Reuters is working to confuse the people, naturally. Biofuels do not raise the price of food. Capitalists raise the price of food.

Biofuels are easily produced in sustainable ways on small farms, building local self-reliance, and eliminating fossil fuels. You can grow your own food/fuel.

Also, check into what grows wild in your area and eat that. You can even get fuel from the wilds - pecans for example. Beware the capitalist.

I have never witnessed so many statements of pessimism, guaranteed cataclysm, faithlessness, and all-around whineyness in my life. You all must be the group that marches around town square carrying the signs that say "The End is Near." For our sake, let's hope you're right so the rest of us will be sparred of your endless doomsday tripe.

Lester "the sky is" Brown has been predicting food shoratges for the better part of 40 years and they certainly haven't materialized. Incidentally, I noticed Brown's farcical Earth Policy Institute is cited in the IFPRI report. Before Brown it was Paul Ehrlich prognosticating that overpopulation and mass starvation would be the end of civilization by the middle of the 21st century. And before him it was Malthus, quite possibly one of history's greatest crackpots.

Has anyone here looked at average crop yields over the past three decades and noticed that output per hectare has nearly doubled, all while pesticide use per unit of output has dropped dramatically?

Has anyone here bothered verifying some of the statements by von Braun with other global NGOs?? Gee, the U.N. FAO says there is more food per capita today than ever before.

The problem is not food supply; nay, it is food politics. Let's make sure we identify the right problem before casting aspersions. In closing, I simply can't help visiting a discussion board like this one without leaving some bits of wisdom from the great P.J. O'Rourke. Many of these zingers are quite apropos to this ridiculous discussion.

"Personally, I believe a rocking hammock, a good cigar, and a tall gin-and-tonic is the way to save the planet."

"In a war against hunger, what do you do? Shoot the lunch?"

"And biotechnology is a worry. What if they take genetic material from wet noodles and blowfish and splice it into politician chromosomes and create a Clinton administration?"

"Fretting about overpopulation, is a perfect guilt-free (indeed, sanctimonious) way for "progressives" to be racists."

Cheers.

Yep, increases in meat and dairy production is just what the climate needs.

Along with the ten year window on global warming announced last week by the UN Climate Change panel, this is one of the major tipping points that presage the coming overshoot and collapse predicted by the Union of Concerned Scientists over twenty years ago.

Climate change, rampant over-population, resourse depletion (peak oil amongst them), and food and fresh water shortages are all now in play. The collapse of western technological civilization is not far behind.

I'm sorry if this is a downer, but there is no happy-shiny science fiction future. No flying cars. No moon bases. The generations now alive will witness and bear the brunt of the single largest human disaster in the history of our species. Generations to come will be bereft of many of the benefits of modern high technology, and will no doubt alternatly curse us for our greed and stupidity, while wistfully and wonderingly reminise about the hieghts we achieved, only to collapse back into barbarism and conflict.

Being a vegetarian might qualify for a tax break some day.

Namaste … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … Mahatma Gandhi … … … … … … … … … …
« We must be the change we wish to see in the world »
« There is a sufficiency in the world for man's need but not for man's greed »

No sweat here, ___ Soilent Green.

I think that if we're not careful, we'll end up trying to do too much all at once and fail - when we in the 'richer countries' have to act for our own existence.

I can't wait for the proponents of the 'magic technology genie' to spout off how technology will come up with some miraculous little toy or technique that will solve everything. Without of course mentioning how much it will cost us in resources, or time or how only the wealthy, mostly white christian nations will be able to afford the new technology.

Oh, and KEM, isn't it a gas that one of the most prophetic anti-consumerist movies of all time starred one of the Right wings most beloved gun nuts?

He was just making a salary, not a statement of his taste in food

OVERPOPULATION
OVERPOPULATION
OVERPOPULATION

That was the point in the movie Soylent Green. Oh and those tasty little recycled crackers....

Overpopulation. We need to talk.

If the powers that be (the ruling elite) wanted, everyone would be fed and there would be no food shortages on the globe. Poverty could/will easily be eradicated.

The problem is horribly corrupt leadership in the industrialized nations and their total lack of concern for the estimated 30,000 who die everyday of hunger. It's time for a brand new world. Our so called leaders are in the way! Excellent solutions to all of our most pressing problems exist, but they're being concealed from the people - because the bastards in power don't want to rock the boat. They like the world just as it is.

Emma Graham-Harrison and Ben Blanchard wrote:
More investment in agricultural technology, a stronger social welfare net with particular support for children, an end to trade barriers and improved infrastructure and finance opportunities in less-developed countries, could all help improve food security.

