Food Crisis Will Take Hold Before Climate Change, Warns Chief Scientist
· Pressures from population growth and affluence
· ‘Profoundly stupid’ to cut down forests for biofuels
Food security and the rapid rise in food prices make up the “elephant in the room” that politicians must face up to quickly, according to the government’s new chief scientific adviser.
In his first major speech since taking over, Professor John Beddington said the global rush to grow biofuels was compounding the problem, and cutting down rainforest to produce biofuel crops was “profoundly stupid”.
He told the Govnet Sustainable Development UK Conference in Westminster: “There is progress on climate change. But out there is another major problem. It is very hard to imagine how we can see a world growing enough crops to produce renewable energy and at the same time meet the enormous increase in the demand for food which is quite properly going to happen as we alleviate poverty.”
He predicted that price rises in staples such as rice, maize and wheat would continue because of increased demand caused by population growth and increasing wealth in developing nations. He also said that climate change would lead to pressure on food supplies because of decreased rainfall in many areas and crop failures related to climate. “The agriculture industry needs to double its food production, using less water than today,” he said. The food crisis would bite more quickly than climate change, he added.
But he reserved some of his most scathing comments for the biofuel industry, which he said had delivered a “major shock” to world food prices. “In terms of biofuels there has been, quite properly, a reaction against it,” he said. “There are real problems with unsustainability.”
Biofuel production is due to increase hugely in the next 15 years. The US plans to produce 30bn gallons of biofuels by 2022 - which will mean trebling maize production. The EU has a target for biofuels to make up 5.75% of transport fuels by 2010.
But Beddington said it was vital that biofuels were grown sustainably. “Some of the biofuels are hopeless. The idea that you cut down rainforest to actually grow biofuels seems profoundly stupid.”
Before taking over the chief scientist post from Sir David King nine weeks ago, Beddington was professor of applied population biology at Imperial College London. He is an expert on the sustainable use of renewable resources.
Hilary Benn, the environment secretary, said at the conference that the world’s population was expected to grow from 6.2bn today to 9.5bn in less than 50 years’ time. “How are we going to feed everybody?” he asked.
Beddington said that in the short term, development and increasing wealth would add to the food crisis. “Once you move to [an income of] between £1 a day and £5 a day you get an increase in demand for meat and dairy products … and that generates a demand for additional grain.” Above £5 a day, people begin to demand processed and packaged food, which entails greater energy use. About 2.7bn people in the world live on less than £1 a day.
There would also be increases at the higher end of the wage scale, he said. At present there are 350m households on £8,000 a year. That is projected to increase to 2.1bn by 2030. “It’s tremendous good news. You are seeing a genuine prediction from the World Bank that poverty alleviation is actually working.”
But he cautioned that the increased purchasing power would lead to greater pressure on food supplies. Global grain stores are currently at the lowest levels ever, just 40 days from running out. “I am only nine weeks into the job, so don’t yet have all the answers, but it is clear that science and research to increase the efficiency of agricultural production per unit of land is critical.”
© 2008 The Guardian
solution-INDUSTRIAL HEMP! HELLO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Here is the crux of the problem: “Beddington said that in the short term, development and increasing wealth would add to the food crisis. ‘… you get an increase in demand for meat and dairy products … and that generates a demand for additional grain’ … people begin to demand processed and packaged food, which entails greater energy use.”
The production of ever larger quantities of meat and dairy products is an environmental disaster and a gross waste of resources. Sure, it is possible to produce a fairly small amount of meat and dairy products using traditional methods: small flocks of free-range chickens fed table and garden scraps; small herds of cattle fed exclusively by grazing on grass in areas that are not suitable for growing crops for human consumption. These methods can be sustainable (not to mention less cruel to the animals) if they are practiced carefully, on a limited scale. But they only produce small quantities of relatively expensive meat, dairy and eggs.
However, industrial-scale “factory farming” of animals, which is now being exported from the industrialized west (mainly the USA) to the rest of the world, produces massive amounts of pollution and consumes vast amounts of fresh water and fossil fuel energy. And since the animals are fed grain, it consumes huge amounts of grain and legumes that could be fed to humans (eg. more than 80 percent of soybeans produced in the USA), reducing the amount of protein ultimately available to humans by as much as 90 percent.
The negative impact of the increasing use of agricultural land to produce biofuels on the human food supply is far, far smaller than the impact of using valuable land to raise crops to feed animals in industrial factory-farms.
The “processed and packaged food” mentioned in the article is also enormously wasteful of resources, not to mention that it typically has lower nutritional value than whole, unprocessed foods, and contains all sorts of toxic additives, and wastes even more energy and water on processing.
If it is “critical” that we “increase the efficiency of agricultural production per unit of land”, the answer is not “science and research”. The answer is to phase out the practices that we very well know are massively inefficient.
The more people who adopt a vegan or near-vegan diet, based predominantly on sustainably, organically, locally produced, unprocessed or minimally processed, whole foods — fruits, vegetables, grains and legumes — the more people we will be able to support with a wholesome, ample diet.
I have been a vegan for 20 years. It’s a wonderfully healthy and enjoyable way to eat, and it is a lot easier than trying to seek out “humanely” and/or “sustainably” produced animal foods. The only way you can REALLY be sure that the meat, dairy or eggs you consume are “humanely” or “sustainably” produced is to visit the farm and see for yourself — there are no standards that govern the use of such terms on labels.
If you want to continue eating animal foods, then the burden is on you to research how they are produced. Again, it’s a whole lot easier to go vegan.
And people around the world who have for millennia consumed a sustainable, plant-based diet, are ill-advised to start consuming an American-style meat-based, overprocessed diet just because they have a little more money. All they are buying is epidemics of obesity, heart disease and cancer, and the destruction of the agricultural carrying capacity of their countries.
We could go to E20 nationwide on just the corn stalks from the 90 million acres in corn production with cellulose ethanol. Corn for food and stalks for fuel. You use the same land, fertilizer and water.
The big problem will be climate change. If there is a prolonged drought in areas that depend on rainfall for crops, then we will see a large rise in food prices. These crops can not be irrigated, it would cost too much and there is not enough water available.
GMO food creates GMO humans. Most of America must be genetically modified to have voted for and put up with this administration for 8 years. Never much talk about the real problem facing this planet - overpopulation, the root of just about every other problem on the planet. Just imagine a presidential candidate running on the platform of population control. I can just hear the right-wing evangelicals now. Like bush, they are merely pro-birth, not pro-life. After the life is born, they don’t care - it’s just potential base for them to brainwash. In nature, most overpopulated species end up crashing. Huh, maybe bush and cheney realize this now that I think about it…
Climate change due to Global Warmng will also bring out another major problem for crops and food supplies.___ LOCUSTS.___ There are some very nasty specie of huge locusts, (grasshoppers) in South America, which are now moving northward into Mexico. When they run out of food in an area, they swarm and when 50 million or so locucts arrive in an area of land, within a day there is no vegitation left. NONE. They eat everything including stripping trees of all of their leaves as they mate and lay millions of eggs.
