3 ms·

Let me stop this right here; are we equating "OVERproduction of food that we likely don't need" to "progress?"

by jrm4 5y ago

LeanderK 5y ago
yeah, i was also not sure whether I've missed something. Equating "Technological Progress" to "Increase in Agricultural Output" doesn't make sense...maybe we don't need that much more food, that's why it's slowing down. Maybe the american agricultural output could double in the next 10 years, but is it energy well spent? After all, it's a bit of a zero-sum game, a society has finite capacity for research and must spend its budget wisely.
- lambdadmitry 5y ago
  Agricultural output is usually per unit of land and/or inputs, so more output means less land, less pollution, and less ecological damage for a fixed amount of food produced. If some fields can be reforested instead, it'd pull carbon out of the air and increase biodiversity.
  - tspike 5y ago
    Most agricultural land was short grass or long grass prairie prior to being plowed over. Prairie is the most endangered ecosystem on the planet. Perhaps instead of "reforestation" we can look at restoring native prairie.
  - nosianu 5y ago
    What will happen instead is that all land that could possibly be used will continue to be used. Overproduction will instead be exported, which will hit farmers in less developed countries who cannot compete hard. https://theexchange.africa/industry-and-trade/agribusiness/why-africas-smallholder-growers-cant-compete-with-european-american-farmers/ https://theexchange.africa/industry-and-trade/agribusiness/w... It's not just food from fields. Meat also is overproduced to be exported in countries like the US, UK or Germany and others. https://beef2live.com/story-world-beef-imports-ranking-countries-0-106900 https://beef2live.com/story-world-beef-imports-ranking-count... (some countries, like the US, are both big im- as well as exporters) I know from following relevant news that here in Germany we could significantly scale down our environmentally bad big pig farms, which also suffer from crowded conditions and not exactly a good life for the animals, if not both the businesses involved as well as government concerned about GDP and creating a lot of exports would oppose restrictions on the meat industry. I'm not even against meat at all, but this is a bad cycle. We can export more when/if we are cheap, and that requires industrialized "meat production" to the detriment of the animals. The incentives are wrong IMO. Some might argue that imported cheaper food is better for African countries, but they can't compete on high-tech, they can't compete in agriculture, how are they supposed to bootstrap their economies? There also are reports about all the worn clothing that ends up in Africa, so no local textile industry either. Unchecked, tose able to produce cheaply will never voluntarily restrain themselves and give up "productive land". Instead, they will use their advantage to conquer ever more markets.
- kiba 5y ago
  Is it physically or biologically possible to double agricultural output in the next ten years? It doesn't matter how much you spend on R&D if we hit the limit of what we can do with biology.
  - mikeyouse 5y ago
    Probably yes.. e.g. there's a massive amount of research into RuBisCO. If we could speed up the primary carbon-fixing reaction, we could massively increase Ag output (also could make a dent in carbon sequestration): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RuBisCO#Genetic_engineering https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RuBisCO#Genetic_engineering There's tons about plant bio we don't fully understand and a lot of room for R&D. An imperfect measure, but in 2021, Google Scholar added over 5,000 results for the term; https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C23&as_ylo=2021&q=rubisco&btnG= https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C23&as_yl...
  - kickout 5y ago
    Yes, it is possible. Probably just entering a new golden age with genomic tools and excellent metadata on the farms that currently do produce. Plenty of arable land, but ideally we only want the most efficient land in production.
  - BurningFrog 5y ago
    If/when we figure out how to make good tasting beef industrially, without the intermittent "there is a cow" stage, the world will change a LOT, for the better.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
droopyEyelids 5y ago
Corn and soybeans are better thought of as raw material for industry, rather than food. We don't need more corn to eat, but alongside the fact that it's an industrial input, it's a strategic export that works as a part of American foreign policy: other nations are dependent on US crop imports the way they're dependent on oil. In that way, rising output is always great, as it solidifies our position as an exporter, and lowers the price of the material which prevents competition and solidifies this dependence. And it's a better (more affordable) product for the importer countries.
- kickout 5y ago
  Well stated and I mostly agree
FpUser 5y ago
It is strange talking about overproduction when large part of the world is hungry.
- amerine 5y ago
  OP is spot on. There’s a big reason we use corn for so much more than food today. We over produce it.
- goatlover 5y ago
  Growing enough food isn't the problem. Distribution, which includes economic and political factors, is the issue. Google tells me that 811 million people go hungry. That's a lot of people, but it's not a large part of the world, since 7 billion people presumably have enough to eat.
  - FpUser 5y ago
    That's the point. Instead of worrying about overproduction we should worry about distributing food to ones they need it. And 811 million is a huge number. Can't be ignored just because another 7B are ok. Also I suspect that there are more than 811 hungry. They're just not literally dying.
- imtringued 5y ago
  Zimbabwe could easily feed itself and export to other African nations until Mugabe basically threw out all the farmers because they are white. Sending food from developed nations might work over the short term but you know, before the industrial revolution every economy was an agricultural one. The only thing these countries can export is food. If the developed nations want to act as a parent, then they would obviously give a lot of things away for free, just like you give food to your children for free. That's not what's happening though. Institutions like the IMF are counting every dollar owed to them by developing countries.
xwdv 5y ago
Better to have it and not need it than to need it and not have it.
koheripbal 5y ago
There are certain events in human history that are so destructive, that paying a regular cost to prevent them is wise. Famine is one of those calamities. It will absolutely destroy the entire economy, and get even bring down governments/democracies. Over-production is an absolute conscience choice we make. Do not mistake insurance for waste. Also note that US food surpluses are funnelled into the US Food Aid program which distributes excess production (which we actually used to outright destroy) into preventing famines abroad. This has significant humanitarian, as well as diplomatic value. Because of the intentional overproduction , the US has not had a food shortage for over 100 years, despite occasional crop failures that have occured.
- imtringued 5y ago
  It's fine if you throw the overproduced food away. If someone gets the silly idea to eat more then you will create massive medical costs in the process.

