By Request: The Future of Farming

Michael McLawhorn asks:

Why don't you talk about the consequences of permanently high oil for the food production business? Does the high cost of fertilizer mean a drop in productivity and some kind of malthusian nightmare? Or can we sustain a large world population of food production with permanently expensive petroleum?

A malthusian nightmare seems unlikely to me.

In pure acres of land cultivated per calorie consumed, meat is ridiculously inefficient. If you used the acreage that you dedicating to growing feed for the animal, and used that land to grow (plant) food for people instead, you could feed many more people. So viewed in that light, a rise in the costs of agricultural production is unlikely to lead to mass starvation. Rather, we'll see a return to an earlier pattern of lower overall levels of meat consumption, and probably more consumption of the relatively undesirable cuts of meat (hello, tongue sandwich). There's good reason to believe that consuming less food overall, and less meat in particular, would improve public health in the rich world so even though it would make me sad (I'm certainly part of the public health problem in terms of meat consumption) it's perhaps not to be regretted.

Relatedly, I've heard it plausibly argued that if you're interested in reducing your "carbon footprint," reducing your meat consumption is probably the best thing to do. That strikes me as something that, if true, is more interesting if read the other way 'round -- one major consequence of limiting carbon emissions would be to create financial incentives for people to eat less meat and more plants.

That kind of thing is one reason why I think the cost of adjusting to a low-carbon future will actually prove much lower than people think. A lot of the changes in habit that a world of more expensive energy will incentive are things that there are sound unrelated reasons to do. Less meat-eating and more walking and biking would improve the health and long-term quality of life of the population.

Photo by Flickr user archeon used under a Creative Commons license

Comments

more consumption of the relatively undesirable cuts of meat (hello, tongue sandwich)

Undesirable? Tongue is very good, quite expensive too.

Posted by Peter | June 23, 2008 12:50 PM

Tongue is very good and relatively cheap, but a pain to prepare, and therefore expensive in prepared form.

Posted by Invigilator | June 23, 2008 12:54 PM

It may change where food is grown. I live in the East, and it seems an inordinately large amount of the produce I purchase is grown in California and other far away places and then trucked across the nation (probably for political economy reasons). I wonder if high gas prices will create a greater shift towards locally grown foods...think of it...stronger demand for both public transportation investments and local foods too! Doesn't sound too bad at all, at least from my point of view.

Posted by Matt W. | June 23, 2008 12:59 PM

It may change where food is grown. I live in the East, and it seems an inordinately large amount of the produce I purchase is grown in California and other far away places and then trucked across the nation (probably for political economy reasons). I wonder if high gas prices will create a greater shift towards locally grown foods...think of it...stronger demand for both public transportation investments and local foods too! Doesn't sound too bad at all, at least from my point of view.

Posted by Matt W. | June 23, 2008 1:00 PM

I think one factor not discussed is the rise of biofuels. I think that a large portion of Americans would be fine paying 10 dollars for a loaf of bread if that meant gas stayed at 3 bucks a gallon. So the public at large is fine with turning large amounts of arable land into cornfields for growning ethanol.

I have heard the carbon footprint for cows before, and I don't necessarily find it convincing. Don't we eat meat for the protiens and not the calories?

Posted by freddiemac | June 23, 2008 1:02 PM

I think one factor not discussed is the rise of biofuels. I think that a large portion of Americans would be fine paying 10 dollars for a loaf of bread if that meant gas stayed at 3 bucks a gallon. So the public at large is fine with turning large amounts of arable land into cornfields for growning ethanol.

Talk about a great way to screw the lower class...

Posted by mpowell | June 23, 2008 1:06 PM

liberal fascist!

Posted by razib | June 23, 2008 1:06 PM

Yeah, I like tongue, too. If you're looking for undesirable, how about tripe? Of course, even tripe isn't undesirable everywhere. They love it in Asia.

Posted by fostert | June 23, 2008 1:07 PM

Excellent post. There are many, many compelling reasons to eat fewer animals. I know it isn't polite to have an ethical viewpoint counter to the mainstream, but it is simply wrong to pay someone to kill an animal for you. The lives of these chickens, pigs, turkeys, and cows are complete in and of themselves, and their lives matter to themselves. Someday, we'll worry as much about reducing our suffering footprint as our carbon footprint.

