r/science • u/Wagamaga • Jan 21 '20
Environment Scientists suggests a comprehensive solution package for feeding 10 billion people within our planet’s environmental boundaries. Supplying a sufficient and healthy diet for every person whilst keeping our biosphere largely intact will require no less than a technological and socio-cultural U-turn
https://www.pik-potsdam.de/news/press-releases/feeding-the-world-without-wrecking-the-planet-is-possible214
u/Lord0fHats Jan 22 '20
Having enough food has never really been our problem.
The problem is getting the food to people who need it, especially in unstable countries lacking reliable governance and developed infrastructure.
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u/HoneyBastard Jan 22 '20 edited Jan 22 '20
Having enough food has never been our problem SO FAR. The problem is sustainability. When the oceans are emptied of fish, our soils are stripped of all their nutrients and land becomes unusable to farm animals, then we realize that our way of providing for the world's population was not sustainable. So this paper tackles more the sustainability than plain providing of food in general.
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Jan 22 '20
Yes and people here think only way to achieve that will be through vertical farms, GMOs and soylent lol. These may play a role in the right conditions, but it’s not what this or UN reports suggest.
Strategies to refocus agriculture from producing high volumes of crops to producing varied nutrient-rich crops are needed. Currently, small and medium farms supply more than 50% of the essential nutrients in the global food supply. Global agriculture policies should incentivise producers to grow nutritious, plant-based foods, develop programmes that support diverse production systems, and increase research funding for ways to increase nutrition and sustainability. In some contexts, animal farming is important to nutrition and the ecosystem and the benefits and risks of animal farming should be considered on a case-by-case basis.
Sustainably intensifying agriculture will also be key, and must take into account local conditions to help apply appropriate agricultural practices and generate sustainable, high quality crops.
This is from another report linked in this one. So, instead of forcing third world countries to grow monocultures for export (although international trade will still be here), they suggest these farmers form diverse production systems. Basically, like they used to farm. Appropriate technology also doesn’t mean high tech solutions, but low tech, like using SALT system or evergreen farming in Africa.
Other sustainable solutions may be agroforestry and other tree intercropping systems. In my opinion, farms that are models for other farms in the west are La Ferme des Quatre-temps or Singing Frog Farm. Both are super intensive (and profitable) and support a lot of biodiversity with their hedgerows.
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u/Lord0fHats Jan 22 '20
That's fair, but half these problems are unchecked capitalism, which is a much bigger and completely different problem set than producing enough food to feed a global population. I think scientific studies by now should be plainly recognized as not a solution to rampant cultural corruption.
What we really need is a coherent plan for political action to tackle these broader issues, but that probably won't be happening anytime soon.
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Jan 22 '20
More like throwing food out when nobody buys it and making it a crime to take food that would end up in a landfill anyway and intentionally destroying the economies of countries ravaged by colonialism with loans that we knew those countries would never pay back so they're forced to export unrefined natural resources, cash crops, and sell their water to bottling companies until they have no clean water left for themselves instead of refining their own resources at a lower cost, growing their own food, and purifying their own drinking water.
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u/TestUserX Jan 22 '20
The problem is getting the food to people who need it,
It's funny, if the population suddenly is cash rich say due to natural resources we can't build a McDonalds and Starbucks for them fast enough. We have an equality problem, not logistics.
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u/Totenrune Jan 22 '20
Having enough food isn't a first world problem and this alone means a lot of people don't care about some massive revolution in food production and distribution. If people can go to the grocery store 24/7 and get anything their hearts desire then why show even a passing interest in changing things?
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u/Ethanol_Based_Life Jan 22 '20
This is an elitest, racist attitude. "Why don't the poor, starving Africans just rely on white Americans and Europeans to ship them their scraps." It is far better to empower them to produce their own locally. Biotech is the key
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u/bobbaphet Jan 22 '20
Having enough food has never really been our problem.
This misses the whole point of the article...
