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rudatron
May 31, 2011

by Fluffdaddy
It's actually much worse though, because the assumption, that rising prices will lead automatically (magically) to new alternatives, still assumes a rising price from a falling supply. Thing is, fertilizer is going to be used in any kind of agriculture, and everyone needs to eat. So a falling supply will lead to a rising price until demand falls to meet supply, so the theory goes. But what does a 'falling demand' mean in this context? People being unable to feed themselves, because they can't afford to.

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ToxicSlurpee
Nov 5, 2003

-=SEND HELP=-


Pillbug

rudatron posted:

It's actually much worse though, because the assumption, that rising prices will lead automatically (magically) to new alternatives, still assumes a rising price from a falling supply. Thing is, fertilizer is going to be used in any kind of agriculture, and everyone needs to eat. So a falling supply will lead to a rising price until demand falls to meet supply, so the theory goes. But what does a 'falling demand' mean in this context? People being unable to feed themselves, because they can't afford to.

Then we should be dumping piles of money into research already because the number of people that can't find enough to eat regularly is already 10 digits. In many parts of the world you're lucky if you didn't starve to death as a child.

Killer-of-Lawyers
Apr 22, 2008

THUNDERDOME LOSER 2020
On the other hand, if the people running the farms don't feel the sting of rising costs they won't change, ever. At least not unless the way the government works changes. I'd rather see expensive food and a strong social safety net for those that can't afford it than us waffling around burning tons of fossil fuels till the earth boils.

On the other hand, we're at least accustomed to spending money on agriculture in the US, so maybe things will change over time as the need becomes more apparent, and we'll see a government initiative to nip things in the bud. It's not like the USDA doesn't already do a lot of work on farming practices already.

Things are going to get expensive as at some point though, it all comes down to how we deal with it, or don't. I don't buy the more apocalyptic views though, especially the whole gas == fertilizer thing. Just because gas is the easiest source of H2 for making amonia doesn't mean it's the only one. Also, there's hope that an energy crunch might lead to people making the rational decision and pushing a nuclear policy, which would solve a lot of problems, but I'd rather see that come about from something that isn't wide spread hunger and 10 dollar heads of lettuce.

ToxicSlurpee posted:

Then we should be dumping piles of money into research already because the number of people that can't find enough to eat regularly is already 10 digits. In many parts of the world you're lucky if you didn't starve to death as a child.

Different problem, though. Right now we have a distribution problem. Most people when they talk about future food crises are talking about supply problems. Not that it wouldn't hurt to throw money at the current problems. We could probably solve them in the US budget alone if we had the will.

Gunshow Poophole
Sep 14, 2008

OMBUDSMAN
POSTERS LOCAL 42069




Clapping Larry
Wait what? The problem isn't that natural gas is sort of a good source of the most abundant element in the universe, the problem is that it takes a shitload of heat and pressure (which needs to be provided by power plants or other sources of energy) to turn Nitrogen into a bioavailable form. You get the nitrogen from air, hydrogens can come from literally any fossil fuel. Current market prices define natural gas as the cheapest source but ain't nothing stopping LPGs from becoming that.

kalven
Feb 17, 2006
I always see these charts of how much feed or energy we need to produce a complete protein but they always show for one type of product. What are the numbers for rice and beans? Or any other mixed and matched product? What Iam asking is does anyone have a good list of what would be the best way to produce a complete protein? And with best way i mean best way to combat climate change.

Rent-A-Cop
Oct 15, 2004

I posted my food for USPOL Thanksgiving!

kalven posted:

And with best way i mean best way to combat climate change.
Pick any protein and use a clean power source like nuclear for the energy input.

Killer-of-Lawyers
Apr 22, 2008

THUNDERDOME LOSER 2020

whitey delenda est posted:

Wait what? The problem isn't that natural gas is sort of a good source of the most abundant element in the universe, the problem is that it takes a shitload of heat and pressure (which needs to be provided by power plants or other sources of energy) to turn Nitrogen into a bioavailable form. You get the nitrogen from air, hydrogens can come from literally any fossil fuel. Current market prices define natural gas as the cheapest source but ain't nothing stopping LPGs from becoming that.

