Desalination and farming the Sahara could get us to 10B people without genetically modified food. GMO would on the other hand cost less.
The meat industry also generally gets less competitive as food becomes less plentiful. Feeding the worlds 600 million cows takes significantly more food than feeding 600 million people would. Granted not all cattle are fed from productive farmland, but it’s a common practice.
The energy costs associated with desalination are so high that the Dubai government wants to cut a piece of an iceberg from the South Pole and ship it to them for fresh water.
~3$ per 1,000 gallons or ~1,000$ per acre food is not cheap. But, assuming actual food scarcity and thus higher food prices, it’s still economically viable with proper crop selection.
I am also rather hesitant to use 3$, if we are looking 20+ years from now 2c/kWh for battery backed up solar power at grid scale seems possible. Combined with even minor improvements in desalination would significantly lower prices.
This is simply an example not a suggestion. It’s kind of the worst case example as irritating land with more rainfall takes less water.
Anyway, Corn would be a bad though not completely irrational crop. Going for a 2 acre feet of water high yield variety would cost 2k per acre. Now yields vary but 200 bu/acre makes it simple 10$ per bushel of corn. A bushel is 56 pounds so we are talking 18 cents per pound of corn. Not that big a deal.
200 bu/acre is at the high end of corn yields, so your $10 cost estimate is probably a bit low.
Current price per bushel of corn is $4.4. Adding $10 per bushel will be a huge economic shock. Given corn is a big input in most animal husbandry, this means most animal products will become more expensive.
Middle and upper class people will probably be able to pay more and eat the same things, but not the lower class.
However, as I said this is more a thought experiment than a practical solution. Higher food prices would result in less meat consumption, food waste, and likely less obesity. The most likely outcome seems to be more food production in less ideal locations not farming a literal desert using desalination.
Luckily, Sahara also happens to be a somewhat decent place for production of solar energy. The question is, in other words, not if we can, but rather if we want to throw all those resources at such a project. I suspect the most difficult task will be to stabilize the region enough for large infrastructure projects to be viable.
How do you get constant massive quantities of nutrients, water, and other farming supplies? This would require lots of energy.
Don't forget that you'd need greenhouses that can withstand pretty extreme temperatures, both hot and cold. Manufacturing and transporting those also requires lots of energy.
Finally, people would have to live there, no? I could be wrong, but I don't think a small city in the desert, far away from everything and under extreme weather/temps, would be very sustainable.
You don’t need greenhouses, deserts get extreme temperatures because of the minimal water. As Egypt demonstrates when you irrigate land the temperature swings stop being an issue.
Essentially as you irrigate near deserts you cause local climate change via huge amounts of water evaporation and thermal mass. The more land under irrigation the stronger the effect becomes.
(4) The main effect of irrigation on soil temperatures is to reduce the amplitude of the daily temperature wave, no sudden change of temperature in the root zone taking place.
Locally, absolutely. In this case most of the evaporated moisture would fall within a certain distance of the artificially created lake. Some of the moisture would escape and fall into the sea, but that's fine because it was sea water to begin with (unlike an artificial sweet water lake near the sea)
Globally with a non-desired negative consequence? It seems like it. GHG -> Climate change
Globally with a specific desired goal? Not so obvious, but some people have made interesting proposals:
- Melting the Artic Ocean by enlarging the Bering strait.
- Reversing sea rise by damning the Bering Strait.
- Capturing CO2 by dumping Fe into the oceans.
- Lowering global T by emitting SO2,
- Terraform the Sahara into a tropical jungle reversing desertification (once there are plants, more moisture would be retained)
- And others
Notice how they all have potentially catastrophic side-effects.
Nobody solves the problem from its roots. Population control would solve most of the problems, unless and until that happens, human population will be seen as a cattle field for the minds at the top.
Population control has been happening for decades now. We are rapidly approaching a flat, replacement-level birth rate.
Population isn't growing because of births. It's growing because of much longer lifespans, that go hand-in-hand with the economic and health care improvements that are raising life expectancy from the 50s to the 70s in most countries. Another generation or two, and that effect disappears into the overall population.
Other than "capitalism needs growth!!111" - why are we trying to get to 10 Billion people? Shouldn't the objective at this point not be "how do we keep growing" but - "how do we stop growing"?
Fighting global warming would be a LOT easier if we were encouraging people to not have 10 kids...
Ahh, good ol hacker news. Downvotes without a single person having a cogent argument against attempting to limit population growth.
A bus full of people texting on their phones with nobody in the drivers seat and everyone refusing because "it's not my problem". Instead of addressing the glaring issue, let's add WiFi to the bus!
Honestly? We don’t even have to try. It’s a tragedy of the commons thing: life forms will reproduce and spread until they die off. Smear some bacteria in a Petri dish and the same thing happens. A lot of it has to do with reproductive healthcare (the lack thereof) in developing nations. Basically, people keep having unprotected sex. Biological reproduction is so fundamental that even if every nation in the world had a stable government, I’m not sure there’s anything we could do that isn’t super dictatorship-y. And even then..
It’s pessimistic, yeah, but we don’t have to even try to have babies. People will keep making that individual choice until we run out of food or energy or something and lots of people, most likely the poor, die.
>life forms will reproduce and spread until they die off
Because they don't have the higher level thinking skills to realize their reproduction will have negative consequences. That's a horrible reason to not at least attempt to address the issue.
Vertical farming is about to explode as an industry. Any discussion of planet-wise nutrition is silly without acknowledging the enormous effect it will have.
Vertical farming will never explode because even after accounting for transportation costs it will still be cheaper to grow staple crops in open fields with direct sunlight. Only high value specialty produce makes sense for vertical farming. Even increases in solar panel efficiency and artificial lighting won't significantly change that equation.
