>the system of plant variety and hybrid development, fertilization, pest management, and mechanization with related techniques
You're correct, but there turned out to be second order effects that were not accounted for because we didn't know that much about it.
For example, chemical fertilization in the Midwest turns out to all flow into the watershed and dump out into the Gulf via the Mississippi. Which creates a dead zone for marine life. Which translates all the way down that food chain. It's a real problem. So much so that I'm surprised that the Gulf States haven't tried to sue the Midwest States for economic damages.
Any "feed the world" solution really has to deal with the problem of "exactly how much of the world do we actually need." It sounds grim, and it is, but if the ecological problem is real and serious, it's a question that has to be dealt with.
>You're correct, but there turned out to be second order effects that were not accounted for because we didn't know that much about it.
Everything does. People fall into the pattern of "doing things this way is bad for all of these bad reasons" and "we should do things this other way for all these good reasons" failing to recognize the full spectrum of effects of various plans and pretending that their hopeful solution for the future won't itself have consequences too. It's an optimization problem that has been turned into a polarizing morality problem which doesn't lend itself to solutions (largely because most of the moralizers have only very superficial knowledge of the issues).
>For example, chemical fertilization in the Midwest turns out to all flow into the watershed and dump out into the Gulf via the Mississippi. Which creates a dead zone for marine life. Which translates all the way down that food chain. It's a real problem. So much so that I'm surprised that the Gulf States haven't tried to sue the Midwest States for economic damages.
I wonder how much extra carbon could be fixed in the Gulf of Mexico if we left ag runoff as it is and put enormous aquarium bubblers at the bottom of the ocean around the Mississippi delta.
>Any "feed the world" solution really has to deal with the problem of "exactly how much of the world do we actually need." It sounds grim, and it is, but if the ecological problem is real and serious, it's a question that has to be dealt with.
It really doesn't. Unless you're willing to advocate for suicide or genocide, it's not a problem that food policy needs to be concerned with. People feel resource constrained in other ways and nearly all advanced economies have seen birth rates fall to below replacement rate. Overpopulation is the hot button issue of decades past and the dire predictions aren't coming to pass as growth rates seem to be doing a fine job limiting themselves.
>I wonder how much extra carbon could be fixed in the Gulf of Mexico if we left ag runoff as it is and put enormous aquarium bubblers at the bottom of the ocean around the Mississippi delta
Who knows? I rather suspect that if you optimize for one metric--fixing carbon--you will compound the second order effects.
>It really doesn't. Unless you're willing to advocate for suicide or genocide, it's not a problem that food policy needs to be concerned with
I think it does need to be addressed. Nobody wants to advocate for genocide, and mass suicide is a hard sell, but if we stipulate that the Earth can only support X number of humans--an argument I'm not making in particular, but it has been made both now and in the past--you have to ask who gets to keep eating. While Ehrlich and others have made predictions that didn't pan out, they will eventually come true if the population continues to grow. Granted, that may be a 27th Century problem, but it may be a current-Century problem. We simply don't know.
We have papered over the population growth issue pretty well so far. Technology does a good job of that. But again, it has come with the second order effects of overall carbon output. Massive climate disruption would do a pretty good job of selecting for only those people who can keep ahead of the problem technologically, which is the same thing as genocide, but sounds less gruesome I suppose.
The global population is predicted to peak in the middle of this century as a natural result of development leading to declining birth rates. We don’t seem to have to do anything or motivate anyone to change because it is already happening and won’t exceed the food capacity of current practices before the peak.
It's not "we expect this change" it's "we expect this trend to continue".
Plenty of countries are below replacement birth rates already, it is a trend that goes along with economic development and happens in a few generations. Some US states have lost population in the last couple of years for the first time ever.
You're correct, but there turned out to be second order effects that were not accounted for because we didn't know that much about it.
For example, chemical fertilization in the Midwest turns out to all flow into the watershed and dump out into the Gulf via the Mississippi. Which creates a dead zone for marine life. Which translates all the way down that food chain. It's a real problem. So much so that I'm surprised that the Gulf States haven't tried to sue the Midwest States for economic damages.
Any "feed the world" solution really has to deal with the problem of "exactly how much of the world do we actually need." It sounds grim, and it is, but if the ecological problem is real and serious, it's a question that has to be dealt with.