Posted by John McCain: More of the Same | June 23, 2008 1:10 PM

While not the best thing to do overall, reducing your red meat consumption is definitely one of the best things you can do in regards to your diet. Chicken and fish though are actually significantly better than dairy products in terms of CO2e and pretty close to fruits/vegetables, so you don't have to go totally veggie.

The most efficient foods by far in terms of calories/CO2e are sweets and oils, though. I'll leave the snark for someone else.

Posted by Anonymous | June 23, 2008 1:11 PM

MY,
Does the same analysis apply to the rest of the world? Americans die from gluttony, but don't a large number of Asians and Africans die from malnutrition?

Posted by aleks | June 23, 2008 1:11 PM

That was a lot simplistic (although it is a blog) and at least a little optimistic. While there isn't likely to be a Malthusian nightmare -- at least not soon -- in the U.S. (the expensive Canadian tar-sand oil now coming seriously on line while keep us going for decades to come, expensively), the high price of oil is going to be a large contributing factor in the forthcoming Malthusian nightmare in much of Asia and Africa.

For one basic run-down of the problems (how much photosynthesis is necessary to keep the human population going, sans meat: hint, we're coming up against a brick wall in the coming decades, even assuming cheap fertilizer, let alone excluding it), one source is E.O. Wilson's The Future of Life, which is also an excellent book for lots of other reasons.

Posted by Harvey Lobster | June 23, 2008 1:14 PM

I have heard the carbon footprint for cows before, and I don't necessarily find it convincing. Don't we eat meat for the protiens and not the calories?

FYI, most Americans consume far more protein (mostly in meat form) than they need for nutritional purposes. Without knowing the specific details of your lifestyle, it's likely you could eat far less meat than you do at present and suffer no adverse effects.

Posted by James Gary | June 23, 2008 1:14 PM

I remember reading an article about vegetable oils and heart disease a while back. I'll try to find it, but I seem to recall that the rise in heart disease post WW2 was tied to the use of vegetable oils and processed foods. So really decreasing the use of animals in favor of plants may increase heart disease rather than reduce it.

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

Posted by freddiemac | June 23, 2008 1:18 PM

I think a broader question to look at is what happens when progress is no longer universally expected, and regression is enforced by necessity or fiat.

The 20th-century assumption was that consumption and convenience would increase forever; that life in the modern world meant greater speed and power in cars (and more of them), a greater share of one's diet made up of tasty, expensive meats, more and more power used by more and more labor-saving household devices, etc. Instead, cars will get smaller and slower, meat will get scarcer, more dryers will give way to clotheslines, and so on.

It remains to be seen how Americans and people around the world will react to a very different definition of modern life: that we've peaked in terms of modern conveniences and luxuries, and are headed downward. That doesn't have to make people miserable, but it's a dramatic change nonetheless.

Posted by John | June 23, 2008 1:21 PM

Don't we eat meat for the protiens and not the calories?

Not really. Meat is marketed that way and thought of that way (witness chefs referring to 'protein' when talking about meat), but its hardly the only vehicle for consuming protein. Most protein that people consume goes right down the toilet anyways when people urinate. If you dare, ask an educated vegetarian about protein sources.

The deeper truth of the matter is that nobody really knows much about nutrition. But lots of people around the world (India and China for two good examples) have large vegetarian populations that seem to belie the need to eat lots of meat.

Posted by RoboticGhost | June 23, 2008 1:21 PM

The future of farming is organics. What you don't like the idea of recycling raw manure into stabilized compost. I guess the fact that organic farms are more energy efficient and organic soils sequester more carbon than conventional soils is unimportant to overall scheme of things.

Organic farms can out yield conventional farms in corn production and come in a close second in soybean production.

But the fact that conventional farming relies on petrochemicals, which is tied to the cost of fuel makes conventional farming a long term losing proposition.

The real problem is that factory farming is very energy dependent, along with the fact that animals are not widgets; to be packed in pens so tightly that then cannot move or spend their days standing or sleeping in their own feces for the sake of effeciences of scale. The current high energy prices have only shown how broken the current Ag system really is.

If meat producers were rely on grass fed or truly grain finished, as opposed the current system that forces to much energy, in the form of gains, into a ruminates digestive process, the overall cost of meat would go down.