Vertical farming will never be as efficient as open fields farming. Its claim to fame is quality control and the ability to grow crops year-round by spending more energy.
Earth's population has more than quadrupled in the past century, and yet food scarcity is farther away than ever, and food prices are cheaper than ever. And somehow, we did that without GMO. So I'm not convinced that GMO is the only way to solve the modest 25-30% population bump we'll get over the next century.
(Before you flip out, I'm not saying GMO is a bad thing. I'm saying this is bad logic.)
edit: Selective breeding is not GMO. If your argument is "We've always done GMO", you're wrong. Would you be willing to ban CRISPR and similar tech and do it all the old-fashioned way? No? Then GMO is not selective breeding.
I'm sure that if you pour enough money into something, you'll always get what you want, especially for something like agriculture that's largely a solved problem (and just needs to scale).
GMO might not be the only way, but it's probably the only economically viable way.
If we only consider GMO as targeted modification of a DNA sequence using methods other than selective breeding, no we didn't. That technology has been around for maybe 30 years. The world's pop hasn't gone up 30% since.
"Isn't a lot of today's food the result of GMO?"
In the West, yes. But despite the promises of lower water usage, more nutritious crops, GMO foods seems to be mostly adding Round Up resistance to crops to enable more mechanized agricultural practices (not necessarily cheaper for the end user).
This is not necessarily robust and it promotes monoculture. Furthermore, financial considerations might make it more economical to farm something non-edible, or not farm at all [0].
[0] Yes, theoretically the price of food would increase to make it profitable again. However, the equilibrium would be at higher prices (pricing out the poorest) and lower Q.S. (i.e. it's good that the poor aren't eating, cause there ain't enough to go around). Besides, it takes time for the system to reach equilibrium, at which point there's a nice famine.
Yeah, there's the rub I didn't want to get into in my original post. The problems with the food chain are more about sustainability than producing enough food, and GMO crops that we've seen so far tend to aggravate rather than solve the problems of monocropping, excessive tillage, etc. That's because the goal of GMO so far hasn't been to improve the food supply, but rather to improve vendor lock-in for megacorporation agribusiness and the associated financial interests. It isn't to solve the needs of either farmers or citizens.
The definition of GMO, for me at least, is laboratory manipulation of genes using tools like CRISPR. This allows cross-species genetic insertion. Selective breeding is not GMO, because it's not cross-species and happens through natural breeding, not laboratory genetic manipulation.
“an organism, with the exception of human beings, in which the genetic material has been altered in a way that does not occur naturally by mating and/or natural recombination.”
Which is sane definition in my view and accepted in most part of the world. Somehow only in some places (cough) is the definition arguable.
Are you saying that humanity is living within it's means?
It's like a 20yo with $500K in the bank simply giving up on everything and not working anymore thinking they'll be fine. As far as they are concerned "life is better than ever" at age 25. Just because you can't measure a debt certainly doesn't mean it's non-existent.
We aren't living within our means in energy terms - dependence on fossil fuel is a major problem. But as the economy converts to a renewable energy basis (and it inevitably will - it's already started and is accelerating), "living within our means" will become much less of a problem.
I assume you're arguing that selective breeding is the same thing as GMO. It is not, and the article was not talking about selective breeding.
If that's your argument, it's very common, as seen in this thread. It's still wrong. GMO is specifically about laboratory manipulation of genes, including cross-species gene insertion, which is not possible via selective breeding.
GMO isn't really an alternative to selective breeding,strictly speaking. GMO refers to a set of methods of inducing individual genetic change, selective breeding is a process to affect the population distribution of genetically-controlled traits independent of the mechanism by which individual genetic change occurs.
It looks like according to Wikipedia and different authoritative bodies, the definition of GMO varies quite a bit from a narrow definition that (sometimes) excludes selective breeding, to a broader definition that includes it.
> GMO is specifically about laboratory manipulation of genes, including cross-species gene insertion,
It's actually about a specific narrow range of techniques, not laboratory manipulation generally.
> cross-species gene insertion, which is not possible via selective breeding.
Cross-species genetic transfer occurs in the wild and, as such, is one of the forms of genetic drift on which the selection in selective breeding acts, so this claim is false.
It is not one of the mechanisms that is accelerated by modern methods of accelerated genetic change that are frequently paired with selective breeding as a similarly-rapid, far less controlled, and more label-friendly alternative to “GMOs”.
> I assume you're arguing that selective breeding is the same thing as GMO.
This seems to be just repeating the mistake pointed out upthread; no, current agricultural productivity is not a result of selective breeding alone without transgenic technology; GMOs are a real and significant thing in current agriculture, and part off what the current food productivity is built on.
No, it's not. GMO still is out there in fields. Why do you assume people are talking about selective breeding ? Also, GMO is not only based on CRISPR, why do you keep bringing that up ? Gene insertion was done before, although the random factor was probably more prevalent since you couldn't focus special loci.
Saying that we managed to feed people so far without the use of GMO is wrong since they're used, even if not everywhere on earth, even if not all techniques, end of story.
How long have genetically modified foods been around and common? Did they coincide with a population boom or did most population increase come before the use of genetically modified foods? Just because larger population exists at the same time right now it doesn't mean their times coincided with each other.
When I say "GMO", I mean laboratory manipulation of genetics, not selective breeding. The tech was first done experimentally in the 1970s, and didn't become commercially viable at all until the 1990s, and it wasn't until quite recently that it became easy and inexpensive. Most of the 20th century population explosion happened before that, and the expected rate of population growth over the next century is an order of magnitude lower than the previous century.
Selective breeding and GMO are different things, and will continue to be different things, until you can convince a squid to screw a cucumber. Please don't make that crap argument.
