Food production over time

[gwynedd1]

Re: Food production over time

Thanks, I will dig out my old book and give a few a try

What book is that, if you don't mind my asking. I would have never believed it myself a few years ago. I shudder to think how much purslane I ripped out. Its like a magnificent relish when pickled.

This is a Canadian thistle quiche, again probably one of the most noxious of weeds. Yet when its young and under a foot in spring, boiling and putting it in a food processor disarms the thorns and is the tastiest green I think I have had. I can eat it on its own with salt. As a soup, incredible. You can't buy it that good.

Hated and despised weeds in this case, unmatched in the invasive nastiness makes a decent horse radish root substitute in early spring, a serviceable pot herb and a magnificent pesto. I think it has one of the highest nutritional profiles of any plant.

http://www.kingcounty.gov/environmen...c-mustard.aspx


http://farm7.staticflickr.com/6184/6...6b3fe4d2b3.jpg

Even more fun is to of course make the quiche crust from acorn flour which is what was used above.

Acorn is calories that take a little work. Like I said, calories are where nature is stingiest. These are cold leached products like flour, fine starch that works like corn starch or rice flour and acorn jelly. So indeed its possible, but I have to give calorie count to the industrial food supply. Thats closer to a hobby; but the greens from the stand point of nutrition, its 5 minutes and much quicker than a trip to the store. Its smart shopping, not a hobby. So if all you can afford is mac and powdered cheese, all you need is the calories anyway because the nutrition is everywhere.


http://farm7.staticflickr.com/6034/6...8dd06669e8.jpg

Can't find a salad in spring? You ain't lookin because there is probably minors lettuce, chickweed or violets on the ground too.


http://www.cirrusimage.com/Trees/Lin...ricana_900.jpg

[jiimbergin]

Re: Food production over time

What book is that, if you don't mind my asking. I would have never believed it myself a few years ago. I shudder to think how much purslane I ripped out. Its like a magnificent relish when pickled.

I think it was simply called "Wild Edible Plants", but it was not where I expected it to be. I will keep looking, but it might have been given away at some point.

[doom&gloom]

Re: Food production over time

The graphs here are interesting: they would seem to indicate that there is neither a food shortage, nor was the Green Revolution an event but rather a process.

http://rogerpielkejr.blogspot.com/20...od-supply.html

Interestingly the FAO often talks about food shortages. So which is it really?

I've been in the farming biz now for three years. First year I got an 8% return, 2nd year I let the land lay fallow, this year I already have a 9+% return off my first crop, and a second is in the ground to come out in December. By the time the year is out I expect a roughly 13-16% return. If I get to 16%, I will have avged 8% a year, much betterr than many other investments.

I wonder how this seems to work out so well when food is supposedly so plentiful?

[c1ue]

Re: Food production over time

Interestingly the FAO often talks about food shortages. So which is it really?

I've been in the farming biz now for three years. First year I got an 8% return, 2nd year I let the land lay fallow, this year I already have a 9+% return off my first crop, and a second is in the ground to come out in December. By the time the year is out I expect a roughly 13-16% return. If I get to 16%, I will have avged 8% a year, much betterr than many other investments.

I wonder how this seems to work out so well when food is supposedly so plentiful?

I'd suggest actually reading the article.

It notes that the supply of food isn't the issue, but clearly affordability and distribution are.

[doom&gloom]

Re: Food production over time

I'd suggest actually reading the article.

It notes that the supply of food isn't the issue, but clearly affordability and distribution are.

under supply and demand, we should ot have such unafforable food. basic economics.

[c1ue]

Re: Food production over time

under supply and demand, we should ot have such unafforable food. basic economics.

Unfortunately 'supply and demand', as you refer to it, is equally as realistic as the 'efficient markets' hypothesis - because supply and demand as a generic economy theory assumes efficient fulfillment of all demand by all supply. In the real world this doesn't exist and is where the affordability and distribution aspect comes into play.

A simplistic example: you have enough food in grains for 10 people. 1 person, however, is willing to pay 10 times more for a big steak rather than eat pasta and bread.

Voila! 8 starving people. (8 pounds of grain = 1 pound of steak)

[doom&gloom]

Re: Food production over time

Unfortunately 'supply and demand', as you refer to it, is equally as realistic as the 'efficient markets' hypothesis - because supply and demand as a generic economy theory assumes efficient fulfillment of all demand by all supply. In the real world this doesn't exist and is where the affordability and distribution aspect comes into play.