If everyone sees the value of energy independence for the US, why not extrapolate that need into food production system that is not energy dependant?

Posted by Organic George | June 23, 2008 1:23 PM

Sorry Matt W, but a widely-cited study that came out over the past few months has shown that more than 85% of the energy cost involved in getting the food to your plate is production-related. The cost to get the food from where it is grown to where you buy it is around 4%. Local food is the new "organic", a label/movement for people who need some new way for their diet to validate their ego now that organic food is available in most supermarkets.

Posted by evgen | June 23, 2008 1:23 PM

Transportation is a very small factor in the overall CO2e output from food production - on the order of like 5%, including not just final delivery but transportation of seed and fertilizers to farms, grain to elevators, feed to cattle, cattle to slaughterhouses, etc. Buying local is nice for local economies but not a big deal for climate change.

Posted by Anonymous | June 23, 2008 1:24 PM

One fly in the ointment of the idea that meat consumption and environmental stewardship are necessarily counterbalanced is this: grass is one of the most efficient and ubiquitous collectors of solar energy around. We can't digest those calories; however, cows' rumens are perfectly suited to do just that.

So, corn certainly is energy and fossil fuel intensive. And raising beef on corn (which is what is done in industrial agriculture) is even more so. But industrial corn is, in itself, pretty bad and certainly not sustainable. There is plenty of land that would be better used for growing grass than corn, and it's cows let people have access those calories.

Pollan's Omnivore's Dilemma has some great stuff on this subject.

Posted by Michael Wolfe | June 23, 2008 1:24 PM

Matt is wrong about the consequences of food prices for starvation. Amartya Sen (Nobel prize-winning Harvard economist) showed decades ago that people starve not only when there isn't enough food but also when they are too poor to buy food. Matt proposes that the price mechanism will make meat more expensive and therefore open land for cultivation of less expensive plant food. But it is more likely that the wealthy will continue to eat meat even as it prices the world's poor out of the ability to afford enough food to live on. Increased famine is not only possible but likely if we don't get a handle on energy costs and global warming. Taxing meat would probably help, but it's not exactly a political winner.

Posted by DCreader | June 23, 2008 1:25 PM

The deeper truth of the matter is that nobody really knows much about nutrition. But lots of people around the world (India and China for two good examples) have large vegetarian populations that seem to belie the need to eat lots of meat.

At least consequence of the eastern diet is that they tend to end up quite a bit shorter than if they had grown up in the United States. You may argue that it is something besides the quantity of meat, or that this not actually unhealthy, but it is quite noticeable in comparing parents to kids.

Posted by mpowell | June 23, 2008 1:25 PM

Nobody would suffer much if people ate less fast food burgers. Take those out of the equation and that's a lot less meat being consumed in the US right there. It's true that a McDonalds meal is a super cheap way for poor families to eat meat (or anything for that matter), but I think the price must be artificially low: it's a *really* unhealthy way to eat, and very costly to raise all those pre-ground cows. I don't think we have to have steak shortages, etc. Just cut out those burgers, which are no longer a 'treat' anyway - you can get a greasy-ass double cheeseburger gut bomb for 99 cents, and people buy them because, among other reasons, they are so damned cheap.

Posted by jonnybutter | June 23, 2008 1:25 PM

freddiemac, you might be interested in this New York Times piece about eating less meat. Specifically, point #1: Forget the protein thing. Many plants have more protein per calorie than meat does.

Posted by Chris O. | June 23, 2008 1:26 PM

Right on the protein, wrong on how much we need. A middling protein intake is about .6 grams of protein per kg of body weight. Someone who weighs 160 pounds should shoot for about 43 grams of protein/day. 3oz of lean beef contains about 23 grams of protein - that is to say, 3oz contains over half of the daily protein requirement for a 160lb man. And when was the last time you saw someone eat 3oz of beef?

In the meantime, a 6oz chicken breast contains about 30 grams of protein and 6oz of salmon contains about 34.

Excess protein is discarded through urine, BTW, so basically Americans are literally pissing away all that excess protein we consume.

Posted by Melinda | June 23, 2008 1:28 PM

One fly in the ointment of the idea that meat consumption and environmental stewardship are necessarily counterbalanced is this: grass is one of the most efficient and ubiquitous collectors of solar energy around. We can't digest those calories; however, cows' rumens are perfectly suited to do just that.