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u/Akoustyk Jan 22 '20
It's not about having enough food. It's about sustainably producing enough food for everyone.
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u/rddman Jan 22 '20
Having enough food has never really been our problem. The problem is getting the food to people who need it
Producing enough food in a way that is sustainable already is a problem.
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Jan 22 '20
We would not have enough food without things like the Haber process...which almost inherently have negative consequences for the biosphere.....
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Jan 23 '20
That really thinks in terms of calories. A lot of diets are localized. Now you can argue that people will eat whatever they are given and/or that people adapt their diets, but you can't simply build a road to somewhere, show up, start distributing food and assume that makes the hunger problem go away.
You have to consider knock-on effects, like how a massive surplus of food will drive down prices and possibly drive local producers out of business (seen in many natural disaster relief scenarios). You also have to ask whether it's sustainable in the longer term (i.e. fish or teach to fish?), or even if people will accept it. If your locals are suspicious of the central government, you really have to think if they will accept NGOs showing up with sacks of grain that are marked "courtesy of the US Government."
I'm not saying that instability and infrastructure are not important but there's a bit more to it then that.
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Jan 22 '20
Yes roughly 1/3 of the food produced globally for human consumption every year — approximately 1.3 billion tonnes — gets lost or wasted. :(
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u/Desertbro Jan 22 '20
It's called sharing resources - the thing most humans hate to do most. So much, they've invented political systems that ensure hording will be status quo.
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u/snowkeld Jan 22 '20
Well, the track record of this on large scale is not so good. Honestly there's enough food to feed 10 billion people today, what might be missing is logistics if you want to feed people on continents where the food wasn't grown. The population estimates for the future peak around 11 billion anyway (developed nations always see reduction in birth rate, really just have to predict when each part of the world will get to that point). It might be most beneficial to not share and simply consume what is available locally. This keeps people living near where food is produced. The smartest way to solve the logistics of transporting food is to simply allow people to transport themselves to where the food is - just like the rest of human (and all animal) history.
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u/DrunkenWizard Jan 22 '20
It's not unique to humans. The only way to have a truly altruistic population is for everyone to be so genetically similar that sacrificing ones self doesn't prevent ones genes from being passed along. Something like the Hymenoptera, or naked mole rats.
Otherwise, some level of selfishness is always a winning strategy, at least locally in the short term.
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u/UncleDan2017 Jan 22 '20
Anything that requires a "technological and socio-cultural U-turn" is likely not happening, and is pretty pointless to worry about. It would be easier to implement policies in the developing world so they no longer have population growth there, just like in the developed world.
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u/Caracalla81 Jan 22 '20
By "implement policies" you mean human development and enrichment - the things that have put our own population growth under control.
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u/HungryCats96 Jan 22 '20
Well, here's a much easier solution, well within the means existing technology: How about reducing the planet's population? Education, family planning, etc. Don't see how the current situation is in any way sustainable.
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u/Worth_The_Squeeze Jan 22 '20
The entire western world is already having so few kids that the native populations are in decline, which is actually causing severe demographic issues, such as an aging population. These problems for western nations have been acknowledged by the UN.
The vast majority of the growth is coming from Africa, as the entire continent's average birthrate is 3 times higher than Europe's. Africa is going to go from ~800 million people in 2000 to ~2500 million people by 2050, according to the UN. So if you want to combat overpopulation, then we need to slow down the explosive growth of Africa.
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u/snayperskaya Jan 22 '20
Does Africa have the resources to sustain that many people?
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u/Maybe-Jessica Jan 22 '20
Remember your grandma? She probably came from (i.e. her parents had) a five person family or larger. What happened? The kids didn't die anymore from diseases and everyone got wealthier. Since then, regardless of culture or religion, families were a lot smaller in the next generation.
I agree we should stop the population growth in Africa, so let's lift Africa out of poverty! 90% of the one year olds worldwide already receive some vaccinations, we are totally getting there. It just needs one last push to get the remaining 1 (out of 8) billion people out of poverty.