What happpens? Governments get right on the problem and use chemical pesticides, delivered by spraying aircraft. Of course in many instances, there aren’t far enough aircaft available to slow down the crop damage. Then the poisionous chemicals are stiil there to pollute the soil for years to come. Catch 22 all over again. They’ll be here, and the damage they can do is incredible.
Grow hemp and make fuel, fiberboards and all sorts of useful things.
Hemp, Solar, Wind, and eating less meat could solve all our problems IF WE STARTED NOW. Trouble is it’s not sexy, lacks glamor.
It will get put off until nothing can help us.
sjc_1 - It’s best to limit the amount of stover (stalk) removal to avoid soil erosion. Also, stover removal requires additional fertilizer and will lower soil organic matter over time. Some soils could accept this type of farming fairly well, but some, including most of mine, could not.
The other problem.. is the fact that folks are ONLY looking at Climate change and NOT the other linked issue of Peak gas and oil.
Oil prices ill only continue to climb.
We need to massively decentralize our food industry and our current economice system. RELOCALIZE networks need to be set up so LOCAL neighborhoods can survive.
It is ironic that conservatives who complain about the Govt not solving your problems.. put so much faith in BIG CORPORATIONS doing it.
The Bio Fuels thing.. great example. The big corporate industrial farming push to CAPITALIZE on biofuel.. with NO regard to food.
It is INSANE.
we are going to need everyone growing food in their literal back yard… go back to locally made items… local economies. They are able to adapt easier ..
not to the demands and whims of the global market…
This economic system has gotten to be a monster. NOw Dubai is buying up our economny. Great!
The Bush and Clinton administrations have sold us down the river to make themselves rich ..
Psycho-patriotic patriarchy has never been interested in feeding its own people or anybody else. They do one thing: consume, consume everything, live out a fantasy of “power” and then destroy themselves with much of the world. It’s called “history.”
The People have the answers obviously. Now all we have to do is figure out how to get the POWER back to the PEOPLE … without another bloody revolution, which against the current weapons of choice, the PEOPLE wouldn’t have a chance.
An engineer in one of the southern states redid his whole house and all appliances and automobile to run on hydrogen. He had to get permits from the local zoning board for big tanks on his property, and they didn’t know what to do. But they drew up some new rules and regs, and he went ahead with his no-pollution energy design.
Yup, industrial hemp–fuel, oil, paper, fibreboard, material for clothing … and solar, wind, hydrogen power …
Well, now that that’s settled …
peace …
fuck GMOs
If you think capitalism sucks now; just give the free market a few more years to control EVERYTHING and EVERYONE. When the corporate cancer is in complete control, today’s neo-cons will be labled bleeding-heart liberals.
It does seem that many of the posters here are not genetically modified. They remain as the first life, an immoble glob surrounded by a semi-permiable membrane. No evolution is evident. We have two choices, let the population starve or use technology to produce more food on less land. Whine over pessicides and then condemn crops that borrow natural insecticides from a bacteria sprayed on organic crops for over 50 years…that is clever.
Roundup - that stuff poisons the weeds that make biofuel.
Forget E20, you cannot eat oil, grass or wind but use them better than we are now. We need the corn for food, we need to reduce the number of people on this planet ( not by war ). The future will not take of itself, we need to work on it now. This expert is nine weeks in the job and does not have all the answers, i am not sure he has all the questions yet either.
How about some low-tech solutions like going vegan and exercising a little birth control to lessen the pressure on food supplies?
“You are seeing a genuine prediction from the World Bank that poverty alleviation is actually working.”
How untrue. The World bank and the IMF, with all their related organizations, have systematically DESTABILIZED and IMPOVERISHED more than 3 billion people with their disastrous global market policies, and unfair lending and capital disbursement. That combined with the cultural force of the media in industrialized society that has reinvented what people consider food and its role in our lives has created a dependent and zombie-like consumer-only market.
1% of the U.S. is farming, people seldom grow a significant part of their diets and the status quo is industrial farms, mono-culture, and loss of bio-diversity. The inevitable result of this continued cycle is high costs, environmental damage and a food crisis.
The answer is right in front of you. If local communities everywhere can reduce the amount of input from outside and choose to change their attitudes to support their neighbors instead of huge corporations, we can all get our feet on a path to more freedom, more quality of life, more food, less poverty and powerlessness.
Diverse, wholesome local food for everyone!!! Hurray!!!
First individuals all over the world must be offered free, easy access to birth control. We can control overpopulation by family planning or famine. There isn’t a third choice.
Secondly corporate agriculture all over the world is going to have to be replaced by permacultures that maximize soil growth and retention while providing food. Right now 17% of all oil consumption in in agriculture and food production and those numbers will have to go down as oil supplies are tightened.
Most importantly farmers all over the world will have to become the front line on fighting climate change by using biochar in their soils and sequestering carbon. This is the only method known of producing energy while reducing atmospheric carbon significantly.
The problem is global warming which is causing dramatic climate change. Climate change is currently and will from now on cause severe problems for agriculture all around the planet. We don’t have the time to reduce world population and enfore birth controls before the global warming will create so many serious problems we wont’have to worry about food supplies. We’ll have to worry about breathing when the methane gas in the Arctic tundra burps out into our atmosphere. So these discussions are moot unless we have some drastic measures taken to reduce the Co2 in our atmosphere.
Too many People. People reduction is on the way with George Bushs foreign policy in full swing.
Too bad population reduction can’t be rationally obtained by all nations. It has been reported to have been obtained by one inspiring group of Pacific Islanders in Jared Diamond’s book, COLLAPSE. But fundamentalist religious fanatics will not allow rationality to intervene in their primitive thought processes, which lead to believing they must breed more soldiers for the cause of their god as opposed to other gods. So I guess reduction will be obtained by war instead.
This is what is happening now in places like Rwanda and Darfur and the Congo - and Iraq. Too many people, not enough resources. Lebensraum obtained by genocide. Look for it more and more in the coming years, as oil, water, land and food all run short. The world is about 3 billion people over its carrying capacity now. We need over 20 Billion meals every single day right now, without adding any more people. To do that, we kill over a Billion animals every single day. We burn four Million barrels of oil every hour of every day. How long can this go on? How can this grow?
