system you're studying. Passing the sound barrier wouldn't have been so amazing if the plane blew up just after.
SomeOldThrow 7y ago
> it's a local maxima that is reducing our ability to talk about long-term sustainable planning. I mostly agree with this, but it's still a useful talking point to illustrate the failings of the current distribution of food to people who need food. In a more general context it's a disingenuous data point to bring up that does have long term sustainability issues. The issue of which food we're producing where is a different part of industrialized food production that's also worth time discussing for sure, but not my aim here. Even if we were to move to a better way of generating food for 9 billion people (say, radically via not farming meat on industrial scales) the problem of food distribution would remain. It certainly remains and grows in importance if our supply contracts. However, I don't think there's dire concerns that we should contract our food output, just many characteristics of how we farm our food.