Yeah, but it's not like it's a mystery on how to use other sources of energy, or other feed stocks (Electrolized water, for example.) The idea that as fuels decline we're going to suddenly find ourselves with out fertilizer is a pretty common one, and it doesn't make any more sense than the sort of people that think one day oil is just going to disappear (I wish it would.)

Job Truniht
Nov 7, 2012

MY POSTS ARE REAL RETARDED, SIR
What about fresh water supplies? The story I hear from climatologists is that any rise in sea levels could salivate the gently caress out of our water supplies, and the majority of which is used for agriculture and irrigation.

Gunshow Poophole
Sep 14, 2008

OMBUDSMAN
POSTERS LOCAL 42069




Clapping Larry

Killer-of-Lawyers posted:

Yeah, but it's not like it's a mystery on how to use other sources of energy, or other feed stocks (Electrolized water, for example.) The idea that as fuels decline we're going to suddenly find ourselves with out fertilizer is a pretty common one, and it doesn't make any more sense than the sort of people that think one day oil is just going to disappear (I wish it would.)

Ammonia fertilizer no, but we're not doomsaying about that element. Nitrogen is freely available in the atmosphere and can be fixed by ecological processes.

Phosphorus is the problem. So is potassium, although chloride salts of that are common as heck.

ToxicSlurpee
Nov 5, 2003

-=SEND HELP=-


Pillbug

Killer-of-Lawyers posted:

Yeah, but it's not like it's a mystery on how to use other sources of energy, or other feed stocks (Electrolized water, for example.) The idea that as fuels decline we're going to suddenly find ourselves with out fertilizer is a pretty common one, and it doesn't make any more sense than the sort of people that think one day oil is just going to disappear (I wish it would.)

It isn't that people are necessarily worried about that stuff just vanishing but rather people are worried about it becoming increasingly scarce. A big problem we're going to run into is that the easy sources of these things are being exploited into nothing. There is also the mathematical fact that there is a finite amount of this stuff around thanks to the Earth only being so large. Eventually the energy required to produce enough food for all of us is going to be more than can be expended. That's the issue. It's comparable to the whole "destroy the Earth" thing. We'd have a hard time actually destroying it but it's on the way to becoming uninhabitable as far as we're concerned. Sure, this stuff will eventually run out if enough of it gets used but we'd have much larger problems long before the well goes dry.

Rent-A-Cop
Oct 15, 2004

I posted my food for USPOL Thanksgiving!

ToxicSlurpee posted:

Eventually the energy required to produce enough food for all of us is going to be more than can be expended.
We already produce more than enough food for the entire population of Earth and there's enough nuclear material lying around to keep that expenditure going until the sun goes out.

Energy really isn't the problem.

computer parts
Nov 18, 2010

PLEASE CLAP

Job Truniht posted:

What about fresh water supplies? The story I hear from climatologists is that any rise in sea levels could salivate the gently caress out of our water supplies, and the majority of which is used for agriculture and irrigation.

I mean maybe in areas where you're literally right on the coast but in general agriculture doesn't depend on water sources near the oceans.

Gunshow Poophole
Sep 14, 2008

OMBUDSMAN
POSTERS LOCAL 42069




Clapping Larry

Rent-A-Cop posted:

We already produce more than enough food for the entire population of Earth and there's enough nuclear material lying around to keep that expenditure going until the sun goes out.

Energy really isn't the problem.

Yes in la la land where anybody anywhere wants nuclear power infrastructure constructed.

Theoretical energy isn't a problem. Actual energy sure as gently caress is, because we won't be actually using nuclear power to generate it. In fact we've gone backwards in that regard.