So, corn certainly is energy and fossil fuel intensive. And raising beef on corn (which is what is done in industrial agriculture) is even more so. But industrial corn is, in itself, pretty bad and certainly not sustainable. There is plenty of land that would be better used for growing grass than corn, and it's cows let people have access those calories.

Pollan's Omnivore's Dilemma has some great stuff on this subject.

Posted by Michael Wolfe | June 23, 2008 1:28 PM

The future of farming is organics.

What's not to like about the the process of recycling raw manure into stabilized compost. I guess the fact that organic farms are more energy efficient and organic soils sequester more carbon than conventional soils is unimportant to overall scheme of things.

Organic farms can out yield conventional farms in corn production and are a close second in soybean production.

But the fact that conventional farming relies on petrochemicals, which is tied to the cost of energy, makes conventional farming a long term losing proposition.

The real problem is that factory farming is very energy dependent, along with the fact that animals are not widgets; to be packed in pens so tightly that then cannot move or spend their days standing or sleeping in their own feces for the sake of effeciences of scale. The current high energy prices have only shown how broken the current Ag system really is.

If meat producers were rely on grass fed or truly grain finished, as opposed the current system that forces to much energy, in the form of gains, into a ruminates digestive process, the overall cost of meat would go down.

If everyone sees the value of energy independence for the US, why not extrapolate that need into food production system that is not energy dependant?

Posted by Organic George | June 23, 2008 1:28 PM

Chris O.,

The NYTimes metric is misleading:

"a cheeseburger contains 14.57 grams of protein in 286 calories, or about .05 grams of protein per calorie; a serving of spinach has 2.97 grams of protein in 23 calories, or .12 grams of protein per calorie; lentils have .07 grams per calorie.)"

Grams per calorie isn't a useful metric of getting the most efficient source of protein. Grams per serving is.

Posted by freddiemac | June 23, 2008 1:36 PM

And when was the last time you saw someone eat 3oz of beef?

Um, a quarter pounder is 3 oz of beef, so yesterday? (The 1/4 pound is pre-cooked weight.)

Posted by crack | June 23, 2008 1:41 PM

Organic George: once was quite enough. Food production is nitrogen-bound; organic farming adhere's to nature's limits, which is great, but which provides nitrogen much more slowly than science can. By some estimates organic farming could only feed 4 billion people. Perhaps someday the globe's population will have shrunk enough to make that viable, but for now, don't fool yourself: although there are things to recommend organic farming, there is no free lunch and it is quite clearly not able to reach the efficiencies of petroleum-based factory farming. There's a reason people use fertilizer, you know.

Posted by Tom | June 23, 2008 1:45 PM

Organic George: Food production is nitrogen-bound; organic farming adhere's to nature's limits, which is great, but which is less efficient than artificially-fixed nitrogen. By some estimates organic farming could only feed 4 billion people. Perhaps someday the globe's population will have shrunk enough to make it viable, but for now, don't fool yourself: although there are things to recommend organic farming, there is no free lunch and it is quite clearly not able to reach the efficiences of petroleum-based factory farming. There's a reason people use fertilizer, you know.

Posted by Tom | June 23, 2008 1:49 PM

The issue with less carbon footprint, and with health, is not so much eating food that is locally grown as eating food that is less processed and sold with minimal packaging. Fresh fruits and vegies are better in these respects even if they are trucked from a long distance. Minimally processed like frozen or canned vegies (especially canned tomatoes) are ok. It's what is processed into snack food or packaged meals that is bad. Cooking fresh food simply takes much less time than eating out or even ordering take-out.

Posted by Mimikatz | June 23, 2008 1:53 PM

I remember reading an article about vegetable oils and heart disease a while back. I'll try to find it, but I seem to recall that the rise in heart disease post WW2 was tied to the use of vegetable oils and processed foods.

But its the processing that's the culprit here, not the source. Hydrogenated oils last longer on the shelf, but are much more likely to kill you. Similarly, whole grain breads are good food; wonder bread, not so much.

Posted by DMonteith | June 23, 2008 1:56 PM

Since South Korea is refusing our beef eyeballs and spinal chords, the price of these delicacies should decline significantly, thus averting any Malthusian difficulties whatsoever.

