Agriculture, environment and food security.

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djm
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Agriculture, environment and food security.

Post by djm » Sun Mar 14, 2021 6:06 pm

I thought it may be interesting to have a place to discuss agriculture.

Feeding an increasing population and at the same time reducing environmental impact is a complex and difficult challenge. Unfortunately the debate is often polarized and simplistic, and can descend into organic v intensive and other such false dichotomies.

Be interesting to see what peoples views are here as it is a bit of a moral minefield. Which is more important food security or environmental sustainability? Is curbing population growth a consideration? Is super-intensive production to free up re-wilding an option? Should we be eating insect protein? Can genetic engineering play a role? Should we be less intensive and more organic? Lots to discuss.

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Ferrus
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Re: Agriculture, environment and food security.

Post by Ferrus » Sun Mar 14, 2021 6:56 pm

I had ants and grasshoper legs in a Mexican restaurant before. I don't really see it as different to eating shellfish. Whether or not it is enviromentally effective or not, for which I haven't seen the data, though I don't have an instinctive problem with eating different animals. I've eaten sea urchins, horses, frogs legs, snails and who the hell knows what when I was in China (a chicken foot was the only thing I could definitively identify). Though I accept I am probably unusual in this respect.

Population growth is a tricky question. In western countries the fear seems to be about decline rather than the reverse.
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jyng1
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Re: Agriculture, environment and food security.

Post by jyng1 » Sun Mar 14, 2021 8:31 pm

Ferrus wrote:
Sun Mar 14, 2021 6:56 pm
I had ants and grasshoper legs in a Mexican restaurant before. I don't really see it as different to eating shellfish. Whether or not it is enviromentally effective or not,

We should go back to eating people; that'd be pretty environmentally effective. 27 tonnes of carbon per annum per American...

Not quite as much for anyone else.

djm
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Re: Agriculture, environment and food security.

Post by djm » Sun Mar 14, 2021 9:03 pm

Ferrus wrote:
Sun Mar 14, 2021 6:56 pm
I've eaten sea urchins, horses, frogs legs, snails and who the hell knows what when I was in China (a chicken foot was the only thing I could definitively identify). Though I accept I am probably unusual in this respect.
Thought you were going to say France!

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Madrigal
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Re: Agriculture, environment and food security.

Post by Madrigal » Sun Mar 14, 2021 9:35 pm

djm wrote:
Sun Mar 14, 2021 6:06 pm
Which is more important food security or environmental sustainability?
I wouldn't look at them as exclusive, but believing that food security is a politial issue with political obstacles to overcome, I doubt we could ever reach global food security without a global cataclysm that would threaten to wipe us out as a species first. And by that I mean world war and its junior partner revolution.

djm
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Re: Agriculture, environment and food security.

Post by djm » Sun Mar 14, 2021 10:31 pm

Madrigal wrote:
Sun Mar 14, 2021 9:35 pm
djm wrote:
Sun Mar 14, 2021 6:06 pm
Which is more important food security or environmental sustainability?
I wouldn't look at them as exclusive, but believing that food security is a politial issue with political obstacles to overcome, I doubt we could ever reach global food security without a global cataclysm that would threaten to wipe us out as a species first. And by that I mean world war and its junior partner revolution.
I am more optimistic, having spent 25 years working in the field I know the tech is there to achieve this.

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Ferrus
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Re: Agriculture, environment and food security.

Post by Ferrus » Mon Mar 15, 2021 3:23 am

djm wrote:
Sun Mar 14, 2021 9:03 pm
Ferrus wrote:
Sun Mar 14, 2021 6:56 pm
I've eaten sea urchins, horses, frogs legs, snails and who the hell knows what when I was in China (a chicken foot was the only thing I could definitively identify). Though I accept I am probably unusual in this respect.
Thought you were going to say France!
Ah ambiguous sentence structure. Actually the frogs legs were in Belgium, sea urchins in Chile, the horses in Italy and snails in Spain and France. The snails are prepared differently in Catalonia, normally without a sauce and large numbers cooked at once, compared to the French style of cooking six of them in a bath of garlic. Both edible Roman snails though that have been cultivated since ancient times. (If I get the chance one day I'd like to try edible dormice in Calabria where supposedly the Roman custom is still observed.)

