It’s surprising to see that beef has such a huge carbon footprint, and at the the same time, it’s to be expected. Cows are much like SUVs, big and inefficient.

I sold my car this past year and got a bike, and having only a backpack to put groceries in, I have to choose what I put in it wisely. Hopefully, everyone else does the same even if they don’t bike to the store.

I would like to direct you to an even more pressing problem for the entire civilization.

We are running out of fresh water for drinking and all the products we produce. We are will run out of fresh water a long time before the ocean rises one foot. So, why don’t we worry about something that really is eminent. Water shortages are everywhere. Cities are rationing water. Many countries in the world are destitute for water. The middle east is trying to make enough desalinations plants to have water to drink and carry on normal commerce.

If one goes without water for just a day or two he/she will dehydrate and become very ill. I water is not given the person will die very rapidly. Look up the medical facts.

Our economy will absolutely colapse when the water becomes so scarce that it will cost much more that any of the present fuels.

I am not saying that climate change is not important. I am just saying it is misiscule in comparison to the water problem that civilation faces. Already the great plains only have less than eleven years left of ground water to irrigate crops. The plains and the central US are the most important crop growing area’s in the world. They are running out of water.

Now, Stop and take a look at the population explosion. How will be get enough water to take care of the people that are yet to come if we are already short of water? We are facing a problem that drafs the importance global warming or climate change. So what if we do eat less beef and go to the local stores to lower our carbon foot print, starving and having no water seems to me much more important and no one (at least that I am aware of is even thinking about it on the governmental level.

Just a thought from an old Engineer!

We have plenty of overinformed naysaying as well as underinformed yeasaying. I agree that the problem of food is complicated and the solutions arent simple. I suspect that most people thinking about the issue would also agree. I think a more productive line of inquiry & reportage would have been to go the extra step in also discussing ways of overcoming the issues you raised and staying away from simple but misleading binaries (either plough or pesticides…) which never truly paint robust portraits of problems or solutions. Good undergrad heurstic devices, effective political tools, but not applicable to earnest discourse.

Thanks for contributing to the conversation. Do you guys use the feedback here in conversation? Hope so.

we could go back to the bard system,
bardering ha ha,
but that’s what teeth fillings and trumped up charges are for????

G. h.u. !

A United Nations’ report released recently stated that the planet’s soil layer sequesters more carbon than the oceans and plant mass combined. Healthy, organic soils have the greatest capacity for curing some of the carbon excess. Soils are also home to more critters than dwell above the soil – something we all ignore – even if we claim to be focused on biodiversity. Soil is the largest terrestrial ecosystem.

Chemicals are killing the soil – the statement that one would rather have chemicals than erosion is short-sighted, as long-term chemical use breaks down the soil structure and assures future wind erosion and increased erosion from rain events.

We are starting to see “dust” in the US that resembles the era of the dustbowl – and it’s being caused by constant chemical application in the Midwest to support the corn rotation – corn, corn, corn and maybe a little soy – which feeds the sugar-based American “diet.”

We cannot enlarge the food production footprint on the planet. In fact, the UN reports we are losing one percent (1%) of our arable land each year. Desertification will increase that rate – so we must be rehabilitating poor soils with organic applications.

If they are using manure for fuel in poor countries – we need to get them fuel so the manure can replenish the soils. If planting legumous crops for rotation is needed, we should focus on developing that capacity instead of trying to sell cigarettes and cell phones.

There is no civilization without soil – urban ag may meet some needs, but the planet cannot support us and the current biodiversity without maintaining its “skin,” healthy soil. Look to history and see that civilizations collapsed when population and poor agricultural practices abused the soil.

It’s time to stop measuring in terms of artificial measures – dollars, Euros, or yen – those are simply pieces of paper with pictures on them. People were better off with barter – or when a “dollar” was tied to a bushel of corn or an hour of labor – rather the attempt today to weigh everything in economic terms. There is a reason it’s called economic THEORY.

