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TechnoratiFood Supply Hangs in the Balance
The current devastating drought in East Africa, where millions of people are on the brink of starvation, is a window on our future, suggests a new study looking at the impacts of climate change.
![[A farmer carries dried corn outside Jalapa, Guatemala September 26, 2009. Guatemalan president Alvaro Colom declared a state of "calamity" over food supply in Guatemala, where a prolonged dry spell has reduced the harvest of staples like maize and beans by up to 50 percent. Not isolated to Guatemala, the food supply crisis is a global, and without radical improvements in the food supply system, things could get much worse. (REUTERS/Daniel LeClair)]](http://www.commondreams.org/files/article_images/food supply.jpg "food supply.jpg")
"Twenty-five million more children will be malnourished in 2050 due to effects of climate change," such as decreased crop yields, crop failures and higher food prices, concluded the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) study.
"Of all human economic activities, agriculture is by far the most vulnerable to climate change," warned the report's author, Gerald Nelson, an agricultural economist with IFPRI, a Washington-based group focused on global hunger and poverty issues.
The report, "Quantifying the Costs of Agricultural Adaptation to Climate Change", may be the "most comprehensive assessment of the impact of climate change on agriculture to date", as IFPRI claims, but researchers concede that there is no current way to quantify all of the future repercussions of changing weather patterns on the food supply.
A critical component of agriculture is knowing the best time to plant seeds, for example. Farmers rely on their past experience and weather records. But one of the most robust science findings is that climate change has and will produce significant increases in weather variability.
This means extremes like droughts or floods will happen more often or last longer, and extreme temperature shifts are more likely. The past is no longer a reliable guide for farmers because the fundamental conditions in the atmosphere have been altered - far more heat is being trapped in the atmosphere today because of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases than at any time since the dawn of agriculture.
Nelson told IPS that the IFPRI report is a "conservative estimate" of the potential impacts and does not include impacts of pests and disease, loss of farmland due to rising sea levels or loss of water from melting glaciers.
The enormous glacier system of the Himalayas-Hindu Kush and high-elevation Tibetan Plateau are the main source of water for 1.3 billion people in Asia. Recent studies as reported by IPS revealed that these glaciers are shrinking faster than anywhere on the planet and could melt away by 2035, according to the International Commission on Snow and Ice in Kathmandu, Nepal.
"There's been a super-rapid decline in the glaciers of the region," Charles Kennel of the University of California San Diego Sustainability Solutions Institute told IPS previously.
A similar situation is now evident in South America, where massive glaciers that provide water for tens if not hundreds of millions of people are melting away.
Moreover, the IFPRI study does not look at future expansion of biofuel, bioenergy crops or tree plantations that will occupy some of existing food production land.
Even without those additional and considerable pressures on global food production, the IFPRI report estimates that by 2050, irrigated wheat yield will have fallen by 30 percent and irrigated rice by 15 percent.
Food prices would be normally be expected to rise over a period of 40 years, but with climate change, prices will skyrocket: wheat by 170 to 194 percent, rice 113 to 121 percent, and maize 148 to 153 percent higher.
Developing countries will be hit hardest by climate change, and will face bigger declines in crop yields and production than industrialised countries, the study found. The negative effects of climate change are especially pronounced in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia.
"Agriculture is extremely vulnerable to climate change because farming is so weather-dependent. Small-scale farmers in developing countries will suffer the most," noted report co-author Mark Rosegrant, director of IFPRI's Environment and Production Technology Division.
However, much of this scenario can be avoided with action on climate change and "seven billion U.S. dollars per year of additional investments in agricultural productivity to help farmers to adapt to the effects of climate change", Nelson said.
These investments would be for agricultural research, improved irrigation, and rural roads to increase market access for poor farmers, he said. Public agricultural research has suffered serious declines in funding for the past decade and more, according to many experts.
Currently, the entire global budget of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) is less than half a billion dollars, said Nelson.
Founded in 1971, CGIAR is a global alliance of researchers, governments and civil society groups that mobilises science to benefit the poor.
"In the past, if investments in agricultural research are made they directly result in productivity boosts," Nelson noted.
