World food shortage

[moXJO]

Starting to hear about this a fair bit now.People starving, and queing for food rations due to the price of food going up so much in various countries.Just interested in what other people think the ramifications may be if this continues on.

 

[Tukker]

Starting to hear about this a fair bit now.People starving, and queing for food rations due to the price of food going up so much in various countries.Just interested in what other people think the ramifications may be if this continues on.

Higher prices -> more opportunities to make profit -> more production

I think its a phase, things balance out eventually.

 

[Trembling Hand]

Higher prices -> more opportunities to make profit -> more production

I think its a phase, things balance out eventually.

What like Oil??

 

[Tukker]

What like Oil??

lol touche

 

[The Once-ler]

I think its a phase, things balance out eventually.

Could be just a phase.

But I think,

'This time it's different'
or
'It's a new paradign shift' Remember these from the tech boom.



LOL. Yep, I'm serious.

Oil is never going to be cheap again, so neither is food. It's pretty obvious. Oil is a major ingredient of food by the time it gets to the supermarket shelf.

Global warming.
Gains from the green revolution are slowing as production is now fully utilised
Falling water aquifers.
Drying up rivers.

Over population.
The worlds population is headed for 9 billion from 6.5, and nothing much can slow that down. It's like an overloaded semi trailer going down hill with no brakes.

Biofuel production.


This is going to be a disaster for the worlds poor.
Genocide, wars in Africa. Much greater terrorist activity in the Middle East.

The only good thing that can happen is that people will wake up to themselves and drop the number of kids they are having, as if they don't do it, nature will fix the problem anyway. But it's too late for Africa and the Middle East. The middle Easts food production is mainly from ancient non replacing water aquifers that are falling, and Africa is just a basket case. Farmers growing anything gets it stollen or destoyed anyway. Plus Africa will get the hardest hit from global warming. Build a wall around the place I say.

This will be a good thing for the food producing exporting nations. Australia, New Zealand, US, Canada, Brazil, Argentina, Russia. Parts of Europe.

Probably the only places you would want to live for the next century.

 

[robert toms]

Thais are being asked to eat less rice....their dominant staple.
I thought that they were an exporter ...probably are but prices are better out of the country,
Egypt has put a tariff on the export of grain...world prices are resulting on local shortages.
As long as we have a world trade system that includes food staples it looks like as we will have ongoing problems with supply and production of suitable food.
I always had to laugh when Australia wanted Japan to open up its local market to Australian rice....and beggar their own farmers.
Was that for real !
On both counts....a water-deprived southern Australia growing rice!!!!!!

 

[questionall_42]

Higher prices -> more opportunities to make profit -> more production.

I take it that people starving is OK if we make profits? Capitalism gone too far?

Go Vegan (or at least vegetarian)

 

[Aussiejeff]

....The only good thing that can happen is that people will wake up to themselves and drop the number of kids they are having, as if they don't do it, nature will fix the problem anyway...

Hmmm. Not so sure about that philosophy. I suspect if the quality and average life expectancy for the citizens of a country start heading south at a significant rate, the opposite effect might occur. Check this link...

http://www.indexmundi.com/g/r.aspx?c=as&v=25

Australia's birthrate of 12.02 per 1,000 at the time of compilation was 165th in the world. Then check out the top 10 with birthrates all over 40 per 1,000!! ALL are almost without exception very poor African countries, with some of the worst living conditions and lowest life expectancies on the planet. I suspect when populations are in a desperate state, they will actually breed MORE as the death rate rises.

In fact, if our own conditions today were to head back towards what they were when our convict forebears first set up the Colony in Oz, I would almost guarantee that birthrates would go up significantly (the Bureau of Stats shows it WAS over 40 per 1,000 back in the 1800's when child death rates were very high and life expectancy was low - sound familiar?).

It's a case of survival of the fittest - having many children so if you are really lucky, a few might survive to adulthood to hopefully carry on the family line. If you don't have a football team sized number of births, the chances of continuing the family line are significantly reduced. Not a happy picture of the future to contemplate, eh? But that's they way it goes.