Let me stop this right here; are we equating "OVERproduction of food that we likely don't need" to "progress?"

by jrm4 5y ago

Let me stop this right here; are we equating "OVERproduction of food that we likely don't need" to "progress?"

yeah, i was also not sure whether I've missed something. Equating "Technological Progress" to "Increase in Agricultural Output" doesn't make sense...maybe we don't need that much more food, that's why it's slowing down. Maybe the american agricultural output could double in the next 10 years, but is it energy well spent? After all, it's a bit of a zero-sum game, a society has finite capacity for research and must spend its budget wisely.

lambdadmitry 5y ago
Agricultural output is usually per unit of land and/or inputs, so more output means less land, less pollution, and less ecological damage for a fixed amount of food produced. If some fields can be reforested instead, it'd pull carbon out of the air and increase biodiversity.
- tspike 5y ago
  Most agricultural land was short grass or long grass prairie prior to being plowed over. Prairie is the most endangered ecosystem on the planet. Perhaps instead of "reforestation" we can look at restoring native prairie.
- nosianu 5y ago
  What will happen instead is that all land that could possibly be used will continue to be used. Overproduction will instead be exported, which will hit farmers in less developed countries who cannot compete hard. https://theexchange.africa/industry-and-trade/agribusiness/why-africas-smallholder-growers-cant-compete-with-european-american-farmers/ https://theexchange.africa/industry-and-trade/agribusiness/w... It's not just food from fields. Meat also is overproduced to be exported in countries like the US, UK or Germany and others. https://beef2live.com/story-world-beef-imports-ranking-countries-0-106900 https://beef2live.com/story-world-beef-imports-ranking-count... (some countries, like the US, are both big im- as well as exporters) I know from following relevant news that here in Germany we could significantly scale down our environmentally bad big pig farms, which also suffer from crowded conditions and not exactly a good life for the animals, if not both the businesses involved as well as government concerned about GDP and creating a lot of exports would oppose restrictions on the meat industry. I'm not even against meat at all, but this is a bad cycle. We can export more when/if we are cheap, and that requires industrialized "meat production" to the detriment of the animals. The incentives are wrong IMO. Some might argue that imported cheaper food is better for African countries, but they can't compete on high-tech, they can't compete in agriculture, how are they supposed to bootstrap their economies? There also are reports about all the worn clothing that ends up in Africa, so no local textile industry either. Unchecked, tose able to produce cheaply will never voluntarily restrain themselves and give up "productive land". Instead, they will use their advantage to conquer ever more markets.
kiba 5y ago
Is it physically or biologically possible to double agricultural output in the next ten years? It doesn't matter how much you spend on R&D if we hit the limit of what we can do with biology.
- mikeyouse 5y ago
  Probably yes.. e.g. there's a massive amount of research into RuBisCO. If we could speed up the primary carbon-fixing reaction, we could massively increase Ag output (also could make a dent in carbon sequestration): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RuBisCO#Genetic_engineering https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RuBisCO#Genetic_engineering There's tons about plant bio we don't fully understand and a lot of room for R&D. An imperfect measure, but in 2021, Google Scholar added over 5,000 results for the term; https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C23&as_ylo=2021&q=rubisco&btnG= https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C23&as_yl...