This is more appropriate for the energy generation thread but the issues are so closely intertwined it's impossible to address one outside the context of the other.

computer parts
Nov 18, 2010

PLEASE CLAP

whitey delenda est posted:

Yes in la la land where anybody anywhere wants nuclear power infrastructure constructed.

Theoretical energy isn't a problem. Actual energy sure as gently caress is, because we won't be actually using nuclear power to generate it. In fact we've gone backwards in that regard.

This is more appropriate for the energy generation thread but the issues are so closely intertwined it's impossible to address one outside the context of the other.

This seems to be under the assumption that we will stop before (at least some) people are meaningfully hurt, whereas history has shown that any major project will probably gently caress a lot of people over as it's being deliberated and implemented.

In other words, if you take it as a given that not everyone will be saved, the likelihood of implementing nuclear energy grows by a significant margin.

Killer-of-Lawyers
Apr 22, 2008

THUNDERDOME LOSER 2020

whitey delenda est posted:

Ammonia fertilizer no, but we're not doomsaying about that element. Nitrogen is freely available in the atmosphere and can be fixed by ecological processes.

Phosphorus is the problem. So is potassium, although chloride salts of that are common as heck.

No, don't think I was accusing you of doing that, I'm mostly commenting on things I've seen elsewhere. Phosphorus is a problem, obviously.


ToxicSlurpee posted:

It isn't that people are necessarily worried about that stuff just vanishing but rather people are worried about it becoming increasingly scarce. A big problem we're going to run into is that the easy sources of these things are being exploited into nothing. There is also the mathematical fact that there is a finite amount of this stuff around thanks to the Earth only being so large. Eventually the energy required to produce enough food for all of us is going to be more than can be expended. That's the issue. It's comparable to the whole "destroy the Earth" thing. We'd have a hard time actually destroying it but it's on the way to becoming uninhabitable as far as we're concerned. Sure, this stuff will eventually run out if enough of it gets used but we'd have much larger problems long before the well goes dry.

I'm aware, but when you have people in previous threads on the subject advocating a return to an agrarian society and manual labor intensive farming they might as well be saying it will end abruptly. Otherwise the cure is a lot worse than the disease.


whitey delenda est posted:

Yes in la la land where anybody anywhere wants nuclear power infrastructure constructed.

Theoretical energy isn't a problem. Actual energy sure as gently caress is, because we won't be actually using nuclear power to generate it. In fact we've gone backwards in that regard.

This is more appropriate for the energy generation thread but the issues are so closely intertwined it's impossible to address one outside the context of the other.

That's the paradox, isn't it? We would be better, as a whole, if we used nuclear power and electrified as much as we could, but people won't stomach that unless they feel the pressure in costs.

Rent-A-Cop
Oct 15, 2004

I posted my food for USPOL Thanksgiving!

whitey delenda est posted:

Yes in la la land where anybody anywhere wants nuclear power infrastructure constructed.
We could probably burn coal until the ice caps melt and drown us all. Nobody is running out of poo poo to turn into electricity any time soon.

Gunshow Poophole
Sep 14, 2008

OMBUDSMAN
POSTERS LOCAL 42069




Clapping Larry

Rent-A-Cop posted:

We could probably burn coal until the ice caps melt and drown us all. Nobody is running out of poo poo to turn into electricity any time soon.

Uh yeah, but the solution can be reached without either negative result so that's the point I'm driving at. The energy "problem" pertains not only to being able to energy fund agriculture, but also to not loving up the context in which we conduct said agriculture.

Better, even, is that we can, with enough good messaging and education, tie the two issues together quite closely. It's hard to sell climate change as a concept (at least to Idiots I guess ) but it's much easier to sell potential starvation

Troutful
May 31, 2011

Nessus posted:

What next, syn-foods? Fair enough that we should cut down on red meat and perhaps all meat, but I don't think the make or break thing for the world ecology is going to be that we decided to eat chicken (or similar fowls) instead of insects.