But our current crop of politicians and corporate MSM are not going to touch the religious zealots and neo-con fascists. So they have not touched any ecological issue at all. The totally-corrupt McCain, for example, is basically completely anti-environment, and yet is the presidential candidate of one of only two major parties of the US. He is a complete blockhead regarding the environment and science and logic and economy, and admits as much with pride. And he has pledged to religious nuts that he will attack a woman’s right to choose. He has overtly pledged a hundred years of war. Yet he may just be elected president, continuing the downward, disgusting, immoral, murderous, planet-ruining path of King ‘Smirky’ Bush the Absolute Disaster. How stupid are Americans anyway? How venal are the current cretinous candidates who think themselves fit to be president?
The system is taking us all down with it. The hopes of the human race have been under attack and have been systematically destroyed by the utterly-depraved Republican Party ever since that evil, money-grubbing, despicable earth-mother-fucker Reagan, the Smilin’ Snake-Oil Salesman, was elected on a platform of pure greed and pure lies. The Republican Party is the party of the God Moola, aka Baksheesh, Cashola, Money, Root of Evil, the Devil. And there isn’t much better to report about the also-money-corrupted Democratic Party either. So where does that leave us?
Prepare for the neutron bombs to fall, and for billions to die in the coming years. Maybe these are indeed the well-deserved end-years of those perverted baboons, the humans. I would like to think though that the better angels of our nature will save us, doubtful as that seems now with the really powerful among us being controlled by the reptilian part of their brains. And looking out for number one- themselves- makes them ‘number-two’ in terms of sense, ethics and morality. So instead of stories of real progress we get stories of official stupidity like this one from The Guardian. Good luck to us all.
I agree completely with the posters that advocate population control. That said, I have two children. Birth control is a complex issue and I am only aware of two solutions that have worked. The first is government legislation (like China’s one child rule) and improving standards of living (like the US and other developed western countries). The second option works, not only because birth control is available, but also because of improved education and the reduced need to produce children as a workforce and retirement plan. Religion also plays a role, but education also help in this regard. God said “Go forth and multiply” but more educated members of religious faiths often realize that there are more symbolic meanings in religious texts. I purposefully left out a couple of other ways that populations can be reduced. I do not think most of us want to advocate war, disease or famine. As pointed out by one of the posters, we can help reduce famine by eating less. This will also help with the sickness that plagues are developed, obese society. Finally, going backwards in our food production system is a misguided folly. The great dustbowl of the 30’s occured using basically organic methods. Producing sufficient food using primitive methods will require destroying more and more natural habitat to accomodate lower yields. Annual crops are, by their nature, disruptive to the ecosystem. Perennial food crops are also disruptive when productive for human food, and we do not know how to produce enough food using such systems. Human populations exploded about 10,000 years ago when we first started raising annual grain crops. Hunting and gathering in natural habitats is tough. Being self-sufficient is a nice ideal, but dividing up tasks and improving their efficiency is what allowed man to enjoy art and music. These simple solutions sound romantic but they are silly.
It is sad and depressing that people in China and India equate meat and dairy with wealth and prosperity–they also tend to emulate western culture. Smoking is also on the rise in such places. As it is selfish for western countries to waste resources it is selfish for countries with 5 times the population tow ant to replicate the culture of a country that is much smaller in population.
Veganism is the only moral and logical diet for humans, but I think most are too stupid for that. I never thought they would be so stupid as to be willing to starve people to grow automobile fuel however.
But humanity always surprises like that.
Breaking news has it that an undergraduate at Augsburg College (MN) has come up with a way to make biodiesel with much less use of water and without the toxic byproducts of current method. This is wonderful news, execpt for poor people trying to afford food and the rainforests.
Self sufficiency is silly? I appreciate division of labor for its efficiency, but the truth is that the further you are removed from nature, from farming, and the more you depend on the systems of big business, trucking, and oil, the more vulnerable you are to sudden loss of food security. If you and a significant number of your neighbors bothered to learn how to grow food properly on a small scale, you wouldn’t need trucks, tractors, and cars to obtain your food. Not that you have to get everything that way, the point is that it increases your food security if you offset food from far away with food from right there. We do have the knowledge to feed people sustainably, permaculture simply hasn’t had enough commitment from people to make it work. If it was done everywhere it could, and if it could replace huge-scale farming, the result would be healthier ecosystems and a huge surplus of food.
During World War II, “victory” gardens provided half of the nation’s food, and that was without permaculture and biodynamics. Self sufficiency is truly conservative by nature, consumption and industrial food production is contributing in a major way to a huge array of problems worldwide, like deforestation, famine, drought, obesity, diabetes, heart disease, and cancer. TRY IT OUT before you say its silly.
Greg R is exactly correct above— soil is like a bank account— take out more than you put in and productivity collapses. Removal of all that grows is NOT sustainable.
Hopeful Brewer - If you are tearing up a suburban yard to plant vegetables and fruit trees then you are not really losing much natural habitat, and home gardens make sense. If you have a farm, like my wife, children and I, then raising high-intensity vegetables on 10% of our land allows us to convert 90% of the land back to “natural” habitat. It has allowed us to put in a pond, 3 wetlands, and over 25,000 trees. We sell our produce at local farmer’s markets. However, we sell our food based on its high quality, not on a phylisophical mumbo jumbo. We don’t try to compete on items that can be shipped from areas where they can be raised more efficiently and shipped while maintaining high quality. We specialize in great tasting tomatoes, which don’t ship well. I agree that our meat-rich diets are neither heathy for us or the environment, but I am not a vegetarian; “Everything in moderation”. One factor not often understood, is that our seemingly insane policies to increase demand for grains is actually a food security plan. For example, the quoted 59-day grain reserve assumes continued use as feed and fuel. If we converted our corn to flour and meal, we could withstand a series of major lean growing years without going hungry. We just wouldn’t be so fat.
The argument about perma-culture having too little commitment can be made for every technology that has not yet worked, including alternate energy sources. This is a “what if” argument. Its possibly true and possibly false. One’s position is based on opinion. The curent ethanol subsidies are a trial balloon for this area of technology. Will thowing money at this help? Time will tell.
I do hope those South American specie of locusts don’t show up at your farm or our garden.___ Chomp, chomp, __ gone.
The author of this piece, or those he quotes, need a phone call from Earth: Hello! We CAN’T keep increasing our population and our levels of consumption–we are 23% past sustainability already and headed for a najor crash, yet you keep reading these statements about how the world population “will be” 9 billion in X year, and as people get more affluent they “demand” first-world standards of wasted resources, and somehow we are supposed to make the Earth yield twice the resources it does now in a few years, and then we will be told it must double again. Can’t be done, and it shouldn’t be done. Either we’re smarter than bacteria in a petri dish and cut our population and consumption levels, or we hit overshoot and die by the billions, some time this century.