Government investment is needed to provide public goods like improved crops, more efficient irrigation systems and infrastructure, he said, cautioning against "one-size fits all" solutions.
Agriculture is location-specific and it is "far more complicated than rocket science", he added.
Nelson is a supporter of small-scale traditional agriculture, which was also the overall finding of the three-year International Assessment of Agricultural Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD) in 2008.
"Traditional agriculture should be supported and its techniques widely shared when it works - not just because it's traditional," he said.
Future food security is much more than seeds and yields. For 30 years, industrialised agricultural nations in Europe and North America have dumped heavily subsidised foods on poor countries with devastating impacts on local food systems, says Michel Pimbert, director of the agriculture and biodiversity programme at the London-based International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED).
Such national and international policies need to be changed to favour "food sovereignty", meaning diverse, local, autonomous food systems, Pimbert told IPS.
IFPRI's call for a seven-billion-dollar investment will not guarantee that all negative impacts can be overcome, acknowledged Nelson, "But business as usual will guarantee disastrous consequences for the human race."
23 Comments so far
Show All"And yes, I do get the urge to eat road kill when I'm starving."
Maybe, maybe not. We would have to see you in that situation. Regardless, you are habituated to a diet that includes meat. Not only are you familiar and comfortable with the habit of consuming it, you are convinced that it is nourishing for you.
Did you know that other herbivores (even of the granivore type and we are the frugivore type), such as goats and sheep, who have been habituated to consuming flesh will eat it even in preference over their natural diets?
But, this outcome can only be affected if the process of inducing them to consume flesh is begun early in their lives and continued on a frequent and regular basis.
So, though we are acculturated to eat meat... and consider it as nutrition, we remain ecologically defined as herbivores.
"That's what happened both to the Donner Party and to the survivors of "Alive" the Uraguain Rugby team trapped for six months in the Andes mountains plane crash. Feasting on "Carrion" (opportunistic eating of dead bodies) is very common with victims of war zones and in the animal kingdom. Preying Mantises do it. Dogs eat some of their young, Male House cats secretly eat their killed enemies in back alleys. Humans are still caught doing it in New Guinea."
In the first cases (and the last one), the responses evidenced were also based upon early conditioning. There pre-existed a conditioned belief that flesh was food or in some way enlivening. In the cases of other animals, their responses are either ecologically driven or again conditioned by unnatural circumstances defined by human interventions.
There is an enormous amount of disinformation regarding diets, and what constitutes a natural human diet or diets in our society.
(Please read: http://www.scribd.com/doc/17111888/Science-Verifies-That-Humans-Are-Frugivores )
But determining the truth on this matter is of utmost importance. Why? Because, the number of people (and other creatures) that can be supported if humans eat a natural plant based diet is considerably greater than the number who can be supported if humans continue to consume meatarian diets.
Furthermore, we are not only dealing with 'best land use' policies, but also with everything medical (since considerable reductions in many types of diseases accompanies the switch to natural plant-based eating.)
The environmental considerations are also simply enormous. This matter continues to enforce deforestation and desertification policies globally... and very little forest is left... and much desert exists simply because of past herding/animal husbandry practices.
Another terrible concomitant to meat-eating (because it is based on cultural myth rather than ecological facts) is that Nature and its creatures are considered/reduced to commodities to be exploited... and those of us living within these meat-eating cultures have become emotionally and psychologically disconnected from the natural and vital understanding/experience of the necessary handshake upon which all living experience depends... a handshake that only occurs when we respect certain laws of nature... that each creature will eat a diet natural (ecologically determined) for itself.
In other words, by misunderstanding our own place in nature (that of a human herbivore/frugivore), we have significantly and just as radically failed to understand/experience the natural system of which we are one partner.
And, our radical severance from natural experience and understanding continues to be the gravest threat to ourselves and all life.
Making Sense out of Nonsense
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 (monetary) to reward those most deserving (competition for ‘limited resources’ with valuations decided by elite self-interests).
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/en/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/en/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.
In fact: Humans Are Herbivores (find proof at http://allinharmony.org)
with a nature determined place in a naturally abundant ecology.
So, how does our global corporate state best obscure these ecological facts?