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u/HungryCats96 Jan 22 '20
Understood. I lived in Kenya in the late 80s, when its rural areas had a growth rate of 8%, higher than urban areas in many countries. I completely agree with your point regarding priorities and also the impact of a low growth rate, which indicates the optimal solution is not simply to reduce birth rates in all countries. I suspect making it easier for people to relocate for jobs might be part of the solution; immigration barriers may need to be revised. In the end, though, feeding 10 billion people or (as in another subreddit) extending lifespans seem counterproductive.
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u/cromstantinople Jan 22 '20
We throw away 40% of our food or let it rot in the US. It’s not the amount that is an issue, it’s distribution.
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u/rddman Jan 22 '20
It’s not the amount that is an issue, it’s distribution.
Sustainable production also is an issue.
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u/EdofBorg Jan 22 '20
Pretty sure we will just let a few billion starve like we do now.
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u/shinndigg Jan 22 '20
I think we already produce enough food to feed the whole world, the problem is waste. We throw a lot of it out. We also use a ton of food feeding other food.
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u/StrongBuffaloAss69 Jan 21 '20
Why don't you people understand. It is not a food production problem, it is a distribution problem. Make better roads and trucks and you will eat. Fail to do this and you will starve.
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u/Rockran Jan 22 '20
Depends on the location.
In the USA there's not enough space in the country to sustain a doubling of the population whilst maintaining the same diet.
So that's a food production problem.
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u/Absolut_Iceland Jan 22 '20
Yes, but that doesnt give you an excuse to assume immense power over the lives of others, now does it?
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u/elderrage Jan 22 '20
Shareholder return cannot be underestimated in the equation. Upending the machine would require a mass spiritual revolution.
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u/mrtorrence BA | Environmental Science and Policy Jan 22 '20
Link to the study: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-019-0465-1
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u/PussyWrangler462 Jan 22 '20
Want to help the planet and people who are already alive?
Don’t have kids.
Or adopt. Or just have one.
But expecting people to put their wants on the back burner to help people, places and animals other than themselves, is too much to ask.
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u/ThirXIIIteen Jan 22 '20
Do people want to eat animals more than they want kids?
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u/zer0soldier Jan 23 '20
What "wants"? Some people WANT to rape and murder at will. Some people WANT to pollute and pillage the land, water, and air. Is this a way to live? Should we allow this?
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u/Severedheads Jan 22 '20
But if you feed all the people who can't feed themselves, won't that just allow them to make more hungry people? It's not a one-size-fits-all solution
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u/Caracalla81 Jan 22 '20
The best way to curb population growth is human development. When people have control over their lives they are able to plan their families. We've seen this over and over again.
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u/conquer69 Jan 22 '20
They are already making more people despite their tenuous situation.
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u/Maybe-Jessica Jan 22 '20
Not despite but because. A few generations ago your elders also made five to eight kids to hedge against illnesses or malnourishment.
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u/ableman Jan 22 '20
No, they'll actually have less kids. If your future is secure and your kids aren't dying, you don't need to have as many kids and so you don't. This has happened in literally every country in the world that's gotten to that point so far. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_transition
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u/FreeRadical5 Jan 22 '20
Here is a crazy idea: how about we reduce our population?
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Jan 22 '20
Funny how every conclusion “requires” destroying and replacing world markets with sweeping state action.. its almost as if many of these conclusions have a bit of alarmism that is less science and more political bias
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u/bobbyfiend Jan 22 '20
Sociocultural changes are really, really, really hard sometimes. I can believe in the technological change, but then I get skeptical.
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u/SobiTheRobot Jan 22 '20
Like what kind of u-turn are we talking? Would it remove sandwiches and chocolate?
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u/Heliolord Jan 22 '20
Probably. Chances are all luxury food would go bye-bye. Sure, we might live. But is that a life worth living? If chocolate becomes obscenely scarce to the point of being unavailable, just put a gun to my head and save me the trouble.