Meanwhile, I must address Mr Obvious: sounds like you’re doing some good things, but you need a little ecological education. Apparently you swallow the story that organic agriculture and small farms are less efficent and “can’t feed the world,” and that GMOs enhance productivity. Look at the statistics and you will find that neither of these assumptions is true. Small farms have considerably higher productivity per unit of land, but require more labor. Now that we are running into limits on fossil fuels, both in availability of the resource and availability of the waste sinks, using labor instead of mechanization makes a lot of sense. We need to reverse the trend away from the farm, which is caused by a rigged system in which subsidies go to agribusiness corporations and small farmers can’t compete. There are plenty of people for the new farming jobs once that set-up is dismantled.
As for the GMO situation, I’ll just focus on the example you alluded to–corn and other crops with Bacillus thuringiensis bacteria genes spliced into the genes of the corn. Yes, Bt is an organically approved, safe insecticide–and it’s being ruined by this immense overkill. There is huge difference between spraying it on your broccoli a couple of times a season, and having it present in every cell of every plant in the field throughout the growing season. The result is utterly predictable–as with any insecticide, the bugs evolve resistance. So organic farmers lose a tool they’d relied on, as you said, for 50 years, and Monsanto just develops something else. There is no boon for consumers in this.
HEMP!!!! HEMP!!!! that’s right hemp. which will become commercially available when monsanto gets the rights to the hemps dna.
Caelidh, those “relocalize networks” sounds like a good idea. Do you have more info?
mwildfire, good idea utilizing labor for food production post-peak oil. The big challenge in the US is changing popular notions of desireable fulfilling lifestyles. Not surprisingly the corporate media has pushed Americans off the farm culturally to get them into specialty occupations, to be good cogs in the empire machine. Getting back to the land means also getting back to more diverse skills sets. This helps build political power for individuals and small communities, through greater independence.
I base my opinions on experience vs. theories and hypothesis. Local production can succeed based on old-fashioned competition rather than the contemporary fashion. Its easy to theorize when sitting in your suburban home watching your large screen TV. Resistance has indeed occured to organic Bt sprays, but has yet to occur in response to GM Bt crops. It eventually will happen, but the benefit to humanity will be much larger than that ever attibuted to the fringe organic movement. A finge anti-progress movement has always existed and always will. Failure to adapt has always been the hallmark of the extinct species.
Overpopulation is the elephant in the room. Everything else is a symptom of this problem. Everyone on the planet could be educated about our problem and provided contraception for a few billion dollars. However billions for defense make a few rich and thus fear of each other and greed take us merrily on our way to destruction of the planet and ourselves—too bad as humans do have some good attributes.
If hemp growing will stabilize our population I am for it, otherwise its a lost cause like most we hear about. Whatever your cause its a lost cause without population reduction by rational policies.
Poverty will never be alleviated. A simple solution to the food crisis is a one child (except if twins)policy in all countries. There will be alot less mouths to feed then.
SOYLENT GREEN!!
There are some excellent comments on this article. SecularAnimist set a great tone of fact and reason. She/he divulged the solution if everyone could stop and consider it.
And yes, it is also essential to return food productivity to a locally centered endeavor. And that is so easy to do. FoodScapes (landscaping with edibles) anyone? Everyone, or most everyone, can do a little, if even just planting a fruit tree or caring for the indigenous flora nearby or maybe launching a green house project.
To add to that, only 1/16th of an acre of land is required to grow food for a person practicing a ‘vegan’ diet. 50 times that amount is required for a western style meat-eater. Indeed, meat-eating was hardly widespread or routinely indulged until the last century.
The tragedy that I see is that all such articles/reports contribute to the general sense that genocide, in one form or another, is the answer (…reduce population or we will all starve).
But, genocidal and anti-nature policies are THE CAUSE of reduced biosphere fecundity around the globe (Agent Orange in Vietnam, burning the forest in Brazil, clear cutting in the US, etc. and we are hardly the first Agent for Totalitarianism to practice genocide of lands and peoples we sought to control).
Loss of productivity clearly has more to do with the attempt to exercise control over resources than overpopulation. And these control paradigms exist in contravention to all natural law requirements. Our modern dominator societies seek control, not cooperation with natural law, and in this struggle, there is only loss to be had for all concerned, for the laws of nature will not be rewritten by any of us. Nor the law that is written into our very own anatomy, that humans are herbivores.
___________
Making Sense out of Nonsense
(copied form http://allinharmony.org)
First, the non-sense:
“There are too many people and not enough resources.”
Second, making sense of it:
1) Remove indigenous peoples from ancestral lands, resources and lifestyles.
2) Put fences around them so that overcrowding occurs. Deny them access to anything outside the fenced area including food, water & shelter. Bring limited quantities of basic necessities to the fenced area. And then tell them:
a) This is a situation of overcrowding.
b) We do not have sufficient resources.
c) We must create some order (police state) to insure fair rationing.
d) And… a system to reward those most deserving (competition for ‘limited resources’ with valuations decided by elite self-interests).
((This entire ‘nonsense’ program only works perfectly if the natural fecundity of ancestral lands is also destroyed… damming of rivers, burning of forests, etc.))
There are many proofs that can amply demonstrate that this is the most basic two-step principle of elitist domination as well as how those dominated come to ‘understand’ their chances for personal ‘success.’
______________ Example _____________
The 12 Myths of Hunger
(excerpt copied from http://www.foodfirst.org/12myths)
Why so much hunger?
What can we do about it?
To answer these questions we must unlearn much of what we have been taught.
Only by freeing ourselves from the grip of widely held myths can we grasp the roots of hunger and see what we can do to end it.
Myth 1
Not Enough Food to Go Around
Reality: Abundance, not scarcity, best describes the world’s food supply. Enough wheat, rice and other grains are produced to provide every human being with 3,500 calories a day. That doesn’t even count many other commonly eaten foods - vegetables, beans, nuts, root crops, fruits, grass-fed meats, and fish. Enough food is available to provide at least 4.3 pounds of food per person a day worldwide: two and half pounds of grain, beans and nuts, about a pound of fruits and vegetables, and… enough to make most people fat! The problem is that many people are too poor to buy readily available food. Even most “hungry countries” have enough food for all their people right now. Many are net exporters of food and other agricultural products.
Please go to http://www.foodfirst.org/12myths to learn about all the myths, including the Overpopulation Myth.
And remember, the original and most destructive MYTH of all is: Humans Are Omnivores.
The Fact is that Humans Are Herbivores with a nature determined place in a naturally abundant ecology.