A simplistic example: you have enough food in grains for 10 people. 1 person, however, is willing to pay 10 times more for a big steak rather than eat pasta and bread.

Voila! 8 starving people. (8 pounds of grain = 1 pound of steak)

ahhh... so you are coming around to my thesis that feeding pigs grains to make pork has an impact on available food supply. Nice example, but it sure took ya a while!

PS. Wheat (my current crop) is at $9+/bu now. I sold my last wheat crop two decembers ago at LESS than that, and it was in December at the time. Gonna be a good year for me, though at the expense of US farmers.

[raja]

Re: Food production over time

The graphs here are interesting: they would seem to indicate that there is neither a food shortage, nor was the Green Revolution an event but rather a process.

http://rogerpielkejr.blogspot.com/20...od-supply.html

Modern agriculture is dependent on oil.
Peak oil will change these graphs . . . .

[BadJuju]

Re: Food production over time

Modern agriculture is dependent on oil.
Peak oil will change these graphs . . . .

I was very, very concerned about food production in the post cheap oil world until I learned about how much grain we feed to animals or for non-food purposes. Here is study from 1997 by Cornell University. I love meat as much as the next person, but I am more than willing to switch my diet to a less intensive one. Even a meat-based diet that focuses on less energy intensive methods, like chicken, can be had.

http://www.news.cornell.edu/releases...stock.hrs.html

"More than half the U.S. grain and nearly 40 percent of world grain is being fed to livestock rather than being consumed directly by humans."

"On average, animal protein production in the U.S. requires 28 kilocalories (kcal) for every kcal of protein produced for human consumption. Beef and lamb are the most costly, in terms of fossil fuel energy input to protein output at 54:1 and 50:1, respectively. Turkey and chicken meat production are the most efficient (13:1 and 4:1, respectively). Grain production, on average, requires 3.3 kcal of fossil fuel for every kcal of protein produced."

"Every kilogram of beef produced takes 100,000 liters of water. Some 900 liters of water go into producing a kilogram of wheat. Potatoes are even less "thirsty," at 500 liters per kilogram."

[gwynedd1]

Re: Food production over time

I was very, very concerned about food production in the post cheap oil world until I learned about how much grain we feed to animals or for non-food purposes. Here is study from 1997 by Cornell University. I love meat as much as the next person, but I am more than willing to switch my diet to a less intensive one. Even a meat-based diet that focuses on less energy intensive methods, like chicken, can be had.

http://www.news.cornell.edu/releases...stock.hrs.html

"More than half the U.S. grain and nearly 40 percent of world grain is being fed to livestock rather than being consumed directly by humans."

"On average, animal protein production in the U.S. requires 28 kilocalories (kcal) for every kcal of protein produced for human consumption. Beef and lamb are the most costly, in terms of fossil fuel energy input to protein output at 54:1 and 50:1, respectively. Turkey and chicken meat production are the most efficient (13:1 and 4:1, respectively). Grain production, on average, requires 3.3 kcal of fossil fuel for every kcal of protein produced."

"Every kilogram of beef produced takes 100,000 liters of water. Some 900 liters of water go into producing a kilogram of wheat. Potatoes are even less "thirsty," at 500 liters per kilogram."

That is not so much my concern as there is no issue with raw output. The problem is the trajectory of factory farming where everyone uses the same grain to feed the same breed of live stock. You can't make biological systems into a factory for long. Life took the path of biodiversity and sex for a reason. Just consider how absurd the human sex drive is if there was no reason to keep biodiversity. What an awful amount of trouble it is. The reason why we lose our minds is because we are in a biological arms race and asexual crops like bananas, and Monsanto mono-cultures will have, and have already had, a day of reckoning. Planting huge mono cultures will result in large scale blights.

What we should be doing is planting things here and there, broken up by something else. A few trees of one type in the park and another in someone's yard has resistance to this sort of thing yet it is precisely this that a factory aims to avoid for scale. I wonder if I will ever taste a Gros Michel banana?