Another factor with pigs and chickens is that you can feed them with leftovers, at least in theory. Chickens can peck at the ground, hogs can eat vegetable waste. I doubt you want to turn crickets loose in the fields.

Crickets thrive on leftovers (up to and including literal garbage) and can easily be raised indoors, in a shack, etc. Industrialized cricket farming is already a thing, the bugs just wind up in pet food instead of people food. I used to raise crickets for research projects in college and I would have eaten them, too, if I hadn't been worried about parasites.

I could go on and on about the benefits of crickets-as-food (they're ridiculously nutritious! many vegetarians will eat them! they're probably kosher!), but a whole lot of consumers were raised on the "never touch a bug" principle and that's obviously going to hugely influence their dietary decisions. Crickets do seem to be gaining some traction among the health food crowd, though, for whatever that's worth. I'm pretty optimistic about the future of entomophagy in general. It's really no more disgusting than eating shrimp or other shellfish -- people just need to be persuaded.

pidan
Nov 6, 2012


Troutful posted:

I could go on and on about the benefits of crickets-as-food (they're ridiculously nutritious! many vegetarians will eat them! they're probably kosher!), but a whole lot of consumers were raised on the "never touch a bug" principle and that's obviously going to hugely influence their dietary decisions. Crickets do seem to be gaining some traction among the health food crowd, though, for whatever that's worth. I'm pretty optimistic about the future of entomophagy in general. It's really no more disgusting than eating shrimp or other shellfish -- people just need to be persuaded.

I think this will be less of a problem than people think. I mean, 30 years ago most Europeans would have refused to eat raw fish wrapped in algae (but would cheerfully have eaten pork brain). Nowadays I don't know anybody who is disgusted by the idea of Sushi, but many people who wouldn't eat any brain-based thing.

So, just introduce the insects as "people from this Indigenous nation eat them, and they all live to be 100 years old". Start them off as high-price and fancy, and lots of people will give it a try. Insect-eating is already a status symbol among the world travel crowd, so it shouldn't be that hard to scale up.

However, as a source of day-to-day nutrition, I think the present drive towards plant-based diets is more promising.

suck my woke dick
Oct 10, 2012

:siren:I CANNOT EJACULATE WITHOUT SEEING NATIVE AMERICANS BRUTALISED!:siren:

Put this cum-loving slave on ignore immediately!

whitey delenda est posted:

This, hydroponic farming takes the problems that I detailed in the OP and actually makes them worse (for the most part). You've got dirt out there, why not utilize it? At the very least, soil is slowly creating more of itself and reclaiming small portions of resources from the environment via deposition effects. The energy problem could be addressed via non-fossil-fuel means, but for the foreseeable future scaling it up to staple farming is physically very challenging.


You joke, but this is going to be an integral part of how we address near-term issues. The overarching idea of "agroecology" is to once again find a niche for the human organism in a broader ecological context. There's more farms doing this these days, I think an important example of which is Veta La Palma in Spain. You essentially foster an ecosystem that you can disturb minimally to harvest your food crop (in their case it's fish) and it doesn't even blink because the biodiversity and density of resources remain balanced. Theoretically you can also incorporate other foods into the ecosystem and harvest some of them as well.

Of course, the annual fish harvest is only about 1500 tons off of 8000 acres of aquaculture. For reference a similar area of corn field would probably give you something to the tune of 37,000 tons of grain.

...and thus starts the debate slapfight between land sparers and land sharers :haw:

Land sharing advocates for (usually less-intensive) agricultural areas with somewhat intact ecosystems as the best way to feed us without destroying too much biodiversity.
Land sparing is about setting aside as much land as possible as protected area and farming the rest for maximal yields. If you embrace the mighty atom :science:, things like vertical farming would be the logical end point for land sparing.

MiddleOne
Feb 17, 2011

Vertical farming will pretty much become a must if damper isn't put on the global population growth eventually.