That being said, I pointedly did not say "GMO BAD". I said that the article is making a bad argument for its necessity.
I'm rejecting the question. I consider it an irrelevant distraction to the actual point, which is that GMO has not been necessary to feed a quadrupling of the population in a century, so it won't be necessary to feed a 25% increase in another century.
Only if you don't count selective breeding as GMO. Which I do. We've "genetically modified" our food to have greater yields, better taste, pest resistance, etc. Just because someone in a labcoat wasn't hunched over a petri dish doesn't mean the genetics aren't being tweaked. The corn we eat today is all but indistinguishable from what we ate in our past.
Genes are genes, and changes to them are changes to them.
>Only if you don't count selective breeding as GMO
Well if selective breeding is GMO then there is nothing on earth that isn't GMO. We have been doing selective breeding since before age of industrial revolution.
Agreed, which is why I find the health scare rather silly. Are there arguments still to be had on the ethics of what we are changing? Perhaps. But the health risk has been basically proven (as much as anything ever is in science) to be nonexistent.
> The question isn't "should we genetically modified food?" because we already are and have been doing it for centuries.
"Genetically modified" does not apply to selection and cross breeding. To create a variety of corn that can resist herbicides, you need some advanced technology that modifies the genes, hence GMO.
So, no, we haven't been genetically modifying our food for centuries. The process appeared a few decades ago in the agro-industry.
> You probably eat genetically modified food on a daily basis. It's everywhere.
It's everywhere in the USA and some other countries. In Europe , GMO are rarely directly present in food. But, indirectly, many animals are fed with GMO, especially GMO soybean.
>we already are and have been doing it for centuries
Now you're conflating traditional crop breeding such as selection and hybrid breeding with GMO crops, which is dishonest. The article is specifically about GMO crops.
>eat genetically modified food on a daily basis. It's everywhere.
I was surprised how you could possibly believe this, it makes sense only with that overbroad GMO crop definition.
No, we didn't. We did it with GMOs. You might argue we could have done it without GMOs, but that's a hypothetical not what actually happened.
Also, even with GMOs, we haven't done it sustainably—one thing new GMOs are looked to as a solution for is maintaining output with the worse conditions resulting from existing large-scale agricultural practiced without further worsening them as current practices would.
And the USA already wastes 40% of the food it produces [ref: http://vaclavsmil.com/wp-content/uploads/14.FOODWASTE.pdf]. Even ignoring the systemic risks monocropping of GMOs already pose the sheer amount of waste shows theres already more than enough to go around
Simplot's potatos are GMO and they used to be an advantage in yield and hence lower price, that is until Climate Changes and your breed and farm land couldn't adapt to the changes as quickly. And yield were no were as good as it used to be.
Netherland spend large part of the past 10+ years perfecting their agricultural output without resorting to GMO. Using good old fashion technology ( old Fashion in the case of HN ), Greenhouse, Temperature Control, lots of sensors, Big Data. Basically farming in modern industry scale. McCain, and Lamb Weston has since been following the same foot steps and getting great results.
Most of the Food Production in China, India, and many parts of the world still has a long way to go in terms of efficiency and capacity. There is still a lot could be done in Food Industry with Technology without resorting to GMO.
As a Dutchman, I was actually under the impression that we used genetic modifications. Think I heard something about that in high school. Only later did I start to hear of "gmo free" food from the USA and assumed it was the same group as those who deny the moon landing. You're telling me we do zero GMO? I don't remember any sources of course (this is decade old information, perhaps even from a physical book), but it seems like you know better than me so I figured I'd ask instead of trying to prove that negative to myself.
Generally speaking EU and European are extremely cautious of GMO. And by GMO, it is defined as per EU,
“an organism, with the exception of human beings, in which the genetic material has been altered in a way that does not occur naturally by mating and/or natural recombination.”
i.e Cross Bleeding is not GMO, which it seems to be the case in some part of the world / some HNers / somewhere in Silicon Valley circle.
I am not sure if it is actually ZERO, since I remembered even in the very few approved GMO products in EU, each member state can grant and deny them on their own. And from a high level overview I doubt there is even 1% of GMO food.
So as someone who doesn't really like GMO Food, you should be proud of yourself.
And it is one reason why European products tends to be more expensive before from a World wide perspective, and doesn't do well in export. But ever since these GMO Free and Organic Food popping up in US, EU products were able to ride along with the tide.
Genetically modified foods are already in the food supply, thats why you see that "GMO free" logo on things. Its also why some company can sue a farmer for patent infringement by growing crops from last years seeds/harvest.
The adult human body operates at a daily minimum of nutrients to survive, and adding more bodies to the fray increases the resource load on the planet.
While I personally prefer not to eat GMO food because of the uncertain effects it has on the body, at the population scale I believe it will eventually (though we don’t know when) be the case that advances in food efficiency are needed to withstand higher carrying capacity. I believe we’re already seeing the effects, with steroid/hormone use in animals, and with GMO crops.
There was an HBS article the pitted Solow’s ideas on technological advancement against Malthus’ population theory. I think both would agree that if population continues to rise, efficiency will be a necessity.
Those of you arguing for population control should think of the methods governments have used in the past to do so. Is this what you have in mind? Scary.
Birth rates will decline when a level of poverty in an area goes down to below replacement levels. This happens everywhere measured.
Here's an unpopular idea: I like bring alive. I think most people do. I'm glad that there are many people on this planet living. I know that the environment suffers because of it but I'd rather have more people.
We humans can meet the challenges of our population on earth though the world will be changed for it.
You can still have people: just have fewer kids later in life. Governments can encourage people not to have kids by reducing tax breaks for families with more kids.
