Is it necessarily a good thing to feed everyone?

@Kolyo,

Quote:

Of course, it isn't entirely as simple as I'm making it out to be. In general, however, countries with better social safety nets and more empowered women had lower fertility rates.

Kolyo, there is a serious danger in presenting a country such as the USA as a homogenous population with a single birthrate evenly distributed through its population. This country, as you know, has a mix of liberals and conservatives, religious and not, and various ethnicities. In general, religious and conservative populations within the USA have dramatically higher birth rates. For example, while Jewish populations in New York have been established for generations, the birth rate among conservative Jews continues to be very substantially higher than the US average. Quoting New York Jewish Week:

"According to the new UJA-Federation of New York survey, 'Jewish Community Study of New York: 2011,' Orthodox Jews, because of their high birthrate, now make up nearly one-third of the Jewish community of the five boroughs, Long Island and Westchester and a whopping 64 percent of its children. That growth helped to increase the Jewish population here by 9 percent over the last decade, to 1.54 million."

http://www.thejewishweek.com/news/new-york-news/sweeping-changes-jewry-seen-ny-population-survey

Similar dynamics can be seen among Mormons, Amish, Hispanics, Muslims, and many other US sub-populations.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/aug/9/amish-enjoy-unexpected-boom-in-numbers/?page=all
Thus the dynamics in a mixed population such as the USA suggest that the most liberal families with 1 or fewer children who aggressively embrace family planning measures will simply die off while the conservative families become an ever larger proportion of the population in turn soon INCREASING the overall national rate of population growth once the declining liberal population disappears.

1 Reply

@maxdancona,

maxdancona wrote:

I don't know what you mean by safety net.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_safety_net

For example, Ireland and Germany offer universal health care while the US and Mali don't.

Quote:

A fertility rate of under 2 means that the population is decreasing. Countries with very low fertility rates and no immigration are having problems. If you have too many retirees for the number of people of working age, it causes economic problems.

Well, okay, I wasn't making the normative statement that a lower fertility rate was a "good" thing. I was making the positive statement that women's lib and assurance that the government will pick up the tab late in life lead to a lower fertility rate.

But while I'm at it, let me make a normative statement: I think a fertility rate of 1.7 would be absolutely perfect. There are too many people in the world as it is. I'm against heavy-handed population controls, but if numbers fall naturally, why fight it? (Banana Breath -- I'll address your worries about non-homogeneity in my next reply.)

Our honest-to-god labor productivity is EXPLODING right now due to automation. (That's not true according to traditional measures of the value of our production, but traditional measures undervalue the advances in the quality of our technological goods and services.) The only reason why "too many retirees" are a problem has to do with an unwillingness of the working age population to share with the retirees. Those of working-age are going to be richer because of the exploding production of things of value, despite having to share, but they don't want to share. Still, this isn't that big a socio-political problem, since the excess numbers in the retiree population will be able to outvote the working population because of superior numbers, thus making sure at the ballot box that they continue to get their state pensions.

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@Banana Breath,

Banana Breath wrote:

Thus the dynamics in a mixed population such as the USA suggest that the most liberal families with 1 or fewer children who aggressively embrace family planning measures will simply die off while the conservative families become an ever larger proportion of the population in turn soon INCREASING the overall national rate of population growth once the declining liberal population disappears.

I agree that this is BIG problem. I was telling my parents about it years ago. "Stop at 2" is a self-defeating philosophy. That's all there is to it. Self-interested greedos will simply "outbreed" generous, altruistic, civic-minded people.

Good luck making "stop at 2" mandatory, though. It ain't gonna happen...

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@Kolyo,

Quote:

That's all there is to it. Self-interested greedos will simply "outbreed" generous, altruistic, civic-minded people.

AKA the stupid will outbreed the smart, thus weakening the gene pool.

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@Kolyo,

Kolyo wrote:

Still, this isn't that big a socio-political problem, since the excess numbers in the retiree population will be able to outvote the working population because of superior numbers, thus making sure at the ballot box that they continue to get their state pensions.

We will always be able to out vote them, but every year, there are more of us and fewer people working to support us. I wonder how long this can be sustained.

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@Kolyo,

Quote:

Good luck making "stop at 2" mandatory, though. It ain't gonna happen...