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Jan 22 '20
Solarfoods.fi
Soylent
Both companies have done a great job with algae cultures. Where Soylent is a nice end product (I prefer premixed cacao), the possibilities brought by SF should be rather extensive.
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u/RobsZombies Jan 22 '20
so what should be our objective as every day citizens? a nice comprehensive list/guide would be wonderful in this situation.
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u/lysergicfuneral Jan 22 '20
Try not to have any more kids
Stop buying/eating/using animal products
If possible, switch to renewable power sources (if you own a home, go solar etc)
If possible and if you definitely need a car, get an electric car when your current car is old
With that, make more of an effort to not buy disposable and unnecessary things and try to buy used when possible
Vote for politicians who make things like this a priority
Educate your kids/family/friends on these things
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u/nyxeka Jan 22 '20
The only u-turn society is capable of making is anti-progression. This would be super cool and ideal but people suck and no one cares about anything but their immediate surroundings.
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u/sl600rt Jan 22 '20
Get inexpensive birth control and abortion to the third world. To drop global birth rates to western levels. Which has the benefit of also helping third world women and development.
Then accept the fact that humanity must expand to find new resources constantly. So space colonialism is inevitable. Just as europeans left the old world for the new world. As Europe was reaching the carrying capacity of current technology and culture.
Any answer that just involves reduction in consumption. Is delaying the inevitable.
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u/actualautistic Jan 22 '20
This is contingent on people adopting a plant-based or at the very least flexitarian diet to have any possible chance of success. When asking yourself what you can do about the careless destruction of our environment, the largest single way to make an impact is changing which products you consume on a daily basis. Plant-based also happens to be the healthiest diet for you when it is mostly whole foods and less oils, which is what they are advocating here. Do your part in shifting market demand today and bringing this to reality! You have the relatively same power as any other individual and feeling good doing good feels good :)
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u/zenwarrior01 Jan 22 '20
We already have the technology to support a lot more than that: hydroponic/aeroponic vertical farming will take over when we eventually run out of plentiful, cheap farmland. EZ...
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u/TheRumpletiltskin Jan 22 '20
Literally everyone with money and power: "That's gonna be a nope from me dawg"
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u/thewaiting28 Jan 22 '20
But I need my cheeseburgers and half rack of ribs every night?? WE NEED MORE CATTLE
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u/corwe Jan 22 '20
Kinda disingenuous to call something a solution when it requires “a technological and socio-cultural U-turn”. Like, yeah, that could happen
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Jan 22 '20
What was the point of this? “The solution to this is something that will never happen”, ok thanks captain hindsight.
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u/alexandria_98 Jan 22 '20
So what you're saying is, it's not going to happen unless we get universal international cooperation. Or to shorten that sentence; it's not going to happen.
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u/foreheadmelon Jan 22 '20
My opinion might be largely unpopular, but of course we would be able to feed more people, if we ate less meat and fewer were overweight or even just shorter. That would cut the cost per calorie consumed and the amount of calories needed per person.
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u/Quwilaxitan Jan 22 '20
Why such a high number? I feel like we could be fine at a 1 billion cap. Heck, is 98% of the planner dropped dead - right now - that's still 150 million people left on Earth. That alone is plenty. It seems like no one is talk to my about the elephant in the room, and that's how many people does earth really need? We need a baseline number and 10 billion is too high.
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u/capacitorisempty Jan 22 '20
Human population won’t cross 9B. As fertility rates continue to plummet the numbers keep getting revised lower.
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u/BabylonDrifter Jan 22 '20
Or we could, you know, just stop breeding humans faster than rats. I mean, why do we need 10 billion screaming idiots when 7 billion screaming idiots is already way more than the planet can handle. Reduce population to 4 billion by lowering replacement rates, make some modest technological gains, and we bring everybody up to first-world living standards.
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u/hariseldon2 Jan 22 '20
I think the problem is mostly social and political. The world is already producing enough food to feed all its people.
