4 ms·
Do We Need Another Green Revolution?
- bradgranath 1y agoWhen was the first one?
- bryanlarsen 1y ago1940 - 1970. Norman Borlaug won the Nobel peace prize for it in 1970. Learning about this incredible person is highly rewarding.
- mitchbob 1y agohttps://archive.ph/e4nXM https://archive.ph/e4nXM
- bryanlarsen 1y agoIt's probably not so much population growth that's going to stress agriculture, but the transition of the global poor to a richer western diet -- lots of meat, a wide variety of fruits & veg available 12 months of the year, et cetera.
- mlindner 1y agoMore discredited "population bomb" thinking. The earth is not heading for overpopulation and there is no shortages in food generation. We produce so much extra food that we feed it to cattle and turn it into vehicle fuel at massive scales. More so, the productivity of farmland in rich areas of the world continues to increase every year, and that productivity increase still hasn't spread to large portions of the world's crop land in poorer countries. It's to the point that there's serious discussion happening on just covering farmland with solar panels because there's so much excess of it and solar panels are getting cheap enough that it can be more profitable to put solar on farmland than to grow food on that farmland.
- nemomarx 1y agoThe article suggests that reducing food waste or trying to cut back on meat to better allocate farming would be the immediate tactic, yeah
- mlindner 1y agoPeople care too much about food waste. Food waste is a result of food being cheap. If food stops being cheap then it stops getting wasted. (And when I mean cheap I'm talking about the price its purchased at at a bulk level.) And you're not going to convince people to cut back on meat. I also edited my post that people are considering putting solar panels on cropland because food is so cheap. This general line of thinking is just flawed. You don't fix global warming by reducing consumption (of any form), you do it by changing the root source of how consumption is performed while continuing to increase consumption. i.e. solar panels and wind, not coal. There is no such thing as an low per-capita energy consumption rich country. Energy efficiency begets more energy usage, not less. The same goes for meat consumption. If meat shortages start happening people will switch to more types of meat consumption (or meat product consumption) that come from more "manufactured" sources. Plant-based meat and grown meat should be going after the areas where they can replace inputs by being a cheaper product. For example, almost no one uses leather now because leather substitutes are cheaper and good enough.
- riversflow 1y ago> If food stops being cheap then it stops getting wasted > If meat shortages start happening You really think the U.S populace would just be okay with this?
- mlindner 1y agoIf it happens gradually enough people won't notice.
- j_timberlake 1y agoIf food prices went to near zero, healthcare and housing would mysteriously get more expensive until people could barely afford them even with cheap-as-salt food. The opposite is probably true too: if food prices went up, all of a sudden health insurance companies and landlords can lower their prices just enough to keep their customers. I'm sure the voters would still freak the f out though.
- kkfx 1y agoThe Club of Rome few days ago admit that the Smart-city is impossible (it consume way to much resources) https://www.clubofrome.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/Transforming-the-Built-Environment.pdf https://www.clubofrome.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/Transf... of course they keep insisting "we must find something else" (to steal private ownership). But the fact is that the Green New Deal works technically for single-family homes and sheds, nothing much bigger than that and those buildings actually use much LESS resources than dense areas with bigger buildings and can evolve as well. The new New Deal, the one technically feasible is the old Distributism. I can't say if it will be enough even for the current world population, but it's certainly much less resource intensive and much more efficient than the dense model needed by the nazi-2030's Agenda and it's the best we can do so far.
- kingstnap 1y agoIf aliens came to earth and started buying edible calories (let's suppose they theoretically only accept staple crops), We could ramp the production of edible calories on earth like mad. Production right now is completely limited by oversaturated demand. Which is true of so much stuff right now.
- deepsun 1y agoSo if there's enough land, and enough food, then surely we can afford welcoming immigrants, especially working ones (although getting one's arse off the couch and emigrate is already a pretty strong filter). But the modern trends around the world is the exact opposite.
- aaron695 1y ago[dead]
- amriksohata 1y agoGreen revolution wrecked Punjab in India. Pesticides, fertiliser and chemicals just so the west could sell these products to them, the result was more food and crop generated just to feed animal livestock rather than people.
- stefantalpalaru 1y ago[dead]