By the systematic destruction of natural habitats such as the burning of the rain forests. (Remember, this process was continuous long before Europeans invaded the Americas) Until ALL natural habitats are 'revisioned', someone might realize...
Nature itself abundantly provided for humans just as it provided for every other functioning member of the natural and fecund ecology.
totellthetruth,
I disagree with a couple things in your post.
First, dental configuration (since teeth are mostly mineral and are the greatest surviving component of the fossil record) confirm linage to either carnivores or herbivores. We most assuredly are Omnivores as evidenced by our mixed 2123 dentition. "Carnivores typically have premolars and molars with high pointed cusps adapted for tearing meat; but Herbivores, such as cattle and horses, have molars with broad flat surfaces suited for chewing tough grasses and other plant material."
We have both. We have the same evolved tools in our mouths as pure predators do plus the processing tooth types that herbivores have. In short, we have the "full tool kit", whereas herbivores do not. And this is borne out not only by our diet today, but by the diet of current primates in the wild genetically 99 percent identical to us who of "most eat a combination of fruits, nuts, seeds, leaves, other plant material, and insects. Many also get animal protein from birds and amphibians, and some occasionally kill and eat small mammals including other primates." - p. 105, Essentials of Physical Anthropology, Jurmain.
Homo sapien is clearly an opportunist. But even further back, our gut evolved surviving mostly on roots and small insects as the bulk of our diet, therefore, greater health is achieved, imho, by going vegan, or at least semi-vegan.
I don't disagree with your assessment of food shortage and I liked your link. I just maintain that the atmosphere can't support any more human population without raising the temperature to 60 degrees C in the shade via unchecked global warming. One third of the carbon footprint is from peasant slash and burn farming and cooking with charcoal in studies I have read.
TJ
"All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent." - Thomas Jefferson
"Comparative anatomy teaches us that man resembles frugivorous animals in every thing, and carnivorous in nothing; he has neither claws wherewith to seize his prey, nor distinct and pointed teeth to tear the living fibre."
A Vindication of Natural Diet by Percy Bysshe Shelley London, 1813
"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
--------------
Comparative Anatomy of Eating by Milton 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
The Natural Human Diet
http://www.goveg.com/naturalhumandiet.asp
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...
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.
totellthetruth,
Interesting post. When you state:
"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."
TJ says:
Do you have to use 196 year old pre-Darwin misunderstandings as "evidence?"
The 1813 crowd was not taking into account our current form is vastly different from our parallel extinct relative the vegetarian line Paranthropus (the "robust lines" that perished in drought). They also didn't know about our direct ancestor Australopithecus. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australopithecus?
"In a 1979 preliminary microwear study of Australopithecus fossil teeth, anthropologist Alan Walker theorized that robust australopiths were largely frugivorous.[6] However, newer methods of studying fossils have suggested the possibility that Australopithecus was omnivorous. In 1992, trace element studies of the strontium/calcium ratios in robust australopith fossils suggested the possibility of animal consumption, as they did in 1994 using stable carbon isotopic analysis.[7] Australopithecus mainly ate fruit, vegetables, and tubers." UNQUOTE
To draw conclusions from our current form exclusively, I don't think is meaningful unless compared to other primates who evolved parallel to us. To compare our current form with other Order of Primates species makes it abundantly clear that they wouldn't fit into Mills classification of Omnivore either (for example the dental comb of Prosimii are spiked like a carnivore while the Suborder is strictly vegetarian. It was misclassified for years as meat eater. But in old world Monkeys (Catarrhini which includes us) we know from direct observation that they are indeed Omnivores despite their fangs and 2133 dentition. I suspect that Mills non-specific generalizations that are not backed up by specific data would make her a quack in scholarly circles. I can't speak to the chemistry comparisons, but her morphology comparisons are too general and do not match known close relatives of ours in the Superfamilies I have studied. From the non-detailed list you posted, I doubt Mills has a background in Anthropology.
And yes, I do get the urge to eat road kill when I'm starving. That's what happened both to the Donner Party and to the survivors of "Alive" the Uraguain Rugby team trapped for six months in the Andes mountains plane crash. Feasting on "Carrion" (opportunistic eating of dead bodies) is very common with victims of war zones and in the animal kingdom. Preying Mantises do it. Dogs eat some of their young, Male House cats secretly eat their killed enemies in back alleys. Humans are still caught doing it in New Guinea.