No...No...No...No

We need less dependence on agriculture technology and more reliance on organic small scale human powered farming methods. Free trade only increases reliance on oil-based transportion and subsidized petro-based industrial agriculture. In order to stimulate local food economies we need to discourage migrant workers while imposing trade barriers and taxing shipped-in produce.

Emma Graham-Harrison and Ben Blanchard wrote:
But it can be difficult for smaller farmers to take advantage of the trend because of large retailers' growing grip on the market and their high safety, quality and other requirements.

There is nothing safe about produce grown with pesticides and herbicides...and methods that perpetuate dependence on fossil fuels while contributing to climate change.

Here is a much better article recently published on the same subject.
http://www.richardheinberg.com/museletter/188

Was that salary or salad?

Hmmm ... for decades we've had a food surplus and starvation occured because our economic system could not find a way to value feeding everybody. Wonder how that will change now that we don't make enough food to make feeding everyone an option?
The last time this problem was common here was, to the best of my knowledge, the 1930's (and to a lesser extent WWII). Then a far greater number of people lived on small family farms. Now most are branches of mega-corporations, and even seeds for crops are getting harder to come by. Here's hoping this doesn't mean what i think it does.
I also think that those hoping for a technological fix are not listening to the scientists who generally acknowledge that most of these fixes are either here, but not economical (eg, micro-generation of electricity by solar, wind, etc) or well past the date of future collapse (eg. fusion, space travel, microwave sattelite emitters). An interesting question is whether we could get to some fixes via conservation, large scale (or widespread small scale) advances, and a desparate, focussed research effort. It's not yet impossible though - but I wouldn't want to bet on it.

bumper sticker spotted on a pickup truck at a recent gun show (i suspect the owner had a specific phenotype in mind, but it's universally applicable): "if you can't feed 'em, don't breed 'em." i'd like to be a fly on the wall when the irony catches up with him.

Biofuel isn't bad. using food for fuel os bad. Here's hoping making fuel from algae develops faster. Algal farms can use sea water. They can make algal oil. corn for fuel or using arable land shouldn't be necessary.

Salary, derived from Latin for salt,

in one's wounds

But I guess it could be a salad too, with the benediction "lettuce not hunger, and eat the green of the 'land'".

Namaste … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … Mahatma Gandhi … … … … … … … … … …
« We must be the change we wish to see in the world »
« There is a sufficiency in the world for man's need but not for man's greed »

Adopt a child instead of having one, and plant a tree. Not necessarily in that order.
If everyone planted some trees we'd start going in the right direction.
I also think that community and backyard gardens can do a lot for people in this country, and probably others as well.

There must be some mistake. Monsanto solved all of the world's food shortages with RoundUp-Ready crops. Didn't you get the memo?

We need more corn to fuel our SUV's, and we need to keep procreating because the Bible tells us to!!

A hundred years ago between a quarter and a third of agricultural land was used to grow food for horses. Now that amount of land will be used to grow crops for horse power. Full cycle. Except that we now have three times the population, and water shortage, and over heating, and increasingly expensive fertilizer and pesticides. Oh dear.

Ulpian: A hundred years ago, when a famine hit, or drought wiped out the crops...you could eat the horse. Damned difficult to chow down on an SUV...

"The world is eating more than it produces..."

Not for long.

Oh, as for the population problem - this will take care of that.

People need food and water to live and procreate. Take those away, and population will decline.

Not the most humane way to depopulate, but we are not the most humane culture.

" Biofuels also threaten nutrition for the poor"

biofuels are not a ntural disaster. when capitalists throw farmers off their land to grow sugarcane for oil, they do it because it's profitable. Same when they cut down rainforest to plant oil.

Julian

overpoulation is not the problem no matter how often you say it. To make this claim is to blame everything on the poor and hungry people in the Global South.
try looking in the mirror- it's about overconmsumption by the rich people in the North (us). We use up 50, 60, 70 times as mich stuff per capita as they do.
also this food shortage is not real. it's caused by biofuel agriculture. there is plenty of good land to feed evryone in the world. if we valued people more than cars.

2LYONS good post, in fact, plant a bunch of trees. We should kill all of the beavers too. Those rodents are destroying our forests and cause flooding of our roads.

I saw a bumper sticker on a sports car yesterday that read, (Save a tree - Eat a beaver.) I agree totally with that. I almost stopped the young couple who were getting into the car to comment on it but decided not to, as they were obviously bikers, wearing their Hells Angels jackets. __ Wish I had asked them if they had a beaver recipe though.

