National Geographic, 'The Global Food Crisis'

[stuntcat]

By Joel K. Bourne Jr
It is the simplest, most natural of acts, akin to breathing and walking upright. We sit down at the dinner table, pick up a fork, and take a juicy bite, obliv­ious to the double helping of global ramifications on our plate. Our beef comes from Iowa, fed by Nebraska corn. Our grapes come from Chile, our bananas from Honduras, our olive oil from Sicily, our apple juice—not from Washington State but all the way from China. Modern society has relieved us of the burden of growing, harvesting, even preparing our daily bread, in exchange for the burden of simply paying for it. Only when prices rise do we take notice. And the consequences of our inattention are profound.

http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2009/06/cheap-food/bourne-text


This was forwarded in one of my overpopulation groups, with this message, I don't know who wrote:
Begin forwarded message:
> We don't want to think about limits. But as we approach nine
> billion people on the planet, all clamoring for the same
> opportunities, the same lifestyles, the same hamburgers, we ignore
> them at our risk.
>
> None of the great classical economists saw the industrial
> revolution coming, or the transformation of economies and
> agriculture that it would bring about. The cheap, readily available
> energy contained in coal—and later in other fossil fuels—unleashed
> the greatest increase in food, personal wealth, and people the
> world has ever seen, enabling Earth's population to increase
> sevenfold since Malthus's day. And yet hunger, famine, and
> malnutrition are with us still, just as Malthus said they would be.
>
> "Years ago I was working with a Chinese demographer, " Dyson says.
> "One day he pointed out to me the two Chinese characters above his
> office door that spelled the word 'population. ' You had the
> character for a person and the character for an open mouth. It
> really struck me. Ultimately there has to be a balance between
> population and resources. And this notion that we can continue to
> grow forever, well it's ridiculous."
>
> Perhaps somewhere deep in his crypt in Bath Abbey, Malthus is
> quietly wagging a bony finger and saying, "Told you so."
>
> The full article can be found at:
>
> http://ngm.national geographic. com/2009/ 06/cheap- food/bourne- text
>
> Please consider writing a letter to the National Geographic
> commending them on this special report and their recognition that
> an expanded “green revolution” and the introduction of new hybrid
> grains may not be enough to head off a catastrophic food crisis.
>
> Letters can be sent to:
>
> ngsforum@nationalge ographic. com
>

I'd write and thank them.. maybe. But the story won't get forwarded to anyone who doesn't already know.

[Taverner]

1. And some people here laugh at me when I say we need to reduce the population...

[lapfog_1]

3. Not to worry

It will be reduced. The current predictions have the climate change bringing about a 2 to 4 degree C rise in global average temperature within 25 years. Possibly a 9 degree C rise in 100 years. And we may already be at the tipping point (i.e. if mankind simply vanished tomorrow and no more fossil fuels were burned... we would STILL see much of this predicted result).

Our food supply will not withstand a 4 degree C rise in global average temperature.

The Himalayas are running out of water. The underground wells in places like Punjab (the bread basket of India) are dropping dramatically every year... many farmers there are simply committing suicide because they cannot afford the diesel to run the pumps to irrigate their fields.

Australia is in a permanent drought and has been for well over a decade now.

We will go from a height of 9 Billion to under a billion in the span of the next 3 generations. Maybe 120 years.

[Taverner]

5. Um this is reason not to worry? I hate HATE being right!

I don't want to see a massive die off

I am hoping we can still avert that

[lapfog_1]

6. Damn... I keep forgetting the :sarcasm: thingy... sigh.

Here....

"Not to worry, population reduction is just around the corner" :sarcasm:

[imdjh]

2. Other than bananas and coffee, my food comes from the USA

[GliderGuider]

10. As a matter of interest,

How much of it do you grow or barter for?

[NickB79]

15. Do you think that will insulate you from a global food crisis? NT

[theoldman]

4. Sometime in the not too distant future we will see a total collapse of a country.

Bangladesh comes to mind with their enormous population. Other countries will be unable or unwilling to provide the food to keep them alive. In plain language they are screwing themselves out of house and home. My concern is that India will take us down when they start to starve to death.

[Gregorian]

7. The email doesn't work. It should be [e-mail]

Great article. I'm barely able to endure the stupidity of the human race. In America it is especially egregious. I watch as the idiots just flit around in the cars incessantly. We're using energy so fast I cannot believe it. It's the unconsciousness that I find so disgusting. As if it's all free and easy.

Everyone in this society ought to be required to have an engineering degree. Although a few of my friends with them seem to not have a clue.

And we had it so good. We could have used energy like kings. But then we couldn't stop reproducing. So now we are all forced to use less and less. I call it Life Light.

[stuntcat]

8. shoot, I didn't even try the address..

Maybe they got so much mail they had to shut it down!

People seem to have no idea at all of the reality of the future, 1st-worlders's lives are so easy. And it's gotten this way in a relatively short time.. it's kind of surprising how fast we've accepting all the automation.
I'm disturbed every day by all the things people can ignore. Last Friday 40,000 people starved to death and 40 more species went extinct, but every news network, even the NPR I listened to, covered whatever happened on American Idol :+ this is why I need to just try to laugh I guess.

[Gregorian]

13. All I can say is

Check this out. STUNTCAT! :)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Ou-6A3MKow

[stuntcat]

14. lol thank you!

:hug:

[Dead_Parrot]

9. "The story won't get forwarded to anyone who doesn't already know."

I love the smell of Zeitgeist in the morning.

[GliderGuider]

11. Three weeks ago

I went from being someone who adored steak tartare, blue-rare filet mignon, barbecued salmon, pork tenderloin in three mustard sauce, melt-in-your mouth spareribs, raw oysters on the half shell and a dozen kinds of Eastern European sausage ... to an ovo-lacto-vegetarian, in about ten seconds.

I was walking through a local grocery supermarket, carrying a vacuum pack of four flash-frozen strip loins back to my cart. Suddenly all the noise in the store faded away, and all I could hear was screaming. I stopped in my tracks and heard someone say through the screams, "But you know what's going on! You know all about this! You know better than to do this! Why are you doing this to us? Why are you doing this to me? How can you still do this, when you know what's going on?" Whether that was the voice of all the feedlot animals in the world, or the voice of Pachamama, or the voice of my own conscience made no difference. In that moment it was all of them, and the message cut like a knife to very center of my soul. As the sounds of the store returned, I discovered myself standing in the meat aisle with my face flooded with tears. I dropped the steaks back in the freezer, said a prayer of awareness and repentance, and finished my shopping in the produce section.

I'm aware of the yawning gaps of logic in my position. I know that humans are omnivores, and I believe that meat is not harmful to our health. I know that monocrop cultivation of grains and vegetables is about as ecologically harmful as feedlot meat production. None of that is a factor in this decision. Because I value all non-human life I feel compelled to take a stand, and that stand begins with refusing to participate in the soul-less devastation we have inflicted on non-human creatures in our heedless quest for meat.

Daniel Quinn makes the point that we are all made entirely out of food. And everyone knows the truism, "You are what you eat." It's perhaps best not to examine the implications of that phrase too closely, lest you similarly become a bittersweet victim of Blessed Unrest.

I'm an ex-smoker who has never cast aspersions on smokers. I know how trapped they are by a deadly combination of culture and physiology. I hope I will be able to hold a similar compassion for those who don't share my personal outlook on the cultivation of living creatures for consumption.

Namaste
Bodhisantra (formerly Paul Chefurka, aka GliderGuider)

[excess_3]

12. does the US 'owe' food to the rest of the world? . n/t