If we want to maintain and improve the quality of life for everyone on the planet, we must respect its ecology and work with it to feed the world.

Also, nothing is mentioned about the process and time-scale of evolutionary changes and the complete interconnectedness of all of the earths ecosystems. Introducing crops created through human vainglory disrupts the system and will backfire beyond imagination as the rest of nature cannot adapt quick enough to changes humans introduce.

Another overlooked occurrence is the rate of cancers and other diseases in the countries that ingest genetically-modified foods. Again, perhaps the human body cannot adapt fast enough to deal with these manipulated foods. We are equipped to eat natural and naturally-changing foods.

The genetically-modified-food proponents always use economic arguments, which is what got us into this mess in the first place. A new outlook on how life should be lived is what is really needed to fix problems. We have to realize the shortcomings of a capitalistic, industrial, and consumer society and adjust accordingly. All life is sustained only through a delicate balance, and we need to realize moderation in this aspect. A complete restructuring of what is important needs to take place. Genetically-modified foods are a misplaced quick-fix. We must stop treating symptoms and address causes–in this case poor land-use and farming practices. There are much better solutions.

One such assumption is that our society is going to continue to be one in which a small percentage of the populace labors to feed the vast numbers who do not produce food. This is a new situaton for humanity. For most of our history, most people were involved in food production. for example, when Lincoln created the USDA in 1860, about 90% of Americans were involved in food production.

The “need” for our current system of food distribution revolves around the fact that most of us do not produce food and need the space and other resources for other economic activities (many of which are of questionable value). More farms would mean more farmers and therefore more local food.

This goes to the food miles issue that opened the article. It is difficult to argue with the idea that transporting lots of food en masse is more energy efficient, even over long distances than moving many small loads short distances. Again, however, there are a lot of assumptions being made here.

One of these is that small farmers will continue to employ individual transit systems to move their produce. It might be that several farmers in a region, say Granger County, might cooperatively buy and own a big truck. Then the model would be: bring your produce a very short distance to a location central to a group of farmers, load the tractor-trailor and then move the food by truck and farmers, to the extent that they all need to be at market, by bus.

Another possibility would be to recusitate our national rail infra structire. In this case, the train would rollinto town, the farmers would load their produce into a box car and them selves into a passenger car and arrive in town together at a market close to the rail head. This is, in fact, how markets such as Philadelphia’s Reading Terminal Market got its start.

Finally, no one is talking in a serious way about the possibility of urban agriculture and the impact it might have ion food miles.

As far as genetic engineering goes, I see a few HUGE problems here that the authors of the article didn’t even glance at. First of all, an “engineered” plant is a pantented device, this means that corporations will have absolute control of the germ line meaning that I will always need to return to them for new seed. Further, there will be a tendency to bias against non-engineered plants leaving a few strains of very specialized organisms that were designed to operate in a particular environment, what happens when that environment changes.

There is a time honored and effective way of using plant genetics to combat pests and disease, namely, avoid monocultures. By raising diverse populations of plants and retaining genetic diversity in every speices you avoid the problems of pests and disease. In point of fact, this is the reason why we even have so many varieties of plants to begin with. Nature likes diversity and uses it to fight blight.

As far as the difficulties encountered by farmers in “poor” countries in using organic methods (lack of manuer, adaquate transport systems, etc.) no one asks “why are these countries poor in the first place”. There is a political dimension to all of the issues raised in the article that is quite important and completely ignored.

The human dimension is never touched. There is more to all of this than energy efficiency and plant hardiness. The problems sited in this article could be handled by more farmers, more farms, more diversity.

The biggest assumptions it makes are:

Our current way of life is the preferable one and must be continued at all costs.

It is better to be at the mercy of other humans through big and complicated systems from transit to genetic engeneering than at the mercy of nature.

These are my initial impressions.

peace
Frank