Major BS follows:
"More investment in agricultural technology, a stronger social welfare net with particular support for children, an end to trade barriers and improved infrastructure and finance opportunities in less-developed countries, could all help improve food security.

Although increased trade, a key demand of many developing world nations in global talks, would bring economic gains, in many cases it would not significantly reduce poverty, the report added." - unquote.

I wonder why CD is republishing Rueter's Lies above. This is typical corporate disinformation that the solution to everything is Burning up more of the atmosphere with "trade" scams (read ships and planes passing each other nonstop across the ocean) which will blackball all local farmers out of existence simply to force unblemished Frankenfoods down everybody's throats.

"High Quality" does not mean gene spliced bananas! That to me is LOW QUALITY, DANGEROUS TO MY CHROMOSOMES food that I would never ingest in any quantity if I had a choice, and if the bastardds would label the Frankenfood honestly.

You should see the tropical fruits and vegetables I eat. Home grown, all come from little farmers or out of our backyard. Strange heavy-seeded Robaton's and Jackfruit; local plantain bananas with no pesticides. Sure there's brown spots from bugs and ants: That means it's ripe and ready to pull off the tree. You just cut out the few bad parts. You don't need to splice in a gene from a completely different phylum or order on the tree of life that hasn't been in that combination for millions of years (like an animal gene that may cause cancer, just to mutate the color; or a peanut gene to eliminate all molds.) In high concentrations this chit that your eating has cause chromosomal damage in mice.

Ever notice how yellow and long your bananas are getting? That's not natural. Your organs evolved over millions of years eating plants, insects and animals which were quite separated on the tree of life. No one knows what this Frankenfood will do to you in ten years since this crap is unregulated by FDA and it is not required to be labeled or tested for ten years on animals first.

And phucking Monsanto is forcing this expensive dangerous poison on the unsuspecting third world as well as you in the U.S. You see, they aren't happy with 80% market dominance. They want 100% of the human race hooked on their doped up seed crop. Otherwise they can't experience eternal profit growth at the expense of human welfare.

Dam, I've gone and done it now... The Monsanto seed cops are going to be parachuting out the sky on top of me....

They will come as thieves in the night. __ We're gonna miss you Pacplayer.

By the by, Monsanto and Microsoft's Bill Gates are major players in Swedens 'Disaster Seed Bank'. Said bank will have air locks and meter thick walls, all buried under a mountain on a small island 1100km from the North Pole. The seed bank will contain seeds from 300 000 species.

Do they know something we don't? Or aren't being told?

Dang Galen, they read my book. I never had it published either. They know something a lot of us know, but don't really acknowlege the truth.

They are preparing for the time when most of humanity is dead and gone. They likely will have a few humans prepared to come out when it is safe to do so. Perhaps as many as a thousand, trained during their time of hiding away, to seed the entire Earth again when it is safe to do so. They may only allow one tribe, perhaps Nordic. They may have some from each of our twelve tribes. The time will come and perhaps not too far in our future, when most of humanity will be gone.

Some rich people have planned for it and it sounds as if Bill Gates is one of those. You only need seven to do it, four female and three male. ___ I get the extra gal, but swapping would be necessary with only seven for a decent gene pool mixture.

No doubt the survivors of the coming bio-holocaust, dressed in Beaver pelts and having "pissed on every tree in the forest" will be the ones to determine the gene pool mixture of the future. Makes you wonder what will happen to the meek who were promised the inheritance of the earth.

Misanthrope: The meek will inheirit only the grave.

The coming dark age will be the death knell of technological man. All the high tech toys will go the way of the dodo and pasenger pigeon. As will all of the modern nations of this world.

I do not envy our great grand-children. They will be living in a world that will be inhabited by some very angry, desperate people who will be filled with a free floating rage at the greed and stupidity of us, their ancestors.

Overpopulation: you got your birth rate solution and your death rate solution. I think humanity long ago decided on the latter.

Galen: It was a rhetorical question. Maybe you should give your crystal ball a rest.