Posted by Alan Vanneman | June 23, 2008 2:01 PM

In pure acres of land cultivated per calorie consumed, meat is ridiculously inefficient.

I don't know much more about this subject than you, but it occurs to me that you're thinking about the problem in the wrong terms here. There's no shortage of acreage (overall), what there's a shortage of is (cheap) energy. It seems like common sense that measured in terms of gallons of gasoline or whatever meat is still less efficient than food crops, but by how much? And what can be done to make food crop production more energy-efficient?

So (a) nitpicking, but (b) a request for more specific information when/if you explore this in depth and (c) making it clear exactly what kind of solution to the problem we need to look for.

Posted by Cyrus | June 23, 2008 2:07 PM

more consumption of the relatively undesirable cuts of meat (hello, tongue sandwich)

Oh, no! Does that mean the price of scrapple is going to rise?

Posted by LFC | June 23, 2008 2:17 PM

There's no shortage of acreage (overall), what there's a shortage of is (cheap) energy. Actually, there is a pending worldwide shortage of acreage. At 6.5 billion people, or whatever we're at, we're sort of ok (except for all the ecosystems we destroy), but the arable acreage is pretty much used. Sure, there's some flex in the U.S. especially, and Brazil could chop down some more rainforest, but the fact of the matter is that worldwide nearly all the good land is in production, especially when you take into account the problem of spreading deserts and dropping water tables pretty much everywhere.

Not to cite the same book obsessively or anything, but E.O. Wilson's The Future of Life has a great rundown of this problem and the related environmental problems - although I'm sure there are other sources more narrowly focused upon it.

Posted by Harvey Lobster | June 23, 2008 2:20 PM

Freddiemac, vegetable oils aren't trans fats unless they're processed to make them that way. I don't think anyone in this thread has suggested that.

Michael Wolfe, I think you're still quite a way from demonstrating that grass is so much more efficient than other plants that it remains more efficient even when you add the large inefficiency involved in transforming the grass into beef.

Posted by KCinDC | June 23, 2008 2:25 PM

Michael Wolfe: The fly in your ointment is the fact that very little of the beef consumed in the United States is grass-fed. The vast majority of cattle (and other meat-producing animals) in this country consume mostly grain.

evgen: You have the statistics exactly backward. Recent research has shown that transportation costs are a very small portion of the overall footprint of food production.

Anonymous: You are obviously referring to this study. This particular chart has been widely misinterpreted and abused. Obviously it makes no sense that the production of sugar would use less carbon per calorie than vegetable production. What the chart in question actually shows is the overall carbon footprint of production of each sector as a whole, which is a useless statistic for this discussion. Chicken, egg, and milk production all have a large carbon footprint than grain or vegetable production.

Posted by Rob Mac | June 23, 2008 2:29 PM

I don't know of any studies on the share of transportation in the cost of moving different foods on average, but this seems beside the point. It isn't zero.

The fact is that gas is more expensive now than it used to be. It's clear that it is now relatively cheaper to grow some crops locally than it was when gas was 1.50/gallon. What I was wondering was if the price is high enough that this switch is actually happening...

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that we should only eat local foods (I love pineapple, and doubt it can be grown near where I live). I'm just saying that we might all be better off if more foods are grown locally and that it's becoming relatively cheaper to do so on account of high gas prices. Transporting food long distances involves many costs that are not internalized by the companies and consumers directly involved. These include emissions, increased use of pesticides, and also the cost of moving water into the regions where they are currently grown. Large parts of CA where a lot of food is produced are not naturally endowed with much water.

Posted by Matt W. | June 23, 2008 2:43 PM

Rob Mac, I think you need to reread evgen's comment. You don't seem to be disagreeing.

Posted by KCinDC | June 23, 2008 3:15 PM

@ KCinDC: "I think you're still quite a way from demonstrating that grass is so much more efficient than other plants that it remains more efficient even when you add the large inefficiency involved in transforming the grass into beef."