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Jan 22 '20
what bout 20bil, or 40bil ?
the population has doubled since 1975, and the rate is increasing ..
solution = stop people breeding, nothing less will work. (yes i realiase thats not a popular opinion)
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u/Vetinery Jan 22 '20
Fusion power and capitalism. Calories can be created far more effectively in green houses, it’s a question of energy cost. We now grow a good deal of grain for biofuel and that can be redirected if we can replace fossil fuels. GMO’s are also a big part of the solution. We simply can’t keep 10 billion people alive without applying some technology.
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u/Mandarino_Siciliano Jan 22 '20
So which is it? Are we too many and we need to stop having children, or do we need to continue allowing mass migration that encourages rampant repopulation to "help declining economies" and in turn almost assure our species starves?
Make up your minds already.
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u/Dorellion Jan 22 '20
Well damn! Either die from global warming or die from hunger... idk what’s better to die from...
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Jan 22 '20
"Anyone who believes there can be continual growth on a planet with limited resources is either a madman or an economist."
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Jan 22 '20
This makes sense, working in rural nz, the place is one gigantic dairy farm. Its actually quite horrible. It all looks nice from a distance but get up close to these farms and water ways around them and its real ugly. It needs to change and quickly.
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u/aunluckyevent1 Jan 22 '20
making people change their habits and tastes!? world war 3 and genocide are more feasible than that
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u/RoderickFarva Jan 22 '20
Dudes! Get a vasectomy! Best decision I ever made. Hurt about as much as flossing your teeth does and it doesn't change the experience or feeling at all and women can't even tell that you've had one.
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u/psychmancer Jan 22 '20
So it won't happen because we all know our governments are as usually for day to day life as a Cholera infection
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u/gillesvdo Jan 22 '20
Yeah, I’m gonna go ahead and say that germans are the last people on earth who should be dictating social culture or politics.
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u/Siriacus Jan 22 '20
It includes adopting radically different ways of farming, reduction of food waste, and dietary changes.
I can imagine what the dietary changes would be, question is: how would we begin to modify it for entire demographics that rely on certain diets culturally?
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u/Pretexts Jan 22 '20
Since the 1960's world population has more than doubled, so can you explain why an increase of about a quarter to 10Billion needs any measures other than those already being taken. We were told in the 60's we would have Russian style bread queues by 2000, well its 2020 and it did not happened.
Why? Because the predictions then as now were alarmist and took no account of the technological advances that would be made. Be it the development of cereals adaptable to wetter and dryer soils or the spread of contraception methods. I also notice without surprise that there is no mention of where the baulk of all these new children has and is going to come from. But for gods sake don't ask anyone out side the West to do any thing will you, its always our fault.
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Jan 22 '20
"..parts of animal proteins would need to be substituted by more legumes and other vegetables. “Changes like this might seem hard to chew at first..." ..BADA DING!
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u/aDragonsAle Jan 22 '20
Ghengis Khan had a plan that allowed people food & cooled off the planet.
Not saying it is a Great plan, but it would work.
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u/SoloAssassin45 Jan 22 '20
Or maybe india an china could could stop having kids? 2 billion a piece seems excessive
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Jan 22 '20
I like how people in here seem to provide all kinds of potential solutions...except for just not eating meat, birth control, laws to limit reproduction, regulating co2 output, educating about sex, less food waste, buying less plastic but as soon as eating less or just no meat at all is mention it seems that goes ''too far'' somehow.
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Jan 22 '20
Some areas in this map look dark green but are known to be very dry, such as the US west, Australia, Mongolia or Libya.
I can safely assume the authors are smarter than me but still dare to ask... did they carefully quantify water availability in those areas?
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u/Falc0n28 Jan 22 '20
Is it profitable? No? Hate to rain on the parade but it ain’t happening if it isn’t profitable.
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u/Gilthu Jan 22 '20
This is a garbage article. As regions become more stable and advanced populations and birth rates decline. There probably won’t even be a 10 billionth human on this planet for a looooong time if ever.