Galen said "I do not envy our great grand-children. "
Entering Editorial mode:
Almost no food to eat--too risky in those days, yep, to grow food--no oil for tractars, those who tried to raise food having them their horses eaten, some hoarding food, otheren fighting dar to dar to find the last of that dar stored food, how can one think of having chil'n? Nope not no mor'. Jus' keep coming out all deformed and the like from that thar nuke stuff, eh, fallout.
Back in those days we watched mooving picts on TV. People in that thar space station, their coffin crashed maybe a dozen years back. Gov couldn't go get 'em after the Big War. Wiped out most population. Huh? Almos' forgetting what I be tellin ya. Anyway --

Ya think now. Jus' a sec'. Gotta grab my homemade brew.
Ahhh, now what was I sayin'. Oh, yeah, Ya really think murder for food is out of the question? That will help reduce the population, they said, and it sure did. Not fast enough so they threw in the Nuke War. Don't misunderestimate humans. We still use his newspeake fangled wards to make fun of the first emperor. Funny how the most dreadful things somehow stay in tha language. Oh, off again on a wander. Sorry. Yep, all part of ShjtBu's plan of warld dominatron. Aftar Jeb got in thar and stuff really get hot after the fallout all fell out ha ha - with the extra CO2 from everything burning made sunlight really hot, we moved up here to Greenland. Lots of fresh water yet from all the melt'n but we have to keep movin' North every couple a years. Not much on that thar climate stuff but had interesting wards, our first monarch. Gotta take a nap, next Summer we move closer to the north end of the island. Gotta keep trying to raise food, but it's so very dark and sad here in the Winters. Ahhh, wandering again. Was gonna warn you about ShjtBu. Ghwad told him to love others to death before they do unto hmmmmm, thinking, I'll get it right -- jus' a min' here. --- somtin' like fool me once, hmmmmm, can't rightly remember, hmmmmm, two birds in your hands are better than a royal fluch and fish in mid stream without a paddle, ahhh, somtin like that. Ahh, still made haaaard cider!
(soapbox humor mode off. Spellings on porpoise - read with an accent--pick one. References to Hillbilly accent only as fun way of presenting it. Could be more polished but tis getting late.)

Glad to know you have no worries there GO-GNO. I'm always delighted to hear the flip side of the coin. Of course I believe you are full of it,___ which is the the other flip side. __ Enjoy your cigar.

Go_GMO, the difference is this time the food shortage is not a prediction, it's an observation. Food reserves (the amount of harvested food) has peaked, fallen, and this year has entered a negative number. If you wish, think of it as a bank account that, although it isn't empty, is shrinking rather than growing.
Biotechnology is a mixed blessing. We've had some form for a long time. One comment earlier was about bananas - the original monoculture crop, since edible bananas are sterile (polyploidy, since they have 5 sets of chromosomes and wild ones have 4). For the record, wild bananas (with seeds) are not particularly edible - we've just used the 5 mutations (4 now, one went extinct due to a disease in the 70's) that stopped seed formation and left us with a fruit. Maybe we could create faster growing bananas, or ones with more vitamins, with biotechnology, since we can't exactly cross breed them. But it's a dangerous path, too - imagine a crop that we design to be more resistant to environmental stresses only to have it outcompete all the other plant forms once we start farming it. The only arguement for the terminator gene is the one I've never seen used; that having an "off" switch on runaway technology might be really useful someday. So we play with fire when we play with biotechnology. And like fire, it can warm us or burn us.
GO_GMO, the problem was food distribution. Now food supply will be added. And worse, what would you do if you were, say, the government of China, Iran, or the USA and you knew that you were going to lose 10% of your population to starvation but your neighbour had so much food that they could waste it? Because that situation is not far distant, without a significant political change.

Craig

(Puffing on choice Cuban cigar)

Craig,

Thanks for your comments, but I am well aware of how global cereal grains markets work. And your comment that reserves have entered a "negative number" this year is wrong and doesn't make any sense. If reserves were a "negative number," doesn't that mean you wouldn't have any reserves at all?

(Pausing to sip gin and tonic)

Here are the facts:

1. The world's total grain ending stocks (or what some call reserves)in 05/06 was 317 million metric tons. In 06/07 it was 286 mmt. For 07/08, ending stocks are projected at 258 mmt. So while declining, you can hardly say this is a "negative number." Incidentally, it's not even a record low. Many years have seen lower ending stocks than this.

2. This year's level of ending stocks (258 mmt) is not historically low. Total grain ending stocks for the 95/96 marketing year, for instance, were 249 mmt and there have been other years similar.

3. Yes, the world's total use of grain (corn, wheat, barley, rice, etc.) is increasing. But by how much?? Total world grain use for 07/08 is projected to be just 1.9% higher than it was two years ago.

Source:
http://usda.mannlib.cornell.edu/MannUsda/viewDocumentInfo.do?documentID=1194

Well, my gin is empty and my cigar is nearly done. Ta ta for now.

We don't survive on just grain. Then too, a lot of grain was planted this last year and the crop to be used for automotive fuel. You don't know what you are talking about, except perhaps Cuban cigars are indeed the best. ___ That gin doesn't only destroy a liver either, it puts holes in the brain.