AJ

 

[gfresh]

There simply isn't enough rice, wheat and corn being grown for many parts of the world. Being vegetarian really doesn't do much for this process!

I guess if you consider the amount of food and energy required per square meter produced for say cattle and staple food such as wheat or rice you may have a point - but the main problem is in places such as Africa, parts of Asia, where many don't even have the luxury of meat products.

 

[Trembling Hand]

I take it that people starving is OK if we make profits? Capitalism gone too far?

Yeah the Socialist system has never let a wealthy countryman starve

 

[Happy]

1 child policy, with an option to trade your allowance like carbon credits

 

[moXJO]

mmmmm soylent green

 

[Happy]

mmmmm soylent green

Some headhunters might still have memories and give a hand to logistics of procedure

 

[Judd]

I wonder. Zimbabwe was at one time considered the Jewel of Africa. Rich in resources, high education standards, expertise in farm management, sound health care. All for the wrong reasons if you are a purist.

And now? A basket case. So are food shortages, in that particular country at least created with ramifications for the rest of Africa, a result of mismanagement?

There is no way i would know how to run a farm productively or to manage stock, grain or any other produce so if farms or similar were handed to me it would go to Hell in a bread basket within a very short space of time. Is this what has actually happened in the African/Asian regions as opposed to a shortage of food due to a growing population (throw in climate change to keep faith with the believers) with good farm management?

 

[disarray]

There is no way i would know how to run a farm productively or to manage stock, grain or any other produce so if farms or similar were handed to me it would go to Hell in a bread basket within a very short space of time.

yeah but your first plan of action wouldn't be to destroy all the farm equipment and burn everything else down. i second the "wall off africa" motion. i'd also like to see a nice new shiny fleet of fast patrol boats sitting off broome for the forseeable future.

 

[Pager]

So the farm subsidies given by various western governments around the globe are a myth then ?.

How many food mountains do the Europeans currently have ?, over the last few weeks/months the commercial TV networks have been running storeys about cheap food imports into Australia putting Aussies out of work, ruining our agricultural and farming industry's etc ?.

Sad thing is any food shortage in poor country's is down to someone needing to make a $, no pay, no food.

 

[treefrog]

are we alluding to universal socialism here - where the rich supporting the deprived is enforced equally throughout the planet?? - food, population and earnings.
recall a book published after the club of rome did their thing in the early 70's called "limits to growth" I think, where on this basis we all got US$1100 pa and not everyone could have even one kid - suspect with pop growth since and inflation the numbers may still be the same today wealth up but pop up so still $1100 pa each - one of the reasons true socialism never took off in the west I feel
here's a TP "encapsulation" of the club's findings

The second conclusion of the study is that piecemeal approaches to solving the individual problems will not be successful. To demonstrate this point, the authors arbitrarily double their estimates of the resource base and allow the model to trace out an alternative vision based on this new higher level of resources. In this alternative vision the collapse still occurs, but this time it is caused by excessive pollution generated by the increased pace of industrialization permitted by the greater availability of resources. The authors then suggest that if the depletable resource and pollution problems were somehow jointly solved, population would grow unabated and the availability of food would become the binding constraint. In this model the removal of one limit merely causes the system to bump subsequently into another one, usually with more dire consequences

humans are meant to have the highest lintelligence of all animals but even rabbits don't breed in a drought.
maybe we all have to go in a world lottery for a cull of say 50%

 

[numbercruncher]

humans are meant to have the highest lintelligence of all animals but even rabbits don't breed in a drought.
maybe we all have to go in a world lottery for a cull of say 50%

Western nations are going to be fine, we barely even replace ourselves here so dont include us in the cull thanks.

 

[treefrog]

Western nations are going to be fine, we barely even replace ourselves here so dont include us in the cull thanks.

wot - even if we cause the most unfixable problems?

 

[disarray]

such as?