- kickout 5y ago
  Yes, it is possible. Probably just entering a new golden age with genomic tools and excellent metadata on the farms that currently do produce. Plenty of arable land, but ideally we only want the most efficient land in production.
- BurningFrog 5y ago
  If/when we figure out how to make good tasting beef industrially, without the intermittent "there is a cow" stage, the world will change a LOT, for the better.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]

droopyEyelids 5y ago

Corn and soybeans are better thought of as raw material for industry, rather than food. We don't need more corn to eat, but alongside the fact that it's an industrial input, it's a strategic export that works as a part of American foreign policy: other nations are dependent on US crop imports the way they're dependent on oil. In that way, rising output is always great, as it solidifies our position as an exporter, and lowers the price of the material which prevents competition and solidifies this dependence. And it's a better (more affordable) product for the importer countries.

kickout 5y ago
Well stated and I mostly agree

FpUser 5y ago

It is strange talking about overproduction when large part of the world is hungry.

amerine 5y ago
OP is spot on. There’s a big reason we use corn for so much more than food today. We over produce it.
goatlover 5y ago
Growing enough food isn't the problem. Distribution, which includes economic and political factors, is the issue. Google tells me that 811 million people go hungry. That's a lot of people, but it's not a large part of the world, since 7 billion people presumably have enough to eat.
- FpUser 5y ago
  That's the point. Instead of worrying about overproduction we should worry about distributing food to ones they need it. And 811 million is a huge number. Can't be ignored just because another 7B are ok. Also I suspect that there are more than 811 hungry. They're just not literally dying.
imtringued 5y ago
Zimbabwe could easily feed itself and export to other African nations until Mugabe basically threw out all the farmers because they are white. Sending food from developed nations might work over the short term but you know, before the industrial revolution every economy was an agricultural one. The only thing these countries can export is food. If the developed nations want to act as a parent, then they would obviously give a lot of things away for free, just like you give food to your children for free. That's not what's happening though. Institutions like the IMF are counting every dollar owed to them by developing countries.

xwdv 5y ago

Better to have it and not need it than to need it and not have it.

koheripbal 5y ago

There are certain events in human history that are so destructive, that paying a regular cost to prevent them is wise. Famine is one of those calamities. It will absolutely destroy the entire economy, and get even bring down governments/democracies. Over-production is an absolute conscience choice we make. Do not mistake insurance for waste. Also note that US food surpluses are funnelled into the US Food Aid program which distributes excess production (which we actually used to outright destroy) into preventing famines abroad. This has significant humanitarian, as well as diplomatic value. Because of the intentional overproduction , the US has not had a food shortage for over 100 years, despite occasional crop failures that have occured.

imtringued 5y ago
It's fine if you throw the overproduced food away. If someone gets the silly idea to eat more then you will create massive medical costs in the process.