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You've highlighted important problems (spoilage, everyone wanting to eat meat, economics, warfare). But unless you know of some solution to those things on the
by Blahah 12y ago
You've highlighted important problems (spoilage, everyone wanting to eat meat, economics, warfare). But unless you know of some solution to those things on the horizon, you've not made a useful point.
Genetic engineering is a toolkit to solve a vast array of problems we face, and it's available right now. With a 1% increase in yield, we can feed 1% more people. 1% of 7 billion is 70 million.
Starvation happens because we're not making enough small percentile increments in efficiency.
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- Blahah 12y agoWhile distribution and many social factors are important, production is also crucial. Farmers in Africa and south-east Asia have production problems. In those places a 1% yield increase really does equate to 1% more people fed. Distribution is a huge complex issue (many people including governments are actively making it worse with farming subsidies and other harmful policies), while production is a problem we can do something about right now with technology. I work in food security, my research is on crop productivity and we collaborate with many crop centres including the International Rice Research Institute. Those centres have huge communities of local farmers who are desperate for yield increases and other huge communities whose entire livelihoods were made possible by improvements in agricultural technology. I can assure you the people whose families are able to eat today because of increases in crop yields in just the last few years are grateful that we're all still working on increasing yields and not just telling them it's a greed and distribution problem.
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]