In China I ate a bunch of different meats from stalls in Xi'an and Chengdu that were of questionable provenance.
djm wrote:
Sun Mar 14, 2021 10:31 pm
I am more optimistic, having spent 25 years working in the field I know the tech is there to achieve this.
What about phosphate resource limitations, do you think that is solvable technologically?
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Utisz
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Re: Agriculture, environment and food security.

Post by Utisz » Mon Mar 15, 2021 4:11 am

Parents were/are part-time beef farmers in the West of Ireland with around 60 acres. Though not organic, most of the practices were pretty natural. Grass/silage fed with some mineral licks. Spreading some cow shit and 10-10-20 (or some variant thereof) once a year seemed to do the trick. A small Massey Ferguson 135 with no brakes, later a 165 with brakes. Grazing during the Spring, Summer, Autumn. Cow shed cleaned out daily by hand during the Winter. Picking weeds by hand. I think the only ecological issue was that the local lake had issues with algae potentially due to silage effluent from surrounding farms. Also some chemicals were spread every few years to control rushes. These practices have not changed in decades, except that instead of silage pits, or hay, we now exclusively do round bales every year.

Farm holdings in the west of Ireland remain quite small, most less than 100 acres. There are larger farms in the midlands and the east of the country. The average Irish farm size in 2018 was estimated to be 43 hectares (106 acres), with average annual income per hectare being €541 (€220 per acre). Which is not a lot.

A lot of small farmers (at least) received and continue to receive support from the Common Agriculture Policy (CAP) of the EU. There's not much money in it so most farmers are part time, with some involved in the local agricultural business (e.g., spreading slurry, cutting silage, etc.), or just some other job entirely. It would not have been enough alone though to sustain our family, though selling sites for locals to build their houses on has been a bit of a cash cow in the past couple of decades.

On a side note, we were watching a documentary last night that said that the Netherlands was the second highest agricultural exporter after the U.S. How in the name of fuck is that possible? :O

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TeresaJ
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Re: Agriculture, environment and food security.

Post by TeresaJ » Mon Mar 15, 2021 4:16 am

I'm no expert but I actually see a lot of hope in this area. Our population is already stabilizing and agriculturally I think there are better practices (eg, more traditional and ecologically intelligent) being recognized together with technological innovations. Seed banks are being utilized sensibly. I'm sure we'll still see local famines, especially with climate change and whatever social upheaval comes with it, but I don't foresee a global food apocalypse.

And hey there's always a future in soylent products.

djm
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Re: Agriculture, environment and food security.

Post by djm » Mon Mar 15, 2021 9:57 am

Utisz wrote:
Mon Mar 15, 2021 4:11 am
On a side note, we were watching a documentary last night that said that the Netherlands was the second highest agricultural exporter after the U.S. How in the name of fuck is that possible? :O
In Ireland work mainly in the farming areas around Cork, Newry and Dublin mostly on potatoes. Have done some work with UCD there also. Have a couple of larger farming businesses there that I work with, one on soft fruit and one one the makes crisps (potato chips to Americans) but most as you say are 20 acres or less of spuds on a mixed farm. Unusually Ireland is almost completely dominated by one potato variety (Rooster) which fortunately is very responsive to my product so am doing well there.

Regards Netherlands, this is because they focus largely on high-value goods, so the $value of their exports is disproportionate to the tonnage produced. They are a world centre for seed production (a new variety of tomatoes seed is more valuable per Kg than gold), seed potato production, flowers and ornamental plants, and glasshouse fruit and vegetables. On the broad acre side very little of the land is given over to cereals, with large acreages of potato, celeriac (they eat a lot of it locally), carrots and onions.

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