So, how does the empire best obscure these ecological facts? A. By the systematic destruction of natural habitats such as the burning of the rainforests. Until they are ALL gone, someone might notice that nature really did abundantly provide for humans just as it provided for every other functioning member of the ecology.
_________________
“When we kill animals to eat them, they end up killing us because their flesh, which contains cholesterol and saturated fat, was never intended for human beings, who are natural herbivores.”
William C. Roberts, M.D., editor, American Journal of Cardiology
________________
From “The Comparative Anatomy of Eating”, by Milton R. Mills, MD
Facial Muscles
CARNIVORE: Reduced to allow wide mouth gape
HERBIVORE: Well-developed
OMNIVORE: Reduced
HUMAN: Well-developed
Jaw Type
CARNIVORE: Angle not expanded
HERBIVORE: Expanded angle
OMNIVORE: Angle not expanded
HUMAN: Expanded angle
Jaw Joint Location
CARNIVORE: On same plane as molar teeth
HERBIVORE: Above the plane of the molars
OMNIVORE: On same plane as molar teeth
HUMAN: Above the plane of the molars
Jaw Motion
CARNIVORE: Shearing; minimal side-to-side motion
HERBIVORE: No shear; good side-to-side, front-to-back
OMNIVORE: Shearing; minimal side-to-side
HUMAN: No shear; good side-to-side, front-to-back
Major Jaw Muscles
CARNIVORE: Temporalis
HERBIVORE: Masseter and pterygoids
OMNIVORE: Temporalis
HUMAN: Masseter and pterygoids
Mouth Opening vs. Head Size
CARNIVORE: Large
HERBIVORE: Small
OMNIVORE: Large
HUMAN: Small
Teeth: Incisors
CARNIVORE: Short and pointed
HERBIVORE: Broad, flattened and spade shaped
OMNIVORE: Short and pointed
HUMAN: Broad, flattened and spade shaped
Teeth: Canines
CARNIVORE: Long, sharp and curved
HERBIVORE: Dull and short or long (for defense), or none
OMNIVORE: Long, sharp and curved
HUMAN: Short and blunted
Teeth: Molars
CARNIVORE: Sharp, jagged and blade shaped
HERBIVORE: Flattened with cusps vs complex surface
OMNIVORE: Sharp blades and/or flattened
HUMAN: Flattened with nodular cusps
Chewing
CARNIVORE: None; swallows food whole
HERBIVORE: Extensive chewing necessary
OMNIVORE: Swallows food whole and/or simple crushing
HUMAN: Extensive chewing necessary
Saliva
CARNIVORE: No digestive enzymes
HERBIVORE: Carbohydrate digesting enzymes
OMNIVORE: No digestive enzymes
HUMAN: Carbohydrate digesting enzymes
Stomach Type
CARNIVORE: Simple
HERBIVORE: Simple or multiple chambers
OMNIVORE: Simple
HUMAN: Simple
Stomach Acidity
CARNIVORE: Less than or equal to pH 1 with food in stomach
HERBIVORE: pH 4 to 5 with food in stomach
OMNIVORE: Less than or equal to pH 1 with food in stomach
HUMAN: pH 4 to 5 with food in stomach
Stomach Capacity
CARNIVORE: 60% to 70% of total volume of digestive tract
HERBIVORE: Less than 30% of total volume of digestive tract
OMNIVORE: 60% to 70% of total volume of digestive tract
HUMAN: 21% to 27% of total volume of digestive tract
Length of Small Intestine
CARNIVORE: 3 to 6 times body length
HERBIVORE: 10 to more than 12 times body length
OMNIVORE: 4 to 6 times body length
HUMAN: 10 to 11 times body length
Colon
CARNIVORE: Simple, short and smooth
HERBIVORE: Long, complex; may be sacculated
OMNIVORE: Simple, short and smooth
HUMAN: Long, sacculated
Liver
CARNIVORE: Can detoxify vitamin A
HERBIVORE: Cannot detoxify vitamin A
OMNIVORE: Can detoxify vitamin A
HUMAN: Cannot detoxify vitamin A
Kidney
CARNIVORE: Extremely concentrated urine
HERBIVORE: Moderately concentrated urine
OMNIVORE: Extremely concentrated urine
HUMAN: Moderately concentrated urine
Nails
CARNIVORE: Sharp claws
HERBIVORE: Flattened nails or blunt hooves
OMNIVORE: Sharp claws
HUMAN: Flattened nails
www.lawnstogardens.com
Time to grow food at home!
Myth number one: -Humans are herbivors- Scientists universally agree that humans are omnivors. The term hunter-gatherer might ring a bell. There are zero records for primitive human civilizations or tribes that did not hunt and eat meat. Even today, insect grubs are a staple food where animal populations will not support hunting. Eating animal protein is a natural human behavior that we evolved with. We evolved as tool users, so one must incorporate these into any comparison. We are pretty helpless against a wild boar until we have a spear in our hands. We do not hunt without tools/weapons. It is possible to get around this with a carefully designed menu, but this is not a “natural” diet for humans.
Myth number two: -We do not need to control the human population- While we have not reached the carrying capacity of the earth yet, our population cannot keep growing. There is a population limit to every environment including the earth. We have not reached this limit, but quality of life will decrease as we approach this limit.
Myth number three: -returning to “organic” farming practices is good for the environment- High-intensity production requires less land. The seperation of “natural” habitats from agricultural habitats results in far more natural diversity and wildlife compared to low-tech, low efficiency farming. Agricultural habitats are manipulated to provide human resources (food/feed/fiber), and thus we protect these resources from competition by other living things, or else we will not be able to use them. Putting gardens and fruit trees in a suburban yard is quite different from destroying natural habitat to produce low-quality, low yielding human food.
munch1 - That said, I agree that our meat rich diet is a major contributor to poor human and environmental health. However, justifying this based on untruths and “natural law” only feeds the fodder for critics of reducing food-animal production. We can greatly improve the human condition by reducing individual consumption and not having more children than that required to replace us. Our large poulations and longer lives are a result of our understanding and manipulation of natural processes. “Natural laws” are simply the way we catagorize the processes that we observe in environments devoid of humans. They are a creation of man. By raising them to some mystical level, you will lose many of the logical thinkers that infuence the decisions that are so important to our society. If your goal is to effect change, then you need to know your audience. Many will discount everything you say if you repeat untrue eco-propaganda and preach that “Mother Nature” is a god. Logic and facts will get you further than religious belief and eco-dribble.
A little info on the vegetarian myth.
http://www.vrg.org/nutshell/omni.htm
Hemp, Solar, Wind, and eating less meat could solve all our problems IF WE STARTED NOW. Trouble is it’s not sexy, lacks glamor.