We don't have four stomaches to process hard grass. We are not herbivores. From Wiki:
Until the development of agriculture approximately 10,000 years ago, Homo sapiens employed a hunter-gatherer method as their sole means of food collection. This involved combining stationary food sources (such as fruits, grains, tubers, and mushrooms, insect larvae and aquatic molluscs) with wild game, which must be hunted and killed in order to be consumed.[67] It has been proposed that humans have used fire to prepare and cook food since the time of their divergence from Homo erectus.[68]
Humans are omnivorous, capable of consuming both plant and animal products.[69] Varying with available food sources in regions of habitation, and also varying with cultural and religious norms, human groups have adopted a range of diets, from purely vegetarian to primarily carnivorous. In some cases, dietary restrictions in humans can lead to deficiency diseases; however, stable human groups have adapted to many dietary patterns through both genetic specialization and cultural conventions to utilize nutritionally balanced food sources.[70]
So despite difficulties in digesting meat better suited for pure carnivores, Natural Selection and Genentic Diversity dictate that some individuals will be better suited to eat Carrion and survive to raise offspring. It doesn't matter that they die of heart disease at 30 years old. They already successfully passed their mixed omnivore genes on.
Cheers,
TJ
"All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent." - Thomas Jefferson
Please read: http://www.scribd.com/doc/17111888/Science-Verifies-That-Humans-Are-Frugivores
There is a lot of disinformation in your post. But, that is hardly your fault. There is a lot of it being circulated throughout our society... in schools, medical facilities and of course, in the mainstream and 'alternative' press.
The idea that we have somehow 'evolved' to eating meat, simply because some small segment of society has been engaged in it for some thousands of years, is not born out by examining present human anatomy and physiology.
There is an excellent video on this here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=05zhL1YUd8Q
Also, the idea that food scarcity precipitated a change in diet is another cultural myth. In fact, food scarcity is an outcome of environmental destruction undertaken to induce food scarcity: it is war policy pure and simple. And the aim of this war is to bring about the destruction and/or subservience of a target population... as was the case in the Americas when the Europeans invaded and set about to destroy the Indian societies that were living on this continent.
But, we have many more evidences of this from around the world and certainly long before the Europeans used these tactics, other empires employed them just as effectively.
Two things should be kept in mind when trying to advance the "we are now evolved to eat meat."
1) Very small numbers of humans actually ate any meat until the advent of refrigeration. So, who evolved? The elite? And certain members of herding communities?
What about the rest? Are they then not evolved?
2) ALL animal proteins produce antigen responses in humans. In other words, your body recognizes animal proteins as a toxin... not a food.
Actually,
There's no disinformation at all in my posts. I provided sources and scholarly text titles to educate you, so I would appreciate if you would acknowledge that it comes, not from the media as you imply or from urban knowledge, but from accepted, peer-reviewed scholarly sources (Wiki being the exception; but it links to accepted sources). I took a college course in Physical Anthropology and received an "A" last year. This doesn't mean I am correct. It just means that I have received recent training on a body of knowledge which has changed drastically since PCR typing became widespread. I agree with the scientific colaboration of biological and physiological anthropologists who have researched both the fossil and the genetic record for markers that show the primate tree (which includes humans) as best as we can discern at this date. It in no way supports any speculation from 1813 such the disproved primer that you posted.
Did you study evolution in college recently? The politics of food after "Pre-history" (civilization 10,000 years ago) you cite have nothing at all to do with our current form. Our evolution into Homo sapien was not "some small segment of society" eating meat. It was ALL humans of today descending from one common ancestor hominid line Australopithicus four million years ago, and before that, a common ancestor of the Superfamily Homanoidia over 8 million years ago. Refrigerators or the rise of culture and writing came about 580,000 years after we had already evolved into our present form as Homo sapiens (another in a line of omnivores) (due to dietary food stress pressures) into Homo sapiens so they had nothing to do with our form.