It's patently obvious that grass-fed beef is much, much more efficient than grain-fed beef. You don't even need to do a study, you just need arithmetic. Efficiency means the ratio of the caloric output to the caloric input, so this is pretty easy to figure out:

Grass-fed efficiency: Output - total energy cost of moving and slaughtering cows - minimal medical care

Grain-fed efficiency: Output - total energy cost of moving and slaughtering cows - total cost of producing industrial grains (enormous) - total cost of dealing with huge pits of cow waste - cows lost to diseases from close quarters - excessive medical care

The only reason grain-fed animals have seemed to be more ''efficient" is we have an energy regime and economic system that heavily subsidizes certain types of inefficient choices so they can outcompete the actually efficient ones (yeah free-market capitalism!). And not only is grass-fed more efficient, it's far more humane and produces much healthier meat. Humans are going to have to eat far less meat and eat primarily pastured animals.

Posted by Loneoak | June 23, 2008 3:15 PM

D'oh! KCinDC is correct. I misread evgen's comment. Sorry about that.

Posted by Rob Mac | June 23, 2008 3:38 PM

Hmm.... your proposed solution seems to be reduced meat consumption across the board to improve agricultural efficiency, but why would that actually happen? Why wouldn't we continue to raise meat, in spite of the cost and continue feeding grain to animals so that the wealthy can continue with their meaty lifestyle largely as it is now, while a "Malthusian nightmare" engulfs the lower classes, as animal farmers outbid poor people for grain and soybeans?

Your view seems to involve some sort of benevolent social planner looking at caloric inputs, acreage, etc, and thinking, "okay. Looks like we need more efficient agriculture. Less meat and more veggies for everyone!" Not that I actually think you think that, but it seems like your view requires some sort of assumption vaguely like that.

How does inequality factor into your view?

Posted by Julian Elson | June 23, 2008 3:43 PM

Loneoak, I wasn't talking about grain-fed beef. Michael Wolfe seemed to be arguing that grass-fed beef might be more efficient than plants for feeding humans.

Posted by KCinDC | June 23, 2008 3:45 PM

Sorry about that KCinDC, we read it differently.

Julian Elson, you seem to assume that the amount and type of meat our society currently eats is simply a representation of our desires. But meat consumption at present levels is only possible through market manipulations that strongly favor intensively raised meat over produce and grains and is driven by huge advertising efforts funded by tax dollars. Just as no one is presently forced to eat meat, no one would be forced to eat vegetables. A rational national policy (i.e., the Farm Bill) would either remove subsidies altogether (except for cushions for market crashes) or shift most of them towards healthier and sustainable choices. I live in an agricultural region in CA that grows mostly produce but we don't get a drop of the money that corn or soy farmers in the Midwest get, and most of their product goes into grain-fed cattle. Not only is that stupid policy, its unfair.

Posted by Loneoak | June 23, 2008 3:56 PM

Loneoak, how is this shift in our agricultural policies going to happen? Will congress decide that Californian produce growers deserve fair treatment and the government should be a bit less solicitous toward ADM? Will congress decide that the basic nutritional needs of the poor are more important than the ease with which the well-to-do can acquire filet mignon?

Posted by Julian Elson | June 23, 2008 4:09 PM

Loneoak, in fairness, your local farmers probably receive an enormous federal subsidy in the form of water rights.

Julian Elson, I think Loneoak is being pretty clear. "A rational national policy (i.e., the Farm Bill) would either remove subsidies altogether (except for cushions for market crashes) or shift most of them towards healthier and sustainable choices." Sure, the devil's in the details, and as I point out above, one man's subsidy is another man's natural right. But subsidizing the most unhealthy and polluting aspect of food production is obviously bad policy and it's something that can be changed.

Posted by Rob Mac | June 23, 2008 4:18 PM

Loneoak, in fairness, your local farmers probably receive an enormous federal subsidy in the form of water rights

umm, no. Water rights are a matter of state law. California farmers hold water rights by virtue of the fact that they started using the water before anybody got there.

Some California farmers get a small federal subsidy in that the federal government is charging them less than the appropriate share of delivering the water which the farmers own. But figuring out the private share of dams and related infrastructure (ie, that associated with delivering water to farmers) vs the public share (flood control) is much more art than science.

Posted by Francis | June 23, 2008 4:50 PM

A couple comments:

1. With the price of corn production at record highs we are going to see the advent of "lean" beef which will be grass fed. The Argentines do it and their beef tastes great. Americans have a developed taste for fatty or marbled beef. Beef is a "wasteful" use of land but much of the US is not suited to crop agriculture.