It will get put off until nothing can help us.
–Are stoned locusts as harmful?
Why are we insisting on distilling things into alcohol? hemp, corn,stalks,sugarcane whatever. Just cuz it will power todays’ inefficient gas cars?
There are much better answers out there.(using LESS energy is the big one) I don’t think I need to tell CD’s audience that.
The absolute only solution to these multiple problems is to control population growth. How to control is the only problem to be thinking about.
“There are zero records for primitive human civilizations or tribes that did not hunt and eat meat.”
The attitude is impressive, but facts do not support this bold and false assertion.
Anthropologists simply disagree with you. Pure vegetarian societies were even possible to study in the thirties last century.
There is also a good book on the history of meat-eating called Beyond Beef. In which we learn that European communities were only recently (a few thousand years ago) converted to meat-eating practices and the history of India and elsewhere is similar. Generally, meat-eating has been spread by war-making societies (highly hierarchical and temple-based) and been accomplished by repeated invasions and force.
Finally, I worte a longer comment with more info but it met the ‘awaiting moderation’ glitch. I hope the info/comment will not be censored.
Bush and other world leaders are frantically working on population control, don’t sweat it. Then when the Arctic tunda defrosts and the methane gas which has been trapped there for the past 5 billion years escapes into our atmosphere, there won’t be ANY populations.
Google Arctic methane gas and read any of the thousand plus articles published on the subject. Be nice to your children, they won’t be here for long.
munch1 - So you think that The Vegetarian Resource Group is trying to mislead vegetarians? Did you read the info at their link that I provided (see below again)? Not only aren’t Homo sapiens vegetarians but neither were are most recent ancestors or our most closely related living primate cousins. Just ain’t so. Vegetarianism is a choice but is not “natural”. Every biologist knows this.
http://www.vrg.org/nutshell/omni.htm
“So you think that The Vegetarian Resource Group is trying to mislead vegetarians? Did you read the info at their link that I provided (see below again)? Not only aren’t Homo sapiens vegetarians but neither were are most recent ancestors or our most closely related living primate cousins. Just ain’t so. Vegetarianism is a choice but is not “natural”. Every biologist knows this.”
I addressed these questions in a previous comment that has not yet been published, as I said. CommonDreams has decided that it needs ‘moderation’.
But, I will try to include a part of that comment here and hope this gets published but a couple of those ‘biologists’ have already been quoted from in my first comment and they clearly disagree with your false assertions.
The claim that humans are omnivores rests upon behavioral rather than biological data. And, the behavioral data is not as you claim, at least not anthropologically/historically speaking.
I studied anthropology in the seventies prior to becoming a vegan and learned that societies that were vegetarian were being driven to extinction not because of poorer diets but because of war-making by meat-eating societies.
So, here is a statement that is based upon the work and writings of some well-known researchers such as Leakey:
The Natural Human Diet
“According to biologists and anthropologists who study our anatomy and our evolutionary history, humans are herbivores who are not well suited to eating meat.
Unlike natural carnivores, we are physically and psychologically unable to rip animals limb from limb and eat and digest their raw flesh. Even cooked meat is likely to cause human beings, but not natural carnivores, to suffer from food poisoning, heart disease, and other ailments.
People who pride themselves on being part of the human hunter tradition should take a second look at the story of human evolution. Prehistoric evidence indicates that humans developed hunting skills relatively recently and that most of our short, meat-eating past was spent scavenging and eating almost anything in order to survive; even then, meat was a tiny part of our caloric intake.
Humans lack both the physical characteristics of carnivores and the instinct that drives them to kill animals and devour their raw carcasses. Ask yourself: When you see dead animals on the side of the road, are you tempted to stop for a snack? Does the sight of a dead bird make you salivate? Do you daydream about killing cows with your bare hands and eating them raw? If you answered “no” to all of these questions, congratulations, you’re a normal human herbivore, like it or not. Humans were simply not designed to eat meat.”
The above discussion was copied from http://www.goveg.com/naturalhumandiet.asp
munch1 - So you are saying that The Vegetarian Resource Group is deceiving its members?
“So you are saying that The Vegetarian Resource Group is deceiving its members?”
The short answer is not exactly.
First, this little piece is primarily used by those trying to discredit vegetarians in general and more particularly, vegans. So, the intended audience may or may not be vegetarians but its actual use seems to have little to do with VRG members.
So, there are several considerations in regard to disinfo.
1) Most spreading it do not know that what they believe is false. (ex. People feed meat to their children without intending to destroy their health.)
2) ‘Alternative’ groups are very effective disseminators of disinfo since they have a high level of trust amongst their followers. Chomsky on 9/11 is a very good example of how ‘alternative’ sources are used in maintaining disinfo scripts.
3) Not all members of an organization are aware of the connections of others in the organization to undercover operations.
4) The FBI identified vegetarians as the next big threat group in the mid-nineties. So, it is realistic to assume that their operations are thoroughly infiltrated. (In this regard, I have much anecdotal evidence that the FBI is fully operational throughout the community. I think Common Dreams even posted an article recently on the use of non-profits to track potential ‘terrorism’.)
5) Many prominent ‘alternative’ groups are/were literally created by police/surveillance agencies as community info gathering arms as well as disinfo portholes. This was used quite extensively in the sixties. In my neck of the woods, it appears to be the genesis of such groups as Pacific Studies Center.
6) Things aren’t in such a state of chaos due to everyone just being too dumb… there is a design to this madness and those designs are being managed by such highly unaccountable groups as the FBI, NSA, DIA, etc.
munch1 - Get off the political mumbo jumbo. The Vegetarian Resource Center discredits the assertion that humans are vegetarians. Either they are correct or they are liers. Get off the political rhetoric. Are they liers or are you? Humans are omnivours. Your stupidity is hurting others attempts to curtail excessive meat eating. When you assert stupid and idiotic theses, you hurt others attempts to rationally address serious issues. Nutty advocates are a good excuse for rational folks to oppose good policy. You are part of the problem!
“Either they are correct or they are liers.”
No, that is not the only possibility as I explained above. I am sorry that you are not able to follow the very straightforward, logical and fact-based statements that I made.
“Your stupidity is hurting others attempts to curtail excessive meat eating.”
You seem to have a personal bone to pick.
My ’stupidity’ is simply unproven, at least in relative terms. And, my determination to uncover and share reliable info for the sake of all life can not be reliably or factually discredited.
“Nutty advocates”? Are these the folks who advance non-conventional ideas such as the earth is not flat or the sun does not revolve around the earth or Jesus is not about a man but rather an allegory to describe the changing seasons?