It certainly won't happen overnight, especially not in a place like the USA, however it might well happen in China initially, and the trigger point would likely be water. If you read about the water situation in China, you'll likely be aghast. Beijing has run out of water. They've tapped out all river outflows so there isn't anything running into the sea, and they're still short. They've had to divert water from distant parts of the country and are sucking lakes dry. When people get thirsty enough, you'd be surprised what they'd be willing to give up. "Hey thirsty guy, would you like 1000 gallons of water in exchange for having this free little operation?"
http://qz.com/166235/chinas-water-shortage-is-so-bad-it-could-turn-out-the-lights/

The USA is some decades behind China in terms of both population and water shortages, but the writing is on the wall. When the USA gets to that point, when the dustbowl returns to the midwest and the last California water well runs dry, let me know if you still think people wouldn't be willing to rethink some assumptions.

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Not if you're a Republican.

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@Banana Breath,

Ah-hahahahahahahahahaha . . .

California may be left suckin' the hind tittie due to water shortages, but that's only regional. The Great Lakes contain more than 20% of the planet's surface fresh water. Do you just make your **** up as you go along?

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@Setanta,

Ha ha ha, Setanta, you win the head-in-the-sand award for today! While the great lakes are arguably the world's greatest treasure, how many hundreds of thousands of years do you think it would take to refill them if they were drained to irrigate farms? Want to find out?

This is (or was) China's largest freshwater lake, Poyang.

This is Lake Mead in California, the largest reservoir in the USA, which reached a record low volume July 10, 2014. "A 2008 paper in Water Resources Research states that at current usage allocation and projected climate trends, there is a 50% chance that live storage in lakes Mead and Powell will be gone by 2021, and that the reservoir could drop below minimum power pool elevation of 1,050 feet (320 m) as early as 2017"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Mead

This is the Aral Sea, in Kazakhstan-Uzbekistan, once one of the four largest lakes in the world. It dried up almost completely between 1989 and 2014.

The bottom line: "Although the total volume of water in the Great Lakes seems immense, we recognize that these waters are essentially a non-renewable resource which must be carefully managed so that their economic, ecological and social benefits can be sustained for future generations"
-New York State Department of Environmental Conservation
http://www.dec.ny.gov/lands/25593.html

Also, diversion of Great Lake waters has been prohibited by an act of Congress signed into law in 2008, and international treaties. Even a weenie like George W. Bush, who signed the bill, isn't as blind to these realities as you are.
http://www.greatlakes.org/page.aspx?pid=526

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All I can say is that (on this thread) Max, you're my hero.

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Quote:

The world produces enough food to feed everyone. World agriculture produces 17 percent more calories per person today than it did 30 years ago, despite a 70 percent population increase. This is enough to provide everyone in the world with at least 2,720 kilocalories (kcal) per person per day according to the most recent estimate that we could find (FAO 2002, p.9). The principal problem is that many people in the world do not have sufficient land to grow, or income to purchase, enough food

Source
http://www.worldhunger.org/articles/Learn/world%20hunger%20facts%202002.htm

The problem isn't lack of food. The only thing the we lack is the political and social will to see the world fed.

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I regularly observe that those who don't think it's important to feed everyone are never in danger of going hungry themselves.

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@Banana Breath,

At no time did i suggest that the Great Lakes should be drained in order to irrigate farms for some fat-cat capitalist whose only interest is his personal profit. The Great Lakes assure that we (i.e., the United States and Canada) have a continuing, reliable source of drinking water. Don't make sh*t up and then attempt to ascribe it to me. That's a straw man fallacy.

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@Banana Breath,

The world does not love, nor want to be like, a holy, humble and spiritual person. Oh, their consciences tell them such a life is right and they are even constrained to speak well of a true Christian; yes, they will even put confidence in a devout Christian instead of one of their own.

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@Setanta,

Quote:

At no time did i suggest that the Great Lakes should be drained in order to irrigate farms for some fat-cat capitalist whose only interest is his personal profit. The Great Lakes assure that we (i.e., the United States and Canada) have a continuing, reliable source of drinking water. Don't make sh*t up and then attempt to ascribe it to me. That's a straw man fallacy.

On the contrary, you are the one who twists things to your own convenience. What you DID indeed say, it's on the record above is that:

Quote:

The best way to deal with this is to assure that everyone has enough to eat, clean drinking water, shelter and retirement security. As has been seen in the industrial world, fertility rates will drop through the floor.