2. Missing from this discussion is the pending water problem we are going to have in this country. Much of our agriculture is irrigated. Between the depletion of the Olagala (sp?) auquifer and the high cost of pumping water, we are going to have a problem that needs to be addressed.

3. I disagree with the notion of overpopulation of the US. We have a lot of underutilized land. I drive frequently between KC and SE OK and many fields are growing up in brush. I read today that a 1,000 acre area of KC had a population of 20K in 1960 and a population of 5K today. How many other urban areas are "underpopulated"?

4. I believe the solution for providing protein to the rest of the world is goats. We could turn millions of them loose in the Rockies and produce more protein (think goat spam) than the world could consume. They would eat the underbrush and reduce the impact of forest fires. With some management, this would be a win-win solution.

Posted by danceswithgoats | June 23, 2008 5:10 PM

Regarding issue of proteins in a vegetarian diet, as a life long one, some sources in my diet are: leguminous plants like peas, beans, various pulses, soyabean, and milk etc. Suffice to say that millions of vegetarians in Asia with access to the above (and enough money to buy them) don't suffer from a lack of proteins. And the average height being smaller for Asians might have a lot to do with genetic and environmental reasons rather than just diet.

Posted by Abhinav | June 23, 2008 5:57 PM

Regarding issue of proteins in a vegetarian diet, as a life long one, some sources in my diet are: leguminous plants like peas, beans, various pulses, soyabean, and milk etc. Suffice to say that millions of vegetarians in Asia with access to the above (and enough money to buy them) don't suffer from a lack of proteins. And the average height being smaller for Asians might have a lot to do with genetic and environmental reasons rather than just diet.

Posted by Abhinav | June 23, 2008 6:06 PM

We are already seeing serious problems with hunger at current prices. As others have pointed out, the rich are likely to continue eating meat, while the overseas poor are easily outbid for food. One of the biggest causes of the current food shortage is the increase in meat consumption, largely due to the expanding global middle class. Secondary factors are fertilizer price/shortage, biofuels, and global warming influenced weather/crop disasters. Yes to the extent, that we can get the rich to cut their own meat consumption it might mitigate hunger somewhat, but I doubt it will amount to anything more than a single silver BB.

Posted by bigTom | June 23, 2008 6:46 PM

I think one factor not discussed is the rise of biofuels. I think that a large portion of Americans would be fine paying 10 dollars for a loaf of bread if that meant gas stayed at 3 bucks a gallon. So the public at large is fine with turning large amounts of arable land into cornfields for growning ethanol.
Posted by freddiemac

Don't be stupid. The environmentalists showed their ignorance by being conned into the "miracle, renewable, alternative energy" ethanol scam by Agribiz. The general public and international community with more scientific knowledge and economic understanding than environmentalists warned of the scam and are now denouncing diversion of food into fuel. Because, unlike environmental elitists, they do understand that the poorest have been hammeried by rapidly increasing grocery, fuel costs.

Studies, by Scientific American and think tanks show that America ethanol costs 6.50 to 7.00 a gallon without the present 50 cents a gallon taxpayer subsidy to Agribiz. If all our corn crop was kept from humans and livestock, with attendent famine and shortages of meat, eggs, baked goods, cooking oil - it would only cover 12% of our current truck and car energy needs. And is barely generating less carbon emissions than oil - unlike Brazils, which is creating more carbon emissions as remaining rain forest carbon-fixing areas are clear-cut and planted with heavy oil use mechanized production and fossil-fuel derived fertilizer.

Freddiemac joins other ill-informed environmentalists in the delusion that "wonderful ethanol" will lower gas prices. No, it ADDS to the cost of gas - because by law, oil refineries are forced to buy the expensive ethanol at 6-7 bucks a gallon and blend it with cheaper gasoline.

And no, Freddiemac, the general public is not fine with 10 buck a loaf bread, starving poor people overseas, eggs at 4 bucks a dozen, chicken at 7.50 a pound - so we can have 4.60 a gallon gas - instead of 4.25 a gallon ethanol-free gas which flouts the laws environmentalists and Agribiz passed to mandate that high-priced ethanol be addded in it.