I am sorry that you are having trouble with the facts of human anatomy but has oft been said, “Don’t shoot the messenger” especially when they are bearing understandings that promote peace rather than war, disease and poverty.
munch1 - Are you running for president. This is not hard. You say that humans are naturally vegetarian and The Vegetarian Resource Group says that humans are omnivours. Either you are lying or they are? Is this a tough question? Seems like you want to walk the thin line. Are you going to team up with McCain? Don’t spout unpopular science based on evidence to me. This is how I made enough to devote to farming and development of natural habitats. I know the difference between good hypotheses based on evidence and rhetoric. The Vegetarian Resource Group explains that humans are omnivours. Are you saying that they are lying? This is not a complex question.
“Are you saying that they are lying? This is not a complex question.”
Please reread my first answer.
My intention is clearly not to deceive but rather to inform. So ‘no’, I will not be running for political office.
I would like though to retire in a world at peace… so do your homework and stop trying to confound the evident.
http://allinharmony.com
(click on the link to the Bizarro comic video)
Munch1 - I’ll try to make this simple, Yes or no will do. Is the Vegetarian Resource group decieving its members when they conclude that humans are omnivours. Yes or no?
OK - My point is that misguided do-gooders do more harm than good. They provide the opposition to good policy with ample evidence to discredit those who would try to advance rational solutions to our over-indulgent ways. Your not helping.
I’m as far as 1:46 AM Sunday morning re the posts here.
Munch1 sounds right on.
Local food production sounds right on.
What is biochar? I take it hemp stalks can be processed into same…for building structures?
All these outdoor screened in rooms need to have a plastic covers for plants in the winter. IMO we gotta get on the stick with fabric (and for dwellings too…esp when the power goes out after hurricanes). Think if WalMart had offered coupons for reusable shopping bags years back. Almost too frickin late! FABRIC FOR RICKSHAW COVERS TOO!!! HEY, AND DRY YOUR OWN PERSONAL FABRIC ON A CLOTHESLINE FOR CRYING OUT LOUD! Whoops…sorry…off topic.
Someone lay some knowledge down here on tea plants and CCRs (rain makers)…make that tea plants in everyone’s backyard.
I didn’t mean hemp stalks into biochar, sorry, I meant to ask if everyone’s say’n here you can process’em into fiber board. And one uses the latter for buildings?
~MUNCH 1.~__ Mr.Obvious is a soplistic person who loves to disrupt progressive threads, with his often obnoxious and attacking personal comments. He’s fairly new here and he’s obviously not a very pleasant person.
But don’t ignore him, the more he replies to you, the more “obvious” he is, for what he is. He wants you to answer questions similar to, “did you stop beating your wife”, questions you did not raise in the first place.
I agree that humans are omnivorious, as are polar bears. On the other hand, we humans can live quite well without a diet of meat and blubber, polar bears cannot, that’s because suffecient vegitation is not available for them to live through the winters. Besides, they enjoy flesh and blubber as I enjoy a rib-eye steak. We all could probably survive with just eating plankton, nothing else. Yum-yum.
“I agree that humans are omnivorious, as are polar bears”
The fact that polar bears are omnivores does not prove that humans are.
The fact that you like steak does not either. Hindus do not like steak. What does that prove?
At some point, we must realize that we are all INCULCATED. That is the reason for analyzing human anatomy and physiology.
Animal proteins are toxic to humans. Animal fats and cholesterol are as well. At what point does one decide that what they are eating is not natural if it causes disease, premature death and environmental collapse?
As William C. Roberts, M.D., editor, American Journal of Cardiology says, “Atherosclerosis is one of the easiest diseases to produce experimentally, but the experimental animal must be an herbivore.” Humans are herbivores!
No matter what we ‘believe’ (are inculcated to accept as natural), we are living a lie and that lie is destroying not only ourselves but the entire earthly biosphere.
Think about what is at stake before you ‘choose’ the wrong answer just because it is supported by your culture’s conventions and thus seems (feels) self-evident.
Well MUNCH, I agree humans are omnivorious, but OFFER MY OPINION in a decent manner. That’s my opinion and I don’t attempt to prove or disprove it. It seems to be fairly obvious that SOME HUMANS are. Most humans do eat both veggies and meat of some type, lizards and snakes, birds, fish, cows, horses, sea mammals, and inscects. Inscects are an important food source in S. E. Asia as are snakes, rodents and monkeys. I’ve seen shops on Taiwan where that’s all they sell, snake meat.
I agree, we humans don’t have to eat meat to live well and be perfectly healthy, neither do cats and dogs. We just for the majority do eat meat,__ if we do we are obviously omnivorous, ___ if we don’t, we aren’t. What’s the argument? I was saying to you, that Mr. Obvious is a soplist type of debater, he’s probably a nice man but gets snotty when arguing. So do I at times, but I will agree with others opposing opinions at times,__ he doesn’t. __ Never mind. I like peanut butter, wish someone would write a song about it.
Wheat and peanuts are very toxic to some humans. In fact, just a trace of peanuts will kill some people. It happend only recently to a young woman. Lots of plants are toxic to humans. So to state meat is toxic to humans doesn’t PROVE anything either. My parents lived to be 102 and they were both omnivorious and my father could not eat wheat or nuts. It would kill him.
The REAL danger is not what we eat, it’s what we burn to produce electricity and to run our vehicles. Global Warming is the real danger, not chicken soup or fried snakes.
The role meat-eating plays in hunger, environmental decline, etc. is well documented in several books and on many websites so I will not try to repeat that here (but I have added a link and quote at end of this comment).
The fact that one eats meat does not change their anatomy. Cows are fed cows, but they are still herbivores by anatomical design. Humans in modern society are inculcated to eat meat, but they are still anatomically herbivores, meaning designed to eat plant foods exclusively.
I provided the evidence for this in my first comment. Please refer back to it. Cats and dogs on the other hand, are carnivorous by anatomical design. They eat meat and do NOT get heart disease and many other diseases that are found in humans who do the same thing. The reason, once again is that humans are anatomical herbivores and only BEHAVIORAL/Cultural omnivores.
So, though we can be trained to eat meat and like it, our bodies can not be trained not to suffer the deleterious affects that keep Kaiser and many other ‘health’ corporations profitable.
I hope this has clarified what confusion may have been caused.
As far as toxic plants, that also does not prove we are not designed to eat plant foods exclusively, it only suggests that we must be somewhat selective, presumably that is the reason we are also endowed with our two brains, one in the head, and the other in the stomach.
If you have not yet discoverd your second brain, please make its acquaintance: http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_105441.html, another reason to consider how we treat our stomachs.
____________
Meat and the Environment
(copied from http://goveg.com/environment.asp)
Would you ever open your refrigerator, pull out 16 plates of pasta and toss them in the trash, and then eat just one plate of food?