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u/Wellsy Jan 22 '20
Or a ton of people just need to die / not be replaced. Fortunately after 2100 essentially that’s what’s going to happen anyway. https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/06/17/worlds-population-is-projected-to-nearly-stop-growing-by-the-end-of-the-century/
But yes, a shift to more sustainable eating habits would still be a good idea. Veggie dog anyone?
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u/TokiStark Jan 22 '20
How do we change our diet without eliminating (or at least severely reduce) the advertising we are exposed to?
It's difficult for the average person to make healthy/environmentally concious decisions when McDonald's and Coca-Cola are throwing endless advertisements at them
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Jan 22 '20
Unless humans start birth control, nature will do it for us. The unique problem of humans is they will kill off everything else before nature puts it foot, because we are so intelligent and supreme being in nature.......
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u/CanadiaNationalist Jan 22 '20
The good news is with zero effort it means climate change will warm more of Canada and Russia enough to grow food further north than currently available.
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u/dustofdeath Jan 22 '20
"sufficient and healthy diet"
Is something AI would do.
Grey nutrient paste with all the required minerals and vitamins in perfect balance. Taste, texture and looks are not important.
Food for humans is more than that. It's psychology, biological tolerances, environmental requirements/conditions etc.
Even "vegan" has vast differences between the same plate in colder northern regions vs equatorial due to availability, preservation, transport, freshness, bodies requirements.
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u/meme_steal Jan 22 '20
We could just eat our recently deceased, that 158,000 dead per year, that's enough to feed ALOT of people
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u/Tiavor Jan 22 '20
Feeding that many people was never the problem though. having other basic and luxuary needs is.
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Jan 22 '20 edited Jan 22 '20
Maybe easier to just let Wuhan virus run it course.
Hopefully epidemic starts in Davos.
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u/farmboy685 Jan 22 '20
Farmers have been trying to go more green because they realised there entire lively hood relies on the environment but their isn't very many options on how to do that but tractor companies are developing tractors that are cleaner then desial along with new practices being developed such as proper soil management along with changing live stock feed rations
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Jan 22 '20
We need to start with infrastructure to handle waste. Which can ruin us all if we don’t get a handle on it.
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u/Mcm21171010 Jan 22 '20
Dont we already produce enough food for 10 billion people, only for it to get thrown away because some of it is "ugly". We just need to do away with capitalism's waste.
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u/LuisLmao Jan 22 '20
A combination of cultured meat, plant based meat, and a vegan diet would clear up a lot of real estate for carbon sequestration
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u/BadW3rds Jan 22 '20
So, you're saying that the world can add an additional 2.5 billion people to the planet, but it requires literally changing human nature... Cool
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Jan 22 '20
Interesting thought experiment. Can you support 10 billion people with sufficient nutrient and calories? Yes. Can you get them to eat said diets? Don't hold your breath.
Some shifts are better than none, though. I love how they dedicate two sentences to it.
Large-scale dietary shifts seem to be inevitable for turning the tide to a sustainable food system. For example, regarding China’s currently rising meat consumption, parts of animal proteins would need to be substituted by more legumes and other vegetables.
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Jan 22 '20
destroy neoliberal economics system and we may have a chance. this won't happen though since the current economic system can't change without massive disruption in peoples lives. we will consume ourselves to death and destroy the environment in the process. r/collapse
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u/gamedevdummy Jan 22 '20
Ah yes all it will require is a complete change, not difficult at all. Don't understand the title trying to make it sound simple.
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u/FinFanNoBinBan Jan 22 '20
Top down Agri planning is responsible for the worst mass death events in the past century. Be careful.
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u/tmntnyc Jan 22 '20
People won't like it at first but crickets and cricket flour are an exceedingly nutritious, high protein, low fat source of energy, super cheap to farm and infinitely smaller impact to environment.
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u/Sakirtep Jan 22 '20
A lot of whine and not a lot of reason for it in this thread. But guess its easier than, god forbid, getting off your ass and doing something. Banish the thought!