Scorchie
Jul 24, 2014

Killer-of-Lawyers posted:

Right now we have a distribution problem. Most people when they talk about future food crises are talking about supply problems. Not that it wouldn't hurt to throw money at the current problems. We could probably solve them in the US budget alone if we had the will.

I disagree on the distribution problem. It was shown by Amartaya Sen in "Poverty and Famines, 1981" that major food crisises around the world where driven by a decline in food access not food availability. This is understood as an inability for consumers to buy/grow their food. Causes are usually a lack of input(drought, lack of fertilizer, etc) in agricultural systems or a drop in purchasing power due to economic issues.

Untill we have the apocalyptic collapse of global food production that is feared at the moment, Sen's predictions on the causes for famines will likely hold true.

Solkanar512
Dec 28, 2006

by the sex ghost

pidan posted:

So, just introduce the insects as "people from this Indigenous nation eat them, and they all live to be 100 years old". Start them off as high-price and fancy, and lots of people will give it a try. Insect-eating is already a status symbol among the world travel crowd, so it shouldn't be that hard to scale up.

This is pretty loving patronizing to be quite honest. No one is going to solve world scale food issues by playing the Whole Foods model of "only the rich are allowed 'good' food, and treating people like complete idiots isn't to effective either.

The only thing that's worse you could do is scream "fatty fatty fatty" like others on this thread.

pidan
Nov 6, 2012


Solkanar512 posted:

This is pretty loving patronizing to be quite honest. No one is going to solve world scale food issues by playing the Whole Foods model of "only the rich are allowed 'good' food, and treating people like complete idiots isn't to effective either.

The only thing that's worse you could do is scream "fatty fatty fatty" like others on this thread.

I wasn't talking about world scale food issues, I was talking about how to get the global rich to start eating insects (because that's what this thread wants them to do).

I don't think insects, vertical farming or any other innovation internet people like to fantasize about is going to solve global food issues. The only way to solve that is by an intelligent agricultural policy that prioritizes food production over cash crops, and by getting people in general to treat meat as an expensive sunday food again.

Solkanar512
Dec 28, 2006

by the sex ghost

pidan posted:

I wasn't talking about world scale food issues, I was talking about how to get the global rich to start eating insects (because that's what this thread wants them to do).

I don't think insects, vertical farming or any other innovation internet people like to fantasize about is going to solve global food issues. The only way to solve that is by an intelligent agricultural policy that prioritizes food production over cash crops, and by getting people in general to treat meat as an expensive sunday food again.

And you aren't going to do that by playing games or encouraging the rich to eat what you want them to eat through stupid marketing games. You're going to do it by educating people on the information found in the very first post of this thread. Treating people as too stupid for their own good isn't the way to go here.

Gunshow Poophole
Sep 14, 2008

OMBUDSMAN
POSTERS LOCAL 42069




Clapping Larry

blowfish posted:

...and thus starts the debate slapfight between land sparers and land sharers :haw:

Land sharing advocates for (usually less-intensive) agricultural areas with somewhat intact ecosystems as the best way to feed us without destroying too much biodiversity.
Land sparing is about setting aside as much land as possible as protected area and farming the rest for maximal yields. If you embrace the mighty atom :science:, things like vertical farming would be the logical end point for land sparing.

My only concern would be that the "land sparing" approach creates additional barriers to scaling up which will compound with the energy challenge which is already staring us pretty bleakly in the face. I'm of the (not particularly scholarly, at this point anyway) opinion that we have the capability to create and foster productive human-feeding ecosystems that maintain the diversity and... I guess safety of the agricultural areas we have available. Obviously this is to be held in balance because deforestation sucks and we've already lost so much biodiversity via human activity anyway.

Scorchie posted:

I disagree on the distribution problem. It was shown by Amartaya Sen in "Poverty and Famines, 1981" that major food crisises around the world where driven by a decline in food access not food availability. This is understood as an inability for consumers to buy/grow their food. Causes are usually a lack of input(drought, lack of fertilizer, etc) in agricultural systems or a drop in purchasing power due to economic issues.