How about leveling 55 square feet of rain forest for a single meal or dumping 2,500 gallons of water down the drain? Of course you wouldn’t.
But if you’re eating chicken, fish, turkey, pork, or beef, that’s what you’re doing; wasting resources and destroying our environment.
(Please follow link provided above to read the rest of this article.)
I agree that if we didn’t have cows, chickens and hogs to eat and didn’t eat any meat we’d all be much better off, as would the enviroment.
I also believe if one does eat meat, they are “meat eaters” or omnivorous in my opinion. I’ve seen people who had lost all of their teeth eating hamburgers and hot dogs. If one wishes to play semantics with word usage, and not term humans omnivorios, that’s fine with me. Call them non-vegitarians, or meat eaters, or stupid meat eaters, or fake omnivorious, stupid meat eaters. __ Suits me.
One of your arguments is meat is toxic to humans. I reply that so can vegetation be toxic to humans, so I don’t believe you have a valid argument on that point, even if we can intelligently determine what plants are toxic. Some are STILL toxic to some people and some plants are deadly for anyone, man or beast. So meat is toxic, so are some plants. So what.
The major issue and article here is, we are going to have serious problesm with food supplies, primarily grains and vegetables, due to Global Warming and climate change and that’s the issue.
Some perspective:
ALL meat and dairy products are toxic for humans.
Over 95% of plants are nutritious for humans though some more than others.
A small percentage of plants must be avoided.
We are anatomically herbivorous and only behaviorally omnivorous. In other words; human saliva, intestinal tract, stomach ph, teeth, etc. are all optimized for an exclusive plant based diet.
Humans are herbivores.
The solution to more bio fuels is so simple .
Use are cast out garbage. The left over can corn you had for your dinner.and the meats? why not the fats being turn into a fuel. We just throw it away when it could be reused. There is the minor problem of separating your food type garbage from the rest of the trash.But we did it quite well in WWII I doubt it would be that hard to even convert some of these brand new ethanol manufacturing plants.
And they would have a continous supply of garbage. No waiting for new crops which could now help feed our population.
Oh you want another suggestion? how about the Methane from our own Sewage? Again we get to reuse our food products.
Simple Solutions for the future.
There is a difference in offering an opinion and offering an opinion backed up by scientific data. A creationist can state their claim that the earth was created 6,000 years ago and all life was created at that time. This is based on faith. However, when a creationist tries to use the evolutionary record and the physiology of the immune system to justify their position, then I take exception and point out the counter arguments. Most posters here seem to agree that excessive meat production and consumption is bad for the environment and our health. However, there are many opponents to this way of thinking and they will find the chink in your armour and pry it open. Claiming humans are “naturally” herbivores based on selected average physiology for carnevores (or any group) is not a valid argument. The evidence for omnivory is so overwelming that it rivals that for the theory of evolution. Even respected vegetarian organizations like the Vegetarian Resource Group acknowledge that humans as “natural” vegetarians is a myth. When you invoke this myth when arguing for reduced meat production and consumption, you discredit the cause. If you want to believe that humans are vegetarians, that is your choice, but if you attempt to prove this with scientific evidence, then I will take exception and provide the evidence to the contrary. Science is not about opinion; it’s about evidence.
Do humans naturally live in high rises or fly through the air? Or chatter on blogs? No, but we can adapt because we have (the potential for) intelligence and change. In rich countries we can and should cut down on meat consumption and excessive consumption because that is adaptive behavior, both for our own health and that of the environment. We also have the potential for unnatural greed and high tech brutality.
At the same time as we are being advised to move to grains in place of meats and dairy, grains are being diverted to the deceptive biofuel initiatives. Biofuel is energy inefficient. It is taking corn away from poor people who have always depended on it. It benefits only corn agri-business.
Monsanto is developing sterile grains that can be used for only one year. The fish are disappearing from the ocean and those that are left have heavy metals in their tissues. It seems the fertilizing bees are in some kind of danger. Farmers in India are committing suicide in droves because of the pressures of commodity capitalism on traditional farming. Small local farmers and fishers need our help so food can be delivered fresh without using up so much fuel and can be raised without so many harmful chemicals and cruelty.
Food, water, air and energy have to be taken out of the pitiless capitalist playbook and returned to popular control, and fast! But to do that we have to stop the obscene military spending that uses up resources that could be used for solutions to any human problems.
How? Do something. Teachers organize HS students to study these things, expose collusion in government, educate. Write, paint, sing about this to inspire. Change buying habits, boycott goods to hurt the profits. Let stores know what you are doing and why. Bring up the environmental / survival questions in every election, even for dog catcher. Expose legislative collusion and organize to get rid of them and replace them with honest representatives.
(PS - I believe that any local politician who is not willing to point to military spending and the Iraq war as undermining all other issues including food, education, enviroment, housing is a coward and should be voted out.)
“But to do that we have to stop the obscene military spending that uses up resources that could be used for solutions to any human problems.”
JC, Google “drain the swamp” and “Chomsky.”
Found this example of a folding motorized bicycle from
a search of “bicyles” and “gas engines.”
Did a better search in the past, but can’t think of it today.
Great paragraph, jc, 4th up from bottom beginning “Monsanto…” That’s the deal.
And the rest too.
Re the tea-plant/CCR-rain connection, I first heard of it years ago in a New Dimensions Bill Mollison interview. But I haven’t been able to find anything regarding same since (only a tiny bit of material on CCRs/rain via Google searches).
I’m also not aware of a Permaculture site(s) that includes, for example, a lot of quotes from Mollison.
It is shocking that Monsanto wants to put an anti-copying device on their patented traits which cannot be purchased without the farmer signing an agreement that they will not save seed. Next thing you know software makers will be intalling anti-copying devices on their copyrighted CDs. What is the world coming to when people start protecting their property? - By the way, Terminator technology was developed by the USDA and it is not being developed by anyone.
munch1 - I just can’t this pass lest someone get very sick.
You say “ALL meat and dairy products are toxic for humans. Over 95% of plants are nutritious for humans though some more than others.”
My Response: Approximately 2-3% of plants are not toxic to humans. Toxic animals as food are very very rare (a few sea creatures). Even most venimous animals are safe to eat. This is why scientists have postulated that South America natives must have come down the coast from the Bering Strait eating seafood. They could not have come down inland because it would have required too much time to learn which 2-3% of plants would sustain them. However since you can eat 95% of plants, you have nothing to worry about if food becomes scarce. You can just go forage in the woods. It is amazing that human populations skyrocketted only after they started farming the few plants that are edible.
Kem - Yes I get snotty sometimes. This is why.
Me too. Same reason.