China's one child policy did essentially that - financially encouraged people to have less children and the result was the murder of female babies. So many that there is an alarming amount of boys versus girls today: 118.06 boys to every 100 girls born (measured in 2010).
Remember that high birth rates are only a problem in poverty.
> Because all cultures have sex discrepancies and a tolerance to infanticide so that would be the outcome everywhere on earth ?
Most do. And is abortion infanticide? Because abortion is widely accepted across the first world, and can result in the same thing.
> And how can it be a problem only in poverty ? Doesnt the average American consume like ten fold what the average Indian does ?
Yes, which is the point. Those who say "population control" is the answer are essentially saying "make third world countries with less consumption but higher birthrates change, not first world countries with low birthrates and high consumption". The US actually have stable, ideal birth rate currently. And I doubt even the most delusional population control advocate thinks reducing the US birth rate by 10 fold (from somewhere a little above 2 to .2) is a good idea (though I could be wrong). And many first world countries are even lower to the US, to the point its actually creating major societal problems (like Japan and Sweden). What the above commenter is trying to say is that as poverty levels go down, birth rates drop to replacement level or below.
So essentially to say "population control" is the ideal solution is to say make the areas of the world with high birth rates (largely developing nations, mostly in Africa) stop having children, rather than improving the consumption patterns and efficiency of those of us living in the first world.
Most first world countries don't need nor even want to encourage people to not have kids. In fact, most want the opposite. Countries like Japan and Sweden are actively pursuing measures to encourage people to have more children, because their countries are looking at existential crises as the result of having too few young people, and a population that isn't replenishing itself.
In fact, the US, which offers tax breaks for families with more children, is right around what is considered the ideal birth rate as it currently stands. Projections for increased global population are being driven almost entirely by developing nations, most of which are in Africa. And most of the reasons for the high birth rates are entwined in a very complex web of factors, including poverty, education, and general health outcomes, none of which can be solved by waving a magic wand. The good news is that these countries are projected to level out their population growth as they do develop. The reality is that it will take time.
But this means that anyone who seriously considers "population control" as the means to dealing with climate change, world hunger, etc. completely misunderstand the realities surrounding both the growth of the global population and our ability to influence it. And that is without even considering the history of what "population control" has often meant, and the fact that it is a slippery slope that has been used to justify war, eugenics (if not in name then in function), and genocide, to say nothing of a whole host of societal issues like sexism.
Population control is not "the solution". "The solution" will require finding ways to make our societies sustainable at the increased population levels.
It's not so much that the birth rates go down when the level of poverty goes down, but birth rates go down when the level of education go up and then the standard of living goes up. This seems like a semantic argument, I know but it isn't just birth rates that goes down that goes down but age of conception goes up as well, allowing for more independent and more qualified choices. Not to mention a more egalitarian society for the sexes.
If we focus on education and not poverty, that would seem an easier problem to solve. Unfortunately, there are more societal and cultural boundaries to overcome to educating certain segments of specific populations (women in some societies, homosexuals in others, untouchables in some).
You can see all kinds of countries where birth rates go down as women gain the freedom to exercise family planning. Even women who love babies may need time to recover after a birth and prefer to space things out a bit more than might occur without available birth control. There is not a need to bring government control into this: women will make decisions about birth control in discussion with their partners and considering family finances, safety (are we in a civil war or not?), physical health, and needs of existing children.
Here's a thought experiment - assume that you do not have Genetic Modification at your disposal. Given that, what can you do to ensure you feed 10Bn people?
It's important to understand the challenge before posing a solution.
Take the number out. What can we do to ensure we can feed all the people. Break it down to the level of consumption per person, and methods we have of sourcing the inputs and disposing of the outputs. What fresh water, energy and land area is required per person?
There is nothing wrong with genetically modified food. People in the US eat it all the time, even if they don't know it. What annoys me about articles like this is that they skirt around an obvious solution to this and other environmental problems: don't let the world's population grow to 10 billion people. We already know how to do this, and they are things we should be doing already: empower and educate women, provide better family planning, provide better healthcare.
We're already doing those things. If you dropped the birth rate 50%, the population would still grow for the next few decades. Why? Because the primary cause of population growth today isn't high birth rates - it's increased life expectancy.
If you want to control the population, you'll have to resort to more old-fashioned means, like banning antibiotics and vaccine and the occasional genocide.
That's a brilliant solution, what a shame that is also part of a problem.
GM crop is by definition commercial crop, half of Indian agricultural problems are because of death of local farming vs conventional farming (think energy costs, supply chains effectiveness, technology dependence and lack of biodiversity which hits food chain hard).
Why are we exactly fixed on GM crop but not on better food management policies, promotion of local farming and climate-related tech (ie. irrigation)? Is it because GMO has clear profit margin where above mentioned (and many more) doesn't?
One can argue even about selective breeding which also has its own costs (fragility of a given genetics), but GMO should, by rule, be heavily limited.
I'm not "against GMO" because I think it makes frankentomatoes that will eat us, or because I think that gene modification is intrinsically unhealthful. I'm (sort of) against GMO because genetically modified organisms are controlled by profit-focused corporations who lock farmers into a financial system that disadvantages them and promotes heavy use of brand-name herbicides that are not good for the surrounding ecosystem. Especially in 2nd/3rd world countries where people rely more heavily on waterways for water and their backyards for food, as opposed to the US where we can pay to outsource these problems, local ability to maintain a healthy environment without paying a multinational on a yearly contract is essential.
People have been able to plant saved seeds for all of human history. Programs that prevent the ability to grow your own food for only the cost of labor put farmers and local areas at a significant disadvantage by eliminating the possibility of subsistence farming. I know that GMOs are designed to increase yields -- but that's focused on farming as commodity.