Untill we have the apocalyptic collapse of global food production that is feared at the moment, Sen's predictions on the causes for famines will likely hold true.

I'm confused by this post, the guy you respond to says that supply isn't really an issue (it's not, seriously, we have calories coming out our ears... of corn), you disagree, and then you say that some author supports the idea that supply isn't an issue?

I think it's mainly semantics, "distribution" in the sense that I'm using it encompasses all factors that prevent captured calories from reaching people. As... I dunno, idealistic as that sounds. Food is an economic commodity as well as a means of energy capture and utilization. An "inability for consumers to buy/grow their food" means the same, to me, as having a distribution problem. Because the primary issue is not the amount of energy captured by food crops being grown.

amanasleep
May 21, 2008

Scorchie posted:

I disagree on the distribution problem. It was shown by Amartaya Sen in "Poverty and Famines, 1981" that major food crisises around the world where driven by a decline in food access not food availability. This is understood as an inability for consumers to buy/grow their food. Causes are usually a lack of input(drought, lack of fertilizer, etc) in agricultural systems or a drop in purchasing power due to economic issues.

Untill we have the apocalyptic collapse of global food production that is feared at the moment, Sen's predictions on the causes for famines will likely hold true.

Almost all modern famines are the result of political choices, and likely will continue to be. The modern world has not even come close to the limits of what true food rationing and redistribution could accomplish under true crisis conditions.

Ardennes
May 12, 2002

Xoidanor posted:

Vertical farming will pretty much become a must if damper isn't put on the global population growth eventually.

It is a Malthusian non-starter, if anything the problem is going to be a aged population being supported by a smaller and smaller young population not a soylent green scenario. Population growth rates in the first world and parts of the developing world are declining or have declined to the point of being a problem in themselves.

Anyway, the issue with feeding a global population isn't anywhere based on supply, there is plenty of supply and the potential for greater supply, it is really as another poster pointed out it is a income and distribution issue. In addition, agriculture is a business and food is a commodity, there are plenty of actors that don't want to see a greatly increased supply of food.

Also, if anything if the prices of food theoretically dropped precipitously from a glut in the first world, it wouldn't necessarily be a good thing for much of the third world either.

Scorchie
Jul 24, 2014

whitey delenda est posted:

I'm confused by this post, the guy you respond to says that supply isn't really an issue (it's not, seriously, we have calories coming out our ears... of corn), you disagree, and then you say that some author supports the idea that supply isn't an issue?

We agree that enough calories are produced to feed people. What I then try to say is that even though we have enough calories, even doing famines, the reason people starve is better explained by a lack of access to food rather than the availability of food. Put simply, people starve because they can't afford food, not because there is no food available to them.

For my use of food availability and food access I use the terms as they are described here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_security#Pillars_of_food_security

I hope I managed to make my point clearer and not make it anymore muddled.

Killer-of-Lawyers
Apr 22, 2008

THUNDERDOME LOSER 2020
Not being able to afford food is a distribution problem, not a supply issue, like I said. People starve because of poor economic conditions and a lack of systems in place to provide a safety net for the worlds hungry. I think that's a distribution problem because it could be fixed with out farming any more food and pushing existing food out the backs of c-130's for free on people that can't afford it.

Gunshow Poophole
Sep 14, 2008

OMBUDSMAN
POSTERS LOCAL 42069




Clapping Larry
^ :hfive: this too

Scorchie posted:

people starve because they can't afford food, not because there is no food available to them.


All right I understand where I guess the two terms... draw the line? along the route of taking energy out of the ground and putting it into people, but these two clauses mean the same thing. If you cannot afford food, it is not available to you.

It just seems an arbitrary distinction but I can see where in a policy context, the terms become more meaningful. And also this is what I was hoping to get out of this thread, so thanks for the knowledge!