But even archeological sites dating just 30,000 years to 70,000 years ago (the limit of PCR) are replete with piles of animal bones, so there's no question they were in fact Omnivores. Note: I support the Vegan transition for everybody, but why squander your credibility with outlandish re-writes of known human history?
A scholarly text, is the 2009 Harvard: "Evolution The First Four Billion Years" by Ruse & Travis and dozens of leading researcher in the fields of Biology, Anthropology, Genealogy, etc.
It will cure your "Cultural Myth" misconception.
Best Regards,
TJ
"All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent." - Thomas Jefferson
"Our evolution into Homo sapien was not "some small segment of society" eating meat."
That is the point I made. I am sorry that you missed it... clearly any small group, engaging in aberrant behaviors, is not going to affect the genetic expressions of a much larger group.
"Refrigerators or the rise of culture and writing came about 580,000 years after we had already evolved into our present form as Homo sapiens"
That is also my point. But, we remained herbivores of the type, frugivore, as we do today.
As one anthropologist stated, we were frugivores for 60 million years, a few thousand years of eating meat has not altered our anatomy and physiology as can clearly be understood by the study of it.
So, we are not speaking of socially proscribed behaviors (regardless of whether or not those behaviors have been indulged by some for an extended period) but rather of biological design.
I sincerely hope you will review the links I have supplied. I am certain that if you do so with an open mind, you will see that our culture is rife with disinformation and your current thinking is severely impacted by it.
I meant no disrespect, nor do I now.
My appologies tellthetruth,
When you first claimed emphatically that our present day classification as herbivores, it flew in the face of how hundreds of old world monkey species (including us) live out their lives today.
I see what you are suggesting now: that in our arboreal linage, we obtained the traits of Frugivores (long intestine, plant chewing molars etc).
Yes, I agree with you and this reasoning. But I would caution you on using the term "disinformation" regarding Omnivores.
dis·in·for·ma·tion
n.
1. Deliberately misleading information announced publicly or leaked by a government or especially by an intelligence agency in order to influence public opinion or the government in another nation:
A scientific theory, e.g. "Homo Sapiens Omnivore anatomy", say, that is disproved (in favor of your favored theory of Frugivore anatomy), is not disinformation. It is the natural process of scientific validation. Whether we like it or not, our gut is capable of permitting us to function as Omnivores and reproduce before it kills us (in the form of cardiovascular disease and colon cancer.) I believe you are correct when you say that certain characteristics of our present day anatomy hail from a frugivore past.
I thought you were taking a hard-line vegan extremist position that Australopithecus (four million years old) was not a meat eater, when most scholars believe he was. His robust dead-end descendants who were believed to be mostly vegetarian (like Paranthropus) died out, while his more Gracile Homo habilus and Homo erectus descendants survived possibly due to food pressures and being able to adapt to lessor and more varied food volume and type. But all of them hailed from arboreal (tree-dwelling) linage earlier, which means close proximity to birds and eggs and small mammals which most primates today avail themselves of in moderation.
The lesson for all of us is clear: if we want individual longevity we will swear off primary, habitual meat consumption. If we desire to delay an extinction event we will not permit bovine production as it significantly adds to greenhouse gases.
Again my apology for misunderstanding what you were saying; and I believe that you are quite possibly right. I very much enjoyed the banter.
Cheers,
TJ
"All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent." - Thomas Jefferson
Mills is a 'he' and not a 'she'. Also, he is a medical doctor who graduated from Stanford.
I too doubt that he has an extensive background in anthropology, but I think his credentials in biology, including anatomy and physiology, are sound.
Anyway, here he is, if you would like to get to know him better:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rFROlwe-m3Y
I have lived and traveled through many so-called third world countries. What I find most striking is the lack of access most people in these countries must tolerate to basic requirements for food security, such as a plot of land upon which to plant a garden, seeds, water, etc.
But, the facts are, these resources are amply available, they just aren't available to the starving multitudes. It is my conclusion that starvation and hunger is more about 'designed outcomes' than about overpopulation.
One group, FoodFirst.org, has put together a very good summary of this state called, 'The Twelve Myths of Hunger'. You can read it here: http://www.foodfirst.org/en/publications/backgrounders?page=1
In sum, the hunger crisis has been with us for a very long time. Many people went hungry thousands of years ago as well, not because of overpopulation but rather because access to resources (including distribution of production) was controlled, and despoiled by a power hungry elite.