GO_GMO, thanks for catching the typo. I meant the stocks were declining (net change was negative), not the amount.
Lets also keep in mind that the grain stocks are not the beginning and end of the story. We are near the historical upper bound of reserves, true enough. But we're not in nearly as good shape in a per capita sense, since we have more mouths to feed than before - many more if you consider the demand for meat worldwide and include food animals in the "competition" for grain stocks. Historically this isn't done, but historically they tended to be considered to be fed free range, and the last time this was relevant was pre-green revolution in the 1960's. Also, whereas in the past it was reasonable to assume an untapped capacity, the same is harder to find today.
Since the 1960's we have removed most of the worlds edible fish stock, a significant fraction of its natural ecosystems, an estimated 35% of its topsoil has been lost to degradation, and nearly all of the worlds optimal cropland has been utilized. Where to expand in the future? We're eating what my fisherman grandfather would have used as crab bait, the prime agricultural soils are in drying zones and global warming can make agriculture zones try to shift poleward, but it can't create suitable soils.
And that gin had better be tasty stuff if you're going to be dulling hunger pains from long-term (monthly) caloric deficits. The original use of cocaine was by the Quechua, who burnt the leaf with banana peels to make a material that they could chew on as an appetite supressant during the 4 months of the year that they did not, on average, eat more calories than they burnt. Impressive as that is, I don't want my kids, or myself, or you, to have to live that way.
Craig

"I meant the stocks were declining (net change was negative), not the amount."

Painfully obvious and not necessary to explain, I think. I think someone is fishing for a strawman attack, particularly when I see an appeal to humor fallacy in an earlier post.

Food security?

Let's say for the sake of simplicity that I made $30 an hour. A trip the supermarket then costs me $10 in gas round trip. I spend $130 (at least) for a week of groceries. There is 5 and 1/3 hours of work already for just one week. But the process of grocery shopping takes about 2.5 hours each time, so that is almost 8 hours for one trip.

Imagine instead that I take 1/10 acre of my land (or any land I can arrange to use). I collect mulch for sheet mulching and lay out a garden. This takes a day of work. Throw in another $100 for seeds to grow seedlings for the garden. We are now at 11 and a third hours. Round it out to 15 hours for care of the seedlings until they are in the ground. My garden is mulched so watering time is zero, fertilising time is zero and weeding time is zero. After about a month, I start getting food coming in which cuts out more and more of the $560 monthly grocery fee (or 18 and 2/3 hours work without shopping/driving time, 28 and 2/3 hours with).

Once things are growing, it is a question of going to the garden when I am hungry and picking what I need (about 5 to 15 minutes each time).

If I am smart, I plant as many perennials as I can so that next year requires even less effort. And if I get a few chickens to get the occasional eggs, I let the chickens run over the garden in spring to clear out the bits I want to plant (they kindly add phosphorus-rich fertiliser for me). And I 'time stack' the plants to provide produce from spring to late autumn. Now I am cutting down my trips to the supermarket and cutting down on the money and time I need to invest to feed myself. So my choice is invest lots of time and money to let the food industry feed me, or spend a fraction of the time and money to do the same largely on my own. The latter looks more appealing. And food security? Not a problem.

I hope people were skeptical reading that. That would be both natural and wise. But it is something I have done and will do again in the future. I am in the process of changing homes, but the new place will provide more of my own food with the goal of 100% animal protein from my own site and near 100% for fruits and vegetables along with 100% of heating fuel and some fibre needs (building materials, etc.) met by my own site. I frankly don't have the time or money for anything else.

Maybe people should consider not having children.
The price is so high for food here-most is tossed because it is a price none will pay.

WAR AGAINST FAMILY PLANNING

By undermining family planning and women's rights in impoverished areas--the only real means of ending world starvation and poverty for this and future generations, including the unborn–-Bush has added more to world starvation than any single individual.
His alleged concern for the unborn is rendered void by the unmeasurable deaths and illnesses resulting from his blockage of vital environmental, conservation, and health reforms–using secrecy, or environmental friendly disguises based irrational logic and manipulated science used to a degree never before experienced in our history.

His appointment of the worst imaginable person to oversee our nations family planning only underscores his relentless wars against our environment and health. Dr Kerkoack opposes birth control, and had headed an anti-contraception family planning organization. They even provide scientifically false health information to promote their agenda--just as Bush has done.

By allowing such outrages from this unlearned and dangerous president, guided by his financial and radical religious right supporters who planted him in office, Americans have only themselves to blame for the resulting medical setbacks, expanded world poverty, sickness, and degradation of our planet.