Neotokio's remark about the "clear profit margin" of GMOs is, I think, exactly on the money.
Just because GMO can be used to solve human problems does not mean GMO will be used for human problems. It's more likely to solve corporate problems instead.
In 1961, India was on the brink of mass famine... India soon adopted IR8 – a semi-dwarf rice variety developed by the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) that could produce more grains of rice per plant when grown with certain fertilizers and irrigation...In 1968, Indian agronomist S.K. De Datta published his findings that IR8 rice yielded about 5 tons per hectare with no fertilizer, and almost 10 tons per hectare under optimal conditions. This was 10 times the yield of traditional rice.
Indian Green Revolution was a spiritual successor of Mexican 'Green' Revolution (avoiding famine in Mexico), same people (corporations) responsible for both. Yes, famine was avoided, but let's look at the costs - energy + soil degradation + lack of biodiversity (btw. India STILL has tremendous malnutrition problem, crops are mainly exported - again - profit margins).
There is a big asymmetry here we are discussing, mainly, pre 'Green Revolution' agriculture was unsustainable because of population growth and lack of education (development of sustainable agriculture for internal use), while after revolution is unsustainable because of... same things (exchange lack of education for no need to educate). India didn't solve anything, it just pushed the problem further ahead while country monetized on exports (which, without a doubt, provided higher standard of living for some %).
Why not do what i already described? Better management, better climate related preparations, stronger internal supply lines? How is that worse than GM-way which seems to only beat those solutions in profits? Seems more reasonable to save energy, make agriculture less reliable on outsourced tech and empower local production.
I think GMOs are solution to problem from 1960-1970s, not from 2020.
Maybe, if we don't have an abundance of food for 10 billion people, people will think twice before having more children? The environmental challenges with our existing number of people are already overwhelming.
I find it weird we worry about a “Malthusian” catastrophe still. The theory being proposed in 1798. What is the Information Age version? That deals with, “when do we kill the earth by our attempts to get everyone a cellphone?”
We avoided that early catastrophe by using fertilisers sourced from mined phosphates. We have about 300 years reserves at current consumption rates. If we double our consumption, we halve the reserve longevity. No amount of genetic engineering cleverness is going to address the need for onoohsates.
Just because we avoided the early catastrophe doesn’t mean Malthus was wrong.
At some point in the future we need to focus on farming ocean plants that recover the minerals we have been leaching into the oceans for the last few hundred years. Once we can close the loop on phosphates we can start talking about post-industrial-revolution population levels being sustainable.
Ignoring the topic of global warming, one of the things happening is the northern places like northern canada and russia are melting for the first time in 30,000 years. There's significantly more growing space.
We also have grow lights, vertical farming, and urban farming. Which will greatly improve food yields.
Flipside, how many people have heard about gluten sensitivity 10 years ago? Why are so many people trying crazy diets like vegan, keto, carnivore? Virtually all of these diets have 1 thing in common, eliminating sugar from the diet.
Where do we get our sugar? Oh right, pretty much 100% of sugar beets are genetically modified.
I'm not trying to beat up GMO, but there seems to be something bad in our diet and perhaps it's these GMO plants.
I find it treacherous to assume that people didn't have gluten insensitivity in the past. See: cancers existed in the past, but diagnosis and treatment often wasn't on the table.
In a world with global monopolies that drive out local farmers in developing countries through their hyper efficiency, importing GMO food aid from the USA is obviously required.
If countries were able to produce their own food then GMO food isn't necessary.
I don't like the way the thread is going. It's pure bike shedding whether GMO includes selective breeding or not. Then everyone redefines the word however they like to strengthen their argument. We might as well replace GMO with something arbitrary like toilet paper.
"Maybe anti-toilet-paper movements that might lead to believe that they are not used yet" Now everything sounds ridiculous but no one argued about the actual problems or advantages.
We could just ensure the population stays below 2B. Education, emancipation of women, access to contraceptives and abortion, immunisation, and improved healthcare for new mothers and infants: these are proven time and again to reduce fertility rates.
There’s no sensible reason to keep using infinite expansion as a measure of the health of national economies. We should change the goals to improved access to services, and more even distribution of national wealth (ie: lower spread between richest and poorest).
When we run out of fresh water, desalination should not be viewed as the answer but only as an emergency measure. Desalination requires abundant energy and pollutes the marine environment with over-salinated water. Recycling sewage I to drinking water only works as long as the equipment is maintained fastidiously and never breaks.
Rather than producing more food, we should focus on producing fewer people.
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[ 3.9 ms ] story [ 110 ms ] threadThe meat industry also generally gets less competitive as food becomes less plentiful. Feeding the worlds 600 million cows takes significantly more food than feeding 600 million people would. Granted not all cattle are fed from productive farmland, but it’s a common practice.
I am also rather hesitant to use 3$, if we are looking 20+ years from now 2c/kWh for battery backed up solar power at grid scale seems possible. Combined with even minor improvements in desalination would significantly lower prices.
And why not just plant more crops in an area where water is plentiful, like the Amazon?
And...isn’t that exactly what we’re doing, making more farmland from the rainforest?
Anyway, Corn would be a bad though not completely irrational crop. Going for a 2 acre feet of water high yield variety would cost 2k per acre. Now yields vary but 200 bu/acre makes it simple 10$ per bushel of corn. A bushel is 56 pounds so we are talking 18 cents per pound of corn. Not that big a deal.
Current price per bushel of corn is $4.4. Adding $10 per bushel will be a huge economic shock. Given corn is a big input in most animal husbandry, this means most animal products will become more expensive.
Middle and upper class people will probably be able to pay more and eat the same things, but not the lower class.