Also keep in mind that the model you are using for grain feed to cattle is vegan propaganda. Ruminants don't eat grains. They are fattened up by them more or less as a side effect of their poor health because I believe they would soon die if we did not kill them on such a diet. In scrub lands you don't grow grain crops. The most efficient thing to do is to live off ruminants for meat and milk in dry marginal lands. That turns on its head the vegan formula of grains grown in arable land and fed to cattle. And if you did grow grain for human consumption, how are you going to move it with a favorable energy conversion? The best long term use of the high plains is buffalo who can live efficiency on dry native short grass prairie. That isn't obvious yet until we drain the aquifers.

[c1ue]

Re: Food production over time

ahhh... so you are coming around to my thesis that feeding pigs grains to make pork has an impact on available food supply.

I've never said that meat - especially modern meat which is raised on grains - doesn't carry a higher agricultural footprint.

What I've said is, the impact on supply from people eating meat is far from clear as the smoking gun for price increases. The FAOSTAT data shown in the original article in this thread says the same thing: supply isn't the problem.

I was very, very concerned about food production in the post cheap oil world until I learned about how much grain we feed to animals or for non-food purposes. Here is study from 1997 by Cornell University. I love meat as much as the next person, but I am more than willing to switch my diet to a less intensive one. Even a meat-based diet that focuses on less energy intensive methods, like chicken, can be had.

What about range meat? Is that ok?

What about non-organic?

Just curious.

[lakedaemonian]

Re: Food production over time

I was very, very concerned about food production in the post cheap oil world until I learned about how much grain we feed to animals or for non-food purposes. Here is study from 1997 by Cornell University. I love meat as much as the next person, but I am more than willing to switch my diet to a less intensive one. Even a meat-based diet that focuses on less energy intensive methods, like chicken, can be had.

http://www.news.cornell.edu/releases...stock.hrs.html

"More than half the U.S. grain and nearly 40 percent of world grain is being fed to livestock rather than being consumed directly by humans."

"On average, animal protein production in the U.S. requires 28 kilocalories (kcal) for every kcal of protein produced for human consumption. Beef and lamb are the most costly, in terms of fossil fuel energy input to protein output at 54:1 and 50:1, respectively. Turkey and chicken meat production are the most efficient (13:1 and 4:1, respectively). Grain production, on average, requires 3.3 kcal of fossil fuel for every kcal of protein produced."

"Every kilogram of beef produced takes 100,000 liters of water. Some 900 liters of water go into producing a kilogram of wheat. Potatoes are even less "thirsty," at 500 liters per kilogram."

That's one of the reasons why I invested in pasture based dairy farming with virtually unlimited free water here in NZ.

The way I saw it leading up to the oil spike a number of year ago was that dairy farming in the US is a bit like dairy farming in a WalMart parking lot pouring crude oil down the cows throats.

Grain and dairy prices don't mirror energy prices, but it certainly feels like they echo them a bit.

[doom&gloom]

Re: Food production over time

That's one of the reasons why I invested in pasture based dairy farming with virtually unlimited free water here in NZ.

The way I saw it leading up to the oil spike a number of year ago was that dairy farming in the US is a bit like dairy farming in a WalMart parking lot pouring crude oil down the cows throats.

Grain and dairy prices don't mirror energy prices, but it certainly feels like they echo them a bit.

I thought you sold out. Are you back in again? How much is a hectare of good pasture land down under?

[doom&gloom]

Re: Food production over time

supply of what? meat? or grains that get fed to meat? because we all know the more grains fed to create meat poducts, the les grains for everyone and everything else.

[raja]

Re: Food production over time

I was very, very concerned about food production in the post cheap oil world until I learned about how much grain we feed to animals or for non-food purposes. Here is study from 1997 by Cornell University. I love meat as much as the next person, but I am more than willing to switch my diet to a less intensive one. Even a meat-based diet that focuses on less energy intensive methods, like chicken, can be had.

Even if grain is not fed to animals, but consumed by humans, Peak Oil will have a significant impact.
For grain production in modern agriculture, you need huge imputs of oil: diesel fuel for machines planting, harvesting, applying fertilizers, applying pesticides, etc. Plus the fertilizers and pesticides require petroleum in their production.

I do not have the statistics to adequately debate whether or not there will be enough food for all humans on the planet to eat, but I do believe we're going to get a lot poorer.