So in your opinion, minus commodity traders, everything is fine as it is, there is no need to change farming methods or to population growth. Yet you fail to address that even in well fed communities in the industrial world with clean drinking water, shelter and retirement security, there are many sub populations with very high birth rates. Perhaps you skipped reading that portion of the conversation, but it has huge bearing because it disproves your assertion. While the US Jewish population as a whole has a birth rate of 1.86 children per Jewish woman, the sub-population at their religious extreme, the Hasidic community has a birth rate of 7.9 children per Jewish woman. And similar numbers are reported in the other conservative religions as well. And no, turkwad, I don't need to "make **** up" because I'm the one posting verifiable references here, not you.
http://www.aish.com/jw/s/48899452.html

Further, since you don't feel any change is needed to current agriculture methods, and the Ogallala aquifer is being rapidly depleted, as also mentioned above, the midwestern states will demand water from the great lakes (as they already have) to maintain their current methods. That puts you on their side.

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@Banana Breath,

You seem to think that we can plan our future rationally, but as the stalemate on climate demonstrates, we just can't make that happen until it's too late. Population will keep rising. Oil and food prices will continue go up. People will either starve, or farm more land, or better manage the food they produce. (currently we throw away a lot of food)

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@Banana Breath,

There is just a forest of straw man fallacies in that drivel you've posted. On the contrary, it is you who twist things. Commodities traders, and other capitalists, are interested in one thing, and one thing only, and that is personal profit. Here's one example:

Quote:

Brabeck-Letmathe (credited as Peter Brabeck) appeared in the 2005 documentary We Feed the World and while speaking on the subject of water resources called the idea of water as a public right extreme. He then said, "Personally, I believe it's better to give a foodstuff a value so that we're all aware it has its price, and then that one should take specific measures for the part of the population that has no access to this water." Following controversy on social media about these remarks, he stated that he does believe that water for basic hygiene and drinking is indeed a human right. He went on to say that his remarks were intended to address overconsumption by some while others suffered from lack of water and further that his remarks were taken out of context by the documentary.

Sourc e at Wikipedia

Brabeck-Lemathe stepped down as CEO in 2008. I did not say or even suggest that eliminating commodities traders would solve all of the planet's food problems. I am pointing out that these blood-suckers make food more expensive and difficult to distribute. That's you twisting what i wrote so that you can indulge your phony-baloney outrage. Commodities trading in foodstuffs increases the cost of those foodstuffs solely so that commodities traders can profit.

I'm not going to take your bullsh*t point by point. I will just observe once again that you are twisting what i've written to fuel your holier-than-thou rant. If i don't specifically say something, you have no basis for inferring your idiotic claims about what i meant.

You didn't start this thread to ask a question, you started it so that you could promote your scred.

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@Olivier5,

Quote:

(currently we throw away a lot of food)

Tell me how you'd propose "better managing" our food to feed an ever increasing population. Much of the waste happens because of the current need to transport food from the farms to the cities. You can minimize waste if virtually everyone grows their own food on rooftops and back yards, which is certainly more sustainable, and I'd be glad to see that, but without population control and sustainable water management, that model falls apart.

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@Setanta,

Try rereading my last post. I said "MINUS" the commodities traders. I don't defend the commodities traders so you don't need to point out their evils. Clearly YOU are the one who wants to rant here. And you rag on the "other capitalists" which should certainly include Monsanto; if so, we agree on that as well. Contrary to your assertion as to the point of this question, I would like to identify some viable alternatives for the future, not must my own. I would be happiest if there were many viable options. But you haven't presented any yet, are you unable to?

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@Banana Breath,

Quote:

You can minimize waste if virtually everyone grows their own food on rooftops and back yards, which is certainly more sustainable, and I'd be glad to see that, but without population control and sustainable water management, that model falls apart.

We can certainly manage water better, but population control is not something you can force people to do. Even in China it did not work very well, in spite of a very tough dictatorship. So that's a pipe dream. The best we can do there is support family planning as much as we can (e.g. strengthen the capacity of UN agencies working on population issues, instead of harassing and defunding them as the US republicans and the Vatican are often doing), and keep trying to usher in a demographic transition in more and more countries. Many are already moving there, eg many modern Mulsim states like Iran or Tunisia are transitioning to lower fertility rates.

Crop yields have plateau-ed and in my view will not increase much in the near future. But we still have a lot of arable land that we can crop, in Africa in particular. That's why China has started to lease land in Africa to grow food for itself (in Ethiopia, Sudan...).

Food waste is not just a question of transport. A lot of food is thrown by consumers and producers themselves. E.g. something like half of the world fish catch is thrown back to the sea.

1 Reply

Is it necessarily a good thing to feed everyone?

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