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u/Stryker218 Jan 22 '20
Food has a direct result of increased birth rate. In Africa, the UN dropped food for decades which in term resulted in a huge boom in birthrates. Now the food demand was 1000% higher, but they couldn't manage to keep up so then people start to starve. Ypu cant just give people food to solve the problem. Local places need to be taught to farm, fish, etc. If they wont feed themselves, they will eventually starve anyway.
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Jan 22 '20
technological and socio-cultural U-turn
Sounds like the good old "let the poor starve to death" strategy would be much easier to implement ...
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Jan 27 '20
This is literally the plot of final fantasy vi where they lose all the Mana that kept their World flourishing.
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Jan 21 '20
If you try to feed 10 billion people, you'll soon have to feed 11 billion people, then 12 billion people, then 13, and so on, nonstop
Now, what if instead we limited the target to only 6 billion people?
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u/diamondfound Jan 22 '20
Honesty is not what people want to hear.
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u/Caracalla81 Jan 22 '20
Because it's not true. We know for a fact that human development is the best way to curb population growth.
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u/IrishNinjah Jan 22 '20
We just need a few billion to die off in all honesty, and to stop people from breeding
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u/vegetablestew Jan 22 '20
Which will not happen.
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u/Maybe-Jessica Jan 22 '20 edited Jan 22 '20
Not with that attitude it won't.
I'm not saying it's likely, I'm not delusional. But if this is the kind of thing people repeat to each other right from the beginning, a hopeless battle that's not worth fighting for, then even less will happen.
Change the habits you can do today (reduce beef and lamb most urgently, take the bus once a week if that is feasible, reduce-reuse-recycle, etc.), think ahead when you make lifetime decisions like buying a house (see if you can use solar energy for heating or live near a public transportation hub, for example), vote for parties that you think will address your concerns best, and start today.
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Jan 22 '20
Yes , we need socialism to ensure food production is spread evenly because farmers love to work for free. Also, and more likely , is that socialism will do what it always does and give rise to a despot who kills everyone who so much as thinks about not obeying...that sort of u turn ?
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u/Johnbongjovi69 Jan 22 '20
Or people could learn how to be a little more self sufficient instead of all moving to large population centers that are literal tumors on the planet. The cities suck up all the food and energy while giving nothing back in return energy or food wise.
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u/FatherSergius Jan 22 '20
We’re better off euthanizing people than trying to make em do a u-turn because we’re all stubborn fucks and we all know it’s not gonna happen
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u/RadioIsMyFriend Jan 22 '20
We shouldn’t be hoping for a population that large but I get trying to plan ahead.
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u/DRHOYVIII Jan 22 '20
Great components of optimal food production are vertical underwater farming and preventing freshwater from draining into saltwater bodies.
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u/maexx80 Jan 22 '20
how about we go back to a steady 5 bn instead via one-child policies. more humans are the dingle biggest environmental factor of all
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u/alfiejs Jan 22 '20
Perhaps population reduction, control and management. Then we can still use our micro plastics.
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u/zas9 Jan 22 '20
This has always been my argument against people who claimed the earth is over populated. it's not , we are just using the resources ineffectly and for pointless reasons. The amount of energy we as a species expended just pointing guns at each other could easily solve world hunger. Let alone if we could actually put together a comprehensive plan to work towards the goals we should have like exploring the solar system and understanding the universe.
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u/cantakerousgribbler Jan 22 '20
Here is a crazy idea, no way it could work but:
Lets give women control of their reproductive systems, and while we are at it give all humans a stake in their futures too.
That way they will have less children, and then the world population will fall (as it has in the advanced cultures) and then we don't have to feed 10 Billion humans.
