Thread: Will World food production keep up with population growth, & climate change?

Interesting.

Had quite a debate as one does on holidays, this time on a 1 week long steam train trip around the North Island of NZ, with a scientific advisor to the NZ Minister for Conservation or such .. his argument was that we had already passed the stage of natural sustainable production of food for the worlds population.

Okay what did he mean. Natural is without the addition of non natural fertilisers. He says the bulk of fertilisers today come from oil, so once oil starts running out then we will need (approx) x6 the land area for the same production as today.

To make matters worse, a lot of the richer alluvial coastal areas have/are being taken over by housing, reducing the most fertile farming areas.

Another flow on from the oil issue will be the manufacturing of fuel, as ethanol becomes the only viable choice. Crops will now have to compete for whomever pays the most, and Western countries will pay for fuel, therefore less farming areas will be available for food.

The other thing is if fuel is massively expensive the cost of shipping it around will be cost prohibitive. It will most likely mean we will need to live nearer food production, and maybe spread out and not live in massive cities anymore.

Meanwhile the population continues to grow, the world doubles its population. Fertile land is now unbelievably precious (no major countries/businesses buying up huge tracts of land in Australia is there ??).

Scenerio - to those countries with massive populations to the North and N/W, Western Australia will now start to look more and more attractive with all its vast land (forgetting the water table problem). How could we cope with hundreds of thousands of refugees on Govt sponsored/protected boats landing on these shores in a short period. We would be overrun and probably eventually succeed WA once there is millions living there. As they start struggling with the water and food issues the Eastern states will start to look attractive. Maybe those of us in the Eastern States will start looking to the east, and start migrating to NZ .. reversing today's flow

Who knows, but he had a powerful argument

Originally Posted by Rosco8

Interesting


Who knows, but he had a powerful argument

Yes, but it is not all doom & gloom. All that is covered in the article, plus the scientific efforts to boost production. What annoys me is, as the article points out, multinational companies involved in GM [ Monsanto] do not allow farmers to harvest their own seeds from the crop, they have to purchase each crops seeds from Monsanto. At their price. They have a monopoly, and could hold countries to ransom. Woolworths & Coles , any one? Bob

Few points

There is only an oil shortage in the minds of those who want the price to go up. Used to work for an oil major who had enough proven reserves in Canada alone to meet the total projected oil consumption needs for the next 100 years.

There is far more fossil fuel than we can use before the world will overload with green house gasses.

Last time I saw figures 70% of oil went into manufacturing to make fuel.

An interesting one is that 20% of the Co2 produced in China relates to products made for and exported to the EU. This percentage is rising yet EU does not consider itself responsible for what is exported pollution which would not be allowed to be done locally in EU.

One last one

The financial markets here in the UK have for a few years been pushing investments in Australian Agri business. Seems they expect the value of what is seen as a premium 'clean' product to go up significantly as other markets move to more intensive high Co2 producing methods. Natural had a premium when no one else can do it.