However, as I said this is more a thought experiment than a practical solution. Higher food prices would result in less meat consumption, food waste, and likely less obesity. The most likely outcome seems to be more food production in less ideal locations not farming a literal desert using desalination.
Wow, good point, I did not expect that. So it should be sustainable, at least.
There is plenty of space but other than that...
How do you get constant massive quantities of nutrients, water, and other farming supplies? This would require lots of energy.
Don't forget that you'd need greenhouses that can withstand pretty extreme temperatures, both hot and cold. Manufacturing and transporting those also requires lots of energy.
Finally, people would have to live there, no? I could be wrong, but I don't think a small city in the desert, far away from everything and under extreme weather/temps, would be very sustainable.
Essentially as you irrigate near deserts you cause local climate change via huge amounts of water evaporation and thermal mass. The more land under irrigation the stronger the effect becomes.
High desert regions typically have the greatest diurnal-temperature variations, while low-lying humid areas typically have the least. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diurnal_temperature_variation
Soil temperatures under cotton in Egypt: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-agricultu...
(4) The main effect of irrigation on soil temperatures is to reduce the amplitude of the daily temperature wave, no sudden change of temperature in the root zone taking place.
All it would take is a long canal, nothing outside our capabilities.
Not the canal, but the modification of the climate.
Globally with a non-desired negative consequence? It seems like it. GHG -> Climate change
Globally with a specific desired goal? Not so obvious, but some people have made interesting proposals:
- Melting the Artic Ocean by enlarging the Bering strait.
- Reversing sea rise by damning the Bering Strait.
- Capturing CO2 by dumping Fe into the oceans.
- Lowering global T by emitting SO2,
- Terraform the Sahara into a tropical jungle reversing desertification (once there are plants, more moisture would be retained)
- And others
Notice how they all have potentially catastrophic side-effects.
Population isn't growing because of births. It's growing because of much longer lifespans, that go hand-in-hand with the economic and health care improvements that are raising life expectancy from the 50s to the 70s in most countries. Another generation or two, and that effect disappears into the overall population.
A growing population isn't a problem. How that population behaves is the concern.
There are plenty of resources on this planet to sustain more people. How the population uses and shares those resources is what needs to be addressed.
Fighting global warming would be a LOT easier if we were encouraging people to not have 10 kids...
Ahh, good ol hacker news. Downvotes without a single person having a cogent argument against attempting to limit population growth.
A bus full of people texting on their phones with nobody in the drivers seat and everyone refusing because "it's not my problem". Instead of addressing the glaring issue, let's add WiFi to the bus!
It’s pessimistic, yeah, but we don’t have to even try to have babies. People will keep making that individual choice until we run out of food or energy or something and lots of people, most likely the poor, die.
Because they don't have the higher level thinking skills to realize their reproduction will have negative consequences. That's a horrible reason to not at least attempt to address the issue.
What feeding X0e9 people requires is energy.
(Before you flip out, I'm not saying GMO is a bad thing. I'm saying this is bad logic.)
edit: Selective breeding is not GMO. If your argument is "We've always done GMO", you're wrong. Would you be willing to ban CRISPR and similar tech and do it all the old-fashioned way? No? Then GMO is not selective breeding.
GMO might not be the only way, but it's probably the only economically viable way.
-Greater prevalence of plant-based diets
-Steroids and hormones in farmed animals
-Pesticide development and usage
-Vitamin/nutrient supplementation
-Less whaling :)
Good question. I won't answer that.
"Did we do it without GMO food? "
If we only consider GMO as targeted modification of a DNA sequence using methods other than selective breeding, no we didn't. That technology has been around for maybe 30 years. The world's pop hasn't gone up 30% since.
"Isn't a lot of today's food the result of GMO?"
In the West, yes. But despite the promises of lower water usage, more nutritious crops, GMO foods seems to be mostly adding Round Up resistance to crops to enable more mechanized agricultural practices (not necessarily cheaper for the end user).
This is not necessarily robust and it promotes monoculture. Furthermore, financial considerations might make it more economical to farm something non-edible, or not farm at all [0].
[0] Yes, theoretically the price of food would increase to make it profitable again. However, the equilibrium would be at higher prices (pricing out the poorest) and lower Q.S. (i.e. it's good that the poor aren't eating, cause there ain't enough to go around). Besides, it takes time for the system to reach equilibrium, at which point there's a nice famine.
“an organism, with the exception of human beings, in which the genetic material has been altered in a way that does not occur naturally by mating and/or natural recombination.”
Which is sane definition in my view and accepted in most part of the world. Somehow only in some places (cough) is the definition arguable.
It's like a 20yo with $500K in the bank simply giving up on everything and not working anymore thinking they'll be fine. As far as they are concerned "life is better than ever" at age 25. Just because you can't measure a debt certainly doesn't mean it's non-existent.
I think you're confused. You probably eat genetically modified food on a daily basis. It's everywhere.
The question isn't "should we genetically modified food?" because we already are and have been doing it for centuries.
The question is "which GMO techniques should we use?"
But yeah parent comment underlines all the pathetically common misconceptions and broad ignorance about GMOs.
Maybe anti-GMOs movements that might lead to believe that they are not used yet and that it's still completely up to debate ? I don't really know.
If that's your argument, it's very common, as seen in this thread. It's still wrong. GMO is specifically about laboratory manipulation of genes, including cross-species gene insertion, which is not possible via selective breeding.
It's actually about a specific narrow range of techniques, not laboratory manipulation generally.
> cross-species gene insertion, which is not possible via selective breeding.
Cross-species genetic transfer occurs in the wild and, as such, is one of the forms of genetic drift on which the selection in selective breeding acts, so this claim is false.
It is not one of the mechanisms that is accelerated by modern methods of accelerated genetic change that are frequently paired with selective breeding as a similarly-rapid, far less controlled, and more label-friendly alternative to “GMOs”.