For great insight into solutions to this problem watch the new movie "Fresh", and read Lierre Keith's new book "the Vegetarian Myth" which is really about the extreme dangers of factory farming and the monocrops of big agribusiness, what it does to our topsoil, ecosystems, health, and our capacity to sustain ourselves -- and how to correct that, along with all the other needed cultural changes.
She states "this book is an effort to honor our deepest longing for a just world".
Also, a fabulous, passionate talk by Lierre is available from KPFA.org. Let's spread the word.
We have people in this country that are against birth control and family planning, so how could we expect less developed ones to do better if we cannot? Also, the last administration was pro-life, then pro-starve, so that did not help much.
We have people in this country that are against birth control and family planning, so how could we expect less developed ones to do better if we cannot? Also, the last administration was pro-life, then pro-starve, so that did not help much.
Exactly drosera,
Malthus taught us that the size of a population is directly governed by available food supply. Ergo, famine is a natural state of any huge population when the supply fluctuates.
We've got to quit feeding the problem, no matter how callous and cruel it is. Evolution is still in the driver's seat and we will all go extinct if we can't face the problem like detached dispassionate scientists. The third world is indeed causing one third of the global carbon footprint. They no longer can afford LP gas for cooking and have switched to dirty Charcoal, which takes days of burning a tree in the forest to produce. No tree on any island is safe anymore.
If we can't acknowledge China's success in controlling population with the One-Child policy, then we deserve to go extinct.
TJ
"All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent." - Thomas Jefferson"
I'm glad to see people at last pointing out the connection between population and food supply - or lack thereof. A pity the same ideas are not being pushed through in places where it could make a difference. One child per family for three or four generations would solve so many of the resource and environmental problems that face us. But to do what is necessary we need to empower women and give them an opportunity to gain an effective education.
The population has grown unnaturally high due to the brief moment in history that is the oil age. Oil has made it possible and now that oil is getting scarcer and harder to access (i.e. more expensive- meaning the economy will collapse), the population will fall along with it, back down to the sustainable level of about 1 billion. Since we were very clever but not very wise in our use of this limited resource, this is going to be a terrible period of many, many deaths. The poor, as always, will suffer most, and most will die of starvation and lack of water.
There are those who saw this coming but people didn't want to hear it, and business/industry/media certainly didn't want people to know either. Idiotic entertainment and the endless quest for more stuff occupied us. Now we pay the price- the poor with their lives, the rich with their souls.
If only some politicians didn't think that Climate Change is some kind of hoax.
drosera, your view is very narrow. The problem is not THEM. It is US. Research shows that people in third world countries have the smallest carbon footprint in the world. Stop polluting and reproducing. The rest of us on the planet would greatly appreciate it.
Your comment about America's carbon footprint is true, but that doesn't change the fact that a large family size means more food must be produced to feed the children. Although we do consume more than the rest of the world per capita, we do control our fertility.
When poor countries must feed a large population they end up farming in areas that should be left alone, irrigating marginal land, thereby wasting water and impoverishing the soil, destroying forests for firewood, grazing animals in areas that are prone to erosion, and more. These activities, while not counted as consumption, nevertheless promote global climate change in a different way. Photosynthesis, after all, is the only way to take carbon dioxide from the air, and by contaminating the soil and destroying forests, it is reduced over wide areas of the planet. Of course, the logging of the great forests in some of these "poor" lands has to be included, too. You cannot let developing countries off the hook just because they buy less stuff than we do.
"You cannot let developing countries off the hook" - laughable that anyone would consider them being let off, since they are enduring the brunt of the effects. Changes will be made either through cooperation and planning, or through cause and effect - and all indications are the poor in the third world countries are and will be the losers.
Funny how analysis of food shortages never addresses population control. It's always about producing more food through agricultural inputs--increased irrigation, fertilizer, roads--and never about reducing demand through diet changes, birth control, and reduction of waste. Analysts need to stop shying away from admitting the truth: There will always be food shortages as long as people insist on having families bigger than they can feed.