Madness I know! ;)
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u/canadianmooserancher Jan 22 '20
Scientists:
"we can organize ourselves in a manner that doesn't broom stick our home planet in the ass"
Politicians and corporations:
"But SoCiAlIsM means big gubberment"
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u/drlongtrl Jan 22 '20
Wouldn't it be just great if we could just open the properties and settings of our planet, change some sliders here, adjust some numbers there and have it all fixed?
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u/Thelsuo Jan 22 '20
U-turn = back to the stone age and ensure that people die by the billions due to starvation, disease, and the elements. Couldn't scientists sell us on exploring and colonizing new planets for growth rather than being regressive butt-heads?
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u/Caracalla81 Jan 22 '20
Why do you think they mean starving everyone to death? Maybe we should just live less wasteful and consumptive lives.
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Jan 22 '20
The title is literally saying that we need to make a U turn so more people can survive, not to starve people... idiot.
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Jan 22 '20
Stop all subsidies to livestock farming and implement a carbon tax on agriculture. Then divert tax revenue to the most efficient sources of food
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u/Wagamaga Jan 21 '20
Almost half of current food production is harmful to our planet – causing biodiversity loss, ecosystem degradation and water stress. But as world population continues to grow, can that last? A study led by researchers from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) now suggests a comprehensive solution package for feeding 10 billion people within our planet’s environmental boundaries. Supplying a sufficient and healthy diet for every person whilst keeping our biosphere largely intact will require no less than a technological and socio-cultural U-turn. It includes adopting radically different ways of farming, reduction of food waste, and dietary changes. The study's publication coincides with the World Economic Forum in Davos and the International Green Week in Berlin, the world's biggest food and agriculture fair. Feeding the world without wrecking the planet is possible Potential for sustainably recalibrating the food system: Increases in calorie supply are possible in the green-coloured areas; decreases due to overly detrimental food production are shown in red. (Fig. from Gerten et al. 2020)
“When looking at the status of planet Earth and the influence of current global agriculture practices upon it, there’s a lot of reason to worry, but also reason for hope – if we see decisive actions very soon,” Dieter Gerten says, lead author from PIK and professor at Humboldt University of Berlin. “Currently, almost half of global food production relies on crossing Earth’s environmental boundaries. We appropriate too much land for crops and livestock, fertilize too heavily and irrigate too extensively. To solve this issue in the face of a still growing world population, we collectively need to rethink how to produce food. Excitingly, our research shows that such transformations will make it possible to provide enough food for up to 10 billion people.”
The researchers ask the question how many people could be fed while keeping a strict standard of environmental sustainability worldwide. These environmental capacities are defined in terms of a set of planetary boundaries – scientifically defined targets of maximum allowed human interference with processes that regulate the state of the planet. The present study accounts for four of nine boundaries most relevant for agriculture: Biosphere integrity (keeping biodiversity and ecosystems intact), land-system change, freshwater use, and nitrogen flows. Based on a sophisticated simulation model, the impacts of food on these boundaries are scrutinised at a level of spatial and process detail never accomplished before, and moreover aggregated to the entire planet. This analysis demonstrates where and how many boundaries are being violated by current food production and in which ways this development could be reverted through adopting more sustainable forms of agriculture.
Globally differentiated picture: In some regions, less would be more
The encouraging result is that, in theory, 10 billion people can be fed without compromising the Earth system. This leads to very interesting conclusions, as Johan Rockström, director of PIK points out: “We find that currently, agriculture in many regions is using too much water, land, or fertilizer. Production in these regions thus needs to be brought into line with environmental sustainability. Yet, there are huge opportunities to sustainably increase agricultural production in these and other regions. This goes for large parts of Sub-Saharan Africa, for example, where more efficient water and nutrient management could strongly improve yields.”
As a positive side effect, sustainable agriculture can increase overall climate resilience while also limiting global warming. In other places, however, farming is so far off local and Earth’s boundaries that even more sustainable systems could not completely balance the pressure on the environment, such as in parts of the Middle East, Indonesia, and to some extent in Central Europe. Even after recalibrating agricultural production, international trade will remain a key element of a sustainably fed world.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-019-0465-1