> I assume you're arguing that selective breeding is the same thing as GMO.
This seems to be just repeating the mistake pointed out upthread; no, current agricultural productivity is not a result of selective breeding alone without transgenic technology; GMOs are a real and significant thing in current agriculture, and part off what the current food productivity is built on.
Saying that we managed to feed people so far without the use of GMO is wrong since they're used, even if not everywhere on earth, even if not all techniques, end of story.
That being said, I pointedly did not say "GMO BAD". I said that the article is making a bad argument for its necessity.
https://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/28/science/28crop.html
I assume that is only if you live in US? GMO Food are near non existent in EU.
Genes are genes, and changes to them are changes to them.
Well if selective breeding is GMO then there is nothing on earth that isn't GMO. We have been doing selective breeding since before age of industrial revolution.
"Genetically modified" does not apply to selection and cross breeding. To create a variety of corn that can resist herbicides, you need some advanced technology that modifies the genes, hence GMO.
So, no, we haven't been genetically modifying our food for centuries. The process appeared a few decades ago in the agro-industry.
> You probably eat genetically modified food on a daily basis. It's everywhere.
It's everywhere in the USA and some other countries. In Europe , GMO are rarely directly present in food. But, indirectly, many animals are fed with GMO, especially GMO soybean.
Now you're conflating traditional crop breeding such as selection and hybrid breeding with GMO crops, which is dishonest. The article is specifically about GMO crops.
>eat genetically modified food on a daily basis. It's everywhere.
I was surprised how you could possibly believe this, it makes sense only with that overbroad GMO crop definition.
No, we didn't. We did it with GMOs. You might argue we could have done it without GMOs, but that's a hypothetical not what actually happened.
Also, even with GMOs, we haven't done it sustainably—one thing new GMOs are looked to as a solution for is maintaining output with the worse conditions resulting from existing large-scale agricultural practiced without further worsening them as current practices would.
Simplot's potatos are GMO and they used to be an advantage in yield and hence lower price, that is until Climate Changes and your breed and farm land couldn't adapt to the changes as quickly. And yield were no were as good as it used to be.
Netherland spend large part of the past 10+ years perfecting their agricultural output without resorting to GMO. Using good old fashion technology ( old Fashion in the case of HN ), Greenhouse, Temperature Control, lots of sensors, Big Data. Basically farming in modern industry scale. McCain, and Lamb Weston has since been following the same foot steps and getting great results.
Most of the Food Production in China, India, and many parts of the world still has a long way to go in terms of efficiency and capacity. There is still a lot could be done in Food Industry with Technology without resorting to GMO.
“an organism, with the exception of human beings, in which the genetic material has been altered in a way that does not occur naturally by mating and/or natural recombination.”
i.e Cross Bleeding is not GMO, which it seems to be the case in some part of the world / some HNers / somewhere in Silicon Valley circle.
I am not sure if it is actually ZERO, since I remembered even in the very few approved GMO products in EU, each member state can grant and deny them on their own. And from a high level overview I doubt there is even 1% of GMO food.
So as someone who doesn't really like GMO Food, you should be proud of yourself.
And it is one reason why European products tends to be more expensive before from a World wide perspective, and doesn't do well in export. But ever since these GMO Free and Organic Food popping up in US, EU products were able to ride along with the tide.
While I personally prefer not to eat GMO food because of the uncertain effects it has on the body, at the population scale I believe it will eventually (though we don’t know when) be the case that advances in food efficiency are needed to withstand higher carrying capacity. I believe we’re already seeing the effects, with steroid/hormone use in animals, and with GMO crops.
There was an HBS article the pitted Solow’s ideas on technological advancement against Malthus’ population theory. I think both would agree that if population continues to rise, efficiency will be a necessity.
Birth rates will decline when a level of poverty in an area goes down to below replacement levels. This happens everywhere measured.
Here's an unpopular idea: I like bring alive. I think most people do. I'm glad that there are many people on this planet living. I know that the environment suffers because of it but I'd rather have more people.
We humans can meet the challenges of our population on earth though the world will be changed for it.
Remember that high birth rates are only a problem in poverty.
And how can it be a problem only in poverty ? Doesnt the average American consume like ten fold what the average Indian does ?
Most do. And is abortion infanticide? Because abortion is widely accepted across the first world, and can result in the same thing.
> And how can it be a problem only in poverty ? Doesnt the average American consume like ten fold what the average Indian does ?
Yes, which is the point. Those who say "population control" is the answer are essentially saying "make third world countries with less consumption but higher birthrates change, not first world countries with low birthrates and high consumption". The US actually have stable, ideal birth rate currently. And I doubt even the most delusional population control advocate thinks reducing the US birth rate by 10 fold (from somewhere a little above 2 to .2) is a good idea (though I could be wrong). And many first world countries are even lower to the US, to the point its actually creating major societal problems (like Japan and Sweden). What the above commenter is trying to say is that as poverty levels go down, birth rates drop to replacement level or below.
So essentially to say "population control" is the ideal solution is to say make the areas of the world with high birth rates (largely developing nations, mostly in Africa) stop having children, rather than improving the consumption patterns and efficiency of those of us living in the first world.
Seems problematic to say the least.
In fact, the US, which offers tax breaks for families with more children, is right around what is considered the ideal birth rate as it currently stands. Projections for increased global population are being driven almost entirely by developing nations, most of which are in Africa. And most of the reasons for the high birth rates are entwined in a very complex web of factors, including poverty, education, and general health outcomes, none of which can be solved by waving a magic wand. The good news is that these countries are projected to level out their population growth as they do develop. The reality is that it will take time.