Reiterpallasch
Nov 3, 2010



Fun Shoe
I've had fried scorpion on a stick off of a gross-rear end street food stand in Xi'an and it was delicious. Locust, too, in Beijing. Giant ant eggs (escamol, I believe) make a better taco filling than 95% of the poo poo that Americans will happily dump into theirs. Never had cricket but I'd chow down on one in a heartbeat. All y'all white bread & white picket fence kids need to get over yourselves. :colbert:

(More to the point, I don't think you'd have a problem getting like 80% of the world to routinely eat insects if you could nail the production and transportation down, since 80% of the world is still quite comfortable with the idea of eating them at least some of the time.)

cloneboy
May 7, 2014

rudatron posted:

I think if you can find a good way of leeching heavy metals from sewage, you can 'close the cycle' and treat sewage instead of pumping it out into the ocean. But as it is now you have to, otherwise that stuff will just slowly build up. It's kind of both a technological problem, but more than that a development problem. We have great technology to produce from raw inputs, but not the technology to recycle efficiently (disassemble back into raw inputs). Though you could mitigate some problems with heavy regulation, there's just still a lot of things you just can't do.
There's been some research showing that composting worms will absorb heavy metals into their systems, leaving it out of the compost they process.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/08/120816133420.htm

I've read about similar results with mycoremediation.

There are quite a few municipalities that already compost sewage, but they typically utilize conventional composting processes that don't seem to account for heavy metals and other contaminants.

Troutful posted:

Crickets thrive on leftovers (up to and including literal garbage) and can easily be raised indoors, in a shack, etc. Industrialized cricket farming is already a thing, the bugs just wind up in pet food instead of people food. I used to raise crickets for research projects in college and I would have eaten them, too, if I hadn't been worried about parasites.

I could go on and on about the benefits of crickets-as-food (they're ridiculously nutritious! many vegetarians will eat them! they're probably kosher!), but a whole lot of consumers were raised on the "never touch a bug" principle and that's obviously going to hugely influence their dietary decisions. Crickets do seem to be gaining some traction among the health food crowd, though, for whatever that's worth. I'm pretty optimistic about the future of entomophagy in general. It's really no more disgusting than eating shrimp or other shellfish -- people just need to be persuaded.

I've seen some very interesting information about black soldier fly larvae ("Phoenix worms," "soldier grubs," etc.) being used for waste management, and apparently they're very high in calcium and protein.

I'm sure I could get over my personal ick factor if they were ever presented for me to eat, but at the very least they could be used for animal feed.

Torka
Jan 5, 2008

Reiterpallasch posted:

I've had fried scorpion on a stick off of a gross-rear end street food stand in Xi'an and it was delicious. Locust, too, in Beijing. Giant ant eggs (escamol, I believe) make a better taco filling than 95% of the poo poo that Americans will happily dump into theirs. Never had cricket but I'd chow down on one in a heartbeat. All y'all white bread & white picket fence kids need to get over yourselves. :colbert:

Yeah dude, this attitude is gonna work great at convincing an entire society to convert to a new foodstuff.

computer parts
Nov 18, 2010

PLEASE CLAP

Reiterpallasch posted:

I've had fried scorpion on a stick off of a gross-rear end street food stand in Xi'an and it was delicious. Locust, too, in Beijing. Giant ant eggs (escamol, I believe) make a better taco filling than 95% of the poo poo that Americans will happily dump into theirs. Never had cricket but I'd chow down on one in a heartbeat. All y'all white bread & white picket fence kids need to get over yourselves. :colbert:

(More to the point, I don't think you'd have a problem getting like 80% of the world to routinely eat insects if you could nail the production and transportation down, since 80% of the world is still quite comfortable with the idea of eating them at least some of the time.)

This just reminds me of the Caves of Steel when they say that privacy has become outdated on Earth and everyone showers in an open room.

Fish of hemp
Apr 1, 2011

A friendly little mouse!
Could rodents be used as source of meat? I mean rats, guinea pigs, rabbits and so fort. I'd think that a hare doesn't need as much food as a cow and could be slaughtered earlier.