Posted by chris ford | June 23, 2008 6:51 PM

chris ford,

You display an intellectual dishonesty that is proven true of conservatives time and time again. You state "Freddiemac joins other ill-informed environmentalists in the delusion that "wonderful ethanol" will lower gas prices", however no where did I ever state that ethanol will lower gas price. I simply stated the political reality that the average American would be willing to sacrifice cheap food in exchange for cheap gas, not that the trade off would pay off.

chris ford displays his stupidity time and time again on this and other blogs, in order to further his own intellectually bankrupt agenda.

http://uk.reuters.com/article/oilRpt/idUKN1817464520080618

"while 54.2 percent of respondents said they supported increased use of biofuels like ethanol to cut gasoline use."

Posted by freddiemac | June 23, 2008 7:18 PM

Rob Mac,

I sure am referring to that study, but have you read it? You don't seem to have, and I'm not referring to that chart.

Posted by Anonymous | June 23, 2008 11:56 PM

You are hung by your own words, Freddiemac, when you said that Americans would support an explosive rise in food prices globally like 10 dollar a loaf bread in order to get a price reduction to 3.00 a gallon gas.
I pointed out support of the ethanol scam is plummeting as more people catch on - especially later this year and early 2009 when the doubling in grain prices due to ethanol diversion will cause more than a doubling in the price of meat, milk, eggs.
I suspect most Americans, as I would, would happily support use of SURPLUS grain or phantom grain that taxpayers pay farmowners NOT to grow under the formerly well-intentioned 60-year old Agribiz welfare program to prop up prices and prevent a glut. Surplus grain unused in food, not used as part of US foreign aid for famine relief? Sure. Ending all the welfare so grain can be grown for ethanol on "surplus agricultural land"? Sure, most Americans are all for ending enriching fat cat landowners with taxes for doing nothing.
But not at the price of 10 bucks a loaf bread, as you said they would.
And worse, the more ethanol we make and the more the law forces into gasoline - the trend is not towards lower price 3.00 a gallon gas as you imply, but forcing gas prices closer to the cost of USA ethanol at 6.50 to 7 bucks a gallon,

I understand your frustration. For decades, ethanol was part of the environmentalist activists mantra of ignorance: "No oil drilling ever, no coal, no nukes, no gas pipelines. We have beautiful, renewable earth-friendly solar, wind, and ethanol instead".

Now you lost the ethanol "miracle cure" arrow in your quiver, and will lose wind if it harms the view of any rich environmentalist or Senator upset his ocean views or yachting is marred by the sight of them.

PS - Your survey link showed 60% support driling now, more conservation. The slowly sinking support of ethanol didn't even reflect asking in the question if they supported higher gas prices, far higher food prices, 3rd world starvation - in return for a very small amount of supplemental fuel that would look small in comparison to one major new oil field found off US shores, a shale-to-oil plant, or 6 LNG ports on the East Coast.

Posted by chris ford | June 24, 2008 12:03 AM

None of this is going to happen, so it's irrelevant.

What will happen is the usual: a commodity price will rise excessively, alternatives will be found, the issue will disappear.

All of which would happen faster if the US wasn't spending three trillion dollars trying to get the commodity whose price is rising under their control.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | June 24, 2008 3:50 AM

It's quite possible to maintain--and increase--soil fertility through green manuring with leguminous cover crops, and by returning composted human and kitchen waste to the soil.

Synthetic NPK fertilizer is a lazy shortcut that strips soil of minerals, reduces friability and alters osmotic quality, and degrades the bacterial eco-system necessary for proper functioning of root hairs.

What's more, we're a long way from a Malthusian nightmare, until the Earth actually approaches SRO. What matters is not population size, but efficiency of recycling throughput. John Jeavons demonstrated a long time ago that, with intensive use of raised beds and careful soil stewardship, it's possible to feed a person with 4,000 (about 1/10 acre, or less than half the typical suburban lot) of growing space. Of course, it's a Spartan diet of only maybe 20% succulent or leafy vegetables, and 80% high-starch legumes, tubers and grains. But then we've got more than 4,000 sq. ft. apiece available, right? That would mean, at the very least, additional space for fruit and nut trees, berry bushes, and other edible landscaping, even in urban areas.

Posted by Kevin Carson | June 24, 2008 4:00 AM