But this means that anyone who seriously considers "population control" as the means to dealing with climate change, world hunger, etc. completely misunderstand the realities surrounding both the growth of the global population and our ability to influence it. And that is without even considering the history of what "population control" has often meant, and the fact that it is a slippery slope that has been used to justify war, eugenics (if not in name then in function), and genocide, to say nothing of a whole host of societal issues like sexism.
Population control is not "the solution". "The solution" will require finding ways to make our societies sustainable at the increased population levels.
If we focus on education and not poverty, that would seem an easier problem to solve. Unfortunately, there are more societal and cultural boundaries to overcome to educating certain segments of specific populations (women in some societies, homosexuals in others, untouchables in some).
It's important to understand the challenge before posing a solution.
If you want to control the population, you'll have to resort to more old-fashioned means, like banning antibiotics and vaccine and the occasional genocide.
GM crop is by definition commercial crop, half of Indian agricultural problems are because of death of local farming vs conventional farming (think energy costs, supply chains effectiveness, technology dependence and lack of biodiversity which hits food chain hard).
Why are we exactly fixed on GM crop but not on better food management policies, promotion of local farming and climate-related tech (ie. irrigation)? Is it because GMO has clear profit margin where above mentioned (and many more) doesn't?
One can argue even about selective breeding which also has its own costs (fragility of a given genetics), but GMO should, by rule, be heavily limited.
I'm not "against GMO" because I think it makes frankentomatoes that will eat us, or because I think that gene modification is intrinsically unhealthful. I'm (sort of) against GMO because genetically modified organisms are controlled by profit-focused corporations who lock farmers into a financial system that disadvantages them and promotes heavy use of brand-name herbicides that are not good for the surrounding ecosystem. Especially in 2nd/3rd world countries where people rely more heavily on waterways for water and their backyards for food, as opposed to the US where we can pay to outsource these problems, local ability to maintain a healthy environment without paying a multinational on a yearly contract is essential.
People have been able to plant saved seeds for all of human history. Programs that prevent the ability to grow your own food for only the cost of labor put farmers and local areas at a significant disadvantage by eliminating the possibility of subsistence farming. I know that GMOs are designed to increase yields -- but that's focused on farming as commodity.
Neotokio's remark about the "clear profit margin" of GMOs is, I think, exactly on the money.
Just because GMO can be used to solve human problems does not mean GMO will be used for human problems. It's more likely to solve corporate problems instead.
Eh, citation needed. Especially given the role of GM crops in sparking the Green Revolution and avoiding famine in India:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Revolution#Start_in_Indi...
In 1961, India was on the brink of mass famine... India soon adopted IR8 – a semi-dwarf rice variety developed by the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) that could produce more grains of rice per plant when grown with certain fertilizers and irrigation...In 1968, Indian agronomist S.K. De Datta published his findings that IR8 rice yielded about 5 tons per hectare with no fertilizer, and almost 10 tons per hectare under optimal conditions. This was 10 times the yield of traditional rice.
Indian Green Revolution was a spiritual successor of Mexican 'Green' Revolution (avoiding famine in Mexico), same people (corporations) responsible for both. Yes, famine was avoided, but let's look at the costs - energy + soil degradation + lack of biodiversity (btw. India STILL has tremendous malnutrition problem, crops are mainly exported - again - profit margins).
There is a big asymmetry here we are discussing, mainly, pre 'Green Revolution' agriculture was unsustainable because of population growth and lack of education (development of sustainable agriculture for internal use), while after revolution is unsustainable because of... same things (exchange lack of education for no need to educate). India didn't solve anything, it just pushed the problem further ahead while country monetized on exports (which, without a doubt, provided higher standard of living for some %).
Why not do what i already described? Better management, better climate related preparations, stronger internal supply lines? How is that worse than GM-way which seems to only beat those solutions in profits? Seems more reasonable to save energy, make agriculture less reliable on outsourced tech and empower local production.
I think GMOs are solution to problem from 1960-1970s, not from 2020.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_rice
Just because we avoided the early catastrophe doesn’t mean Malthus was wrong.
At some point in the future we need to focus on farming ocean plants that recover the minerals we have been leaching into the oceans for the last few hundred years. Once we can close the loop on phosphates we can start talking about post-industrial-revolution population levels being sustainable.
We also have grow lights, vertical farming, and urban farming. Which will greatly improve food yields.
Flipside, how many people have heard about gluten sensitivity 10 years ago? Why are so many people trying crazy diets like vegan, keto, carnivore? Virtually all of these diets have 1 thing in common, eliminating sugar from the diet.
Where do we get our sugar? Oh right, pretty much 100% of sugar beets are genetically modified.
I'm not trying to beat up GMO, but there seems to be something bad in our diet and perhaps it's these GMO plants.
The equivalent of the surface of Africa is already being used for crops and going up, most of it to feed livestock.
There are projections of fishless oceans in less than 30 years, and we got 12 years to stop global warming. What could go wrong?
The diminished, superstitious minds of today, however, condemn the new generation of scientists who are doing the exact same thing.
If countries were able to produce their own food then GMO food isn't necessary.
"Maybe anti-toilet-paper movements that might lead to believe that they are not used yet" Now everything sounds ridiculous but no one argued about the actual problems or advantages.
There’s no sensible reason to keep using infinite expansion as a measure of the health of national economies. We should change the goals to improved access to services, and more even distribution of national wealth (ie: lower spread between richest and poorest).
When we run out of fresh water, desalination should not be viewed as the answer but only as an emergency measure. Desalination requires abundant energy and pollutes the marine environment with over-salinated water. Recycling sewage I to drinking water only works as long as the equipment is maintained fastidiously and never breaks.
Rather than producing more food, we should focus on producing fewer people.