Killer-of-Lawyers
Apr 22, 2008

THUNDERDOME LOSER 2020

Fish of hemp posted:

Could rodents be used as source of meat? I mean rats, guinea pigs, rabbits and so fort. I'd think that a hare doesn't need as much food as a cow and could be slaughtered earlier.

Sure, but it's not just the type of meat that causes the problem. For example, you could have a very dense industrial rabbit farm, with tons of rabbits being fed manufactured food pellets, or you could have a lot of cattle on marginal grazing land that isn't really good for anything else.

Meat's complicated. It's in really high demand, so we get a lot of high density farming to meet demand, but properly applied grazing most certainly has it's place in providing food to the world. Cows and other animals eat calories that humans can't eat, there by producing food on land that otherwise wouldn't be useful for much of anything. Pigs are fantastic end points for food waste, but not every farm operation is feeding them much if any at all.

At any rate, a lot of rodents are grown for food. Guinea pigs are popular for food in some South American nations, rabbits are eaten and farmed all over, and squirrels are regularly hunted and eaten in the south.

Gunshow Poophole
Sep 14, 2008

OMBUDSMAN
POSTERS LOCAL 42069




Clapping Larry
:hfive: ^^

Fish of hemp posted:

Could rodents be used as source of meat? I mean rats, guinea pigs, rabbits and so fort. I'd think that a hare doesn't need as much food as a cow and could be slaughtered earlier.

Sure could, although rabbits are not ideal in this regard, they tend to graze pretty heavily (I've heard between 80-100 rabbits eat as much as one cow, big round numbers that's about 350 versus 500 pounds of boneless meat) and also carry some fun human pathogens (Leptospira and tularemia bugs). However, bunnies DO mature quite quickly, so there could be a return on total input given multiple slaughter seasons, I just haven't bothered with the math. Bunnies are picky and really really like to die for no reason, as well. I don't know about guinea pigs other than that they're delicious.

After some quick googling, an interesting aspect of rabbit cultivation is their practice of coprophagy, they eat their own poops. As an analogue to ruminant multiple-stomach processing I'm not sure if there are any advantages to this, but it could very well encourage better NPK return to pasturage they're raised on.

In general meat-talk kind of misses the forest for the trees, there's a 10:1 conversion factor to get calories into meatform regardless, and that's going to be the fundamental problem from an ecological perspective. Even assuming that you're raising animals on otherwise utterly-worthless land, it's a LOT of energy to put in and that's not counting the mechanical requirements of slaughter techniques. To speculate wildly for a bit, in addition to developing novel resource capture and remediation techniques, there's going to need to be some Meat Moderation public health campaigns in developing countries that make the anti-smoking efforts of the last 40 years look like a child's lemonade stand advertisement.

Dreylad
Jun 19, 2001
It's worth noting that the UN announced that 2015 is the Year of the Soils underlining the importance for managing and maintaining what arable soil we still have. In Canada, Ontario is one of the more fertile regions in the country is losing roughly 351 acres/day of farmland. Not all of that is a permanent loss, but a substantial amount of it is, as farmland is transformed into development of one kind or another.

Maybe it's a first-world problem right now but the growth and expansion of cities across the globe put increasing pressure on diminishing amounts of farmland, something that either needs to stop, or we need to find a way around it.

At the same time there are some pretty catastrophic predictions about the degradation of good farming soil with the effects of climate change, so if the ideal growing seasons and weather along the globe shifts northward and southward (which is a incredibly simplistic idea of what would happen and isn't entirely accurate at all) depending on which side of the equator they're on, that will have a huge impact on, well, everything.

Dreylad fucked around with this message at 17:18 on Jan 20, 2015

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Gunshow Poophole
Sep 14, 2008

OMBUDSMAN
POSTERS LOCAL 42069




Clapping Larry
It becomes a time scale issue as well, much like deforestation: it takes decades and generations of plants to "create" good soil, one wrong rainstorm can destroy it.

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