European Politico-economics QA Mega-thread - Page 984

On October 31 2017 21:18 Liquid`Drone wrote:
yeah the death of insects seems to be what people are pushing as the real danger. Seen some 'we're fucked when we run out of phosphorous also but that one felt a bit more conspiratorial to me.

AN EMERGING CONSENSUS: A BROKEN SYSTEM
Our inefficient food system is threatening human health and environmental sustainability: along with other degrading and polluting land uses focused on short-term returns, the current patterns of food production, distribution, and consumption largely fail to tackle these global challenges.

The widening gulf between production and consumption, and ensuing levels of food loss/waste, further accelerates the rate of land use change, land degradation and deforestation: in poor countries, food loss is primarily due to the lack of storage and transport while in wealthy nations, food waste is a result of profligacy and inefficiencies towards the end of the food supply chain.

The current agribusiness model benefits the few at the expense of the many: small-scale farmers, the essence of rural livelihoods and backbone of food production for millennia, are under immense stress from land degradation, insecure tenure, and a globalized food system that favors concentrated, large-scale, and highly mechanized farms. Unite Nations Convention to Combat Desertification, key messages/executive summary

On October 31 2017 22:00 Artisreal wrote:
Why farmers degrade their own soil and thus their own liveliehood? The fuck do I know? Maybe it's because scientific knowledge is slow to dissipate into actual politics, maybe because the infornmation doesn't reach farmers or there are no instruments impremented to manage or even envision the transition to a sustainable land use strategy because its helluva complicated and people (i.e. farmers in the first instance and imo most likely the broad populace later as well, bullet point animal products) have to change their ways that have worked for ages. It's easy to tell someone who demands that to come again, but the title of the UNEP publication wasn't named "Agriculture at a Crossroads" for funzies. Its a huge challenge.

But the real reason organic farming isn't more green than conventional is that while it might be better for local environments on the small scale, organic farms produce far less food per unit land than conventional ones. Organic farms produce around 80% that what the same size conventional farm produces16 (some studies place organic yields below 50% those of conventional farms!).

Right now, roughly 800 million people suffer from hunger and malnutrition, and about 16 million of those will die from it17. If we were to switch to entirely organic farming, the number of people suffering would jump by 1.3 billion, assuming we use the same amount of land that we're using now

On October 31 2017 21:11 warding wrote:
Artisreal's central claim is "modern agriculture is destroying the soil."

About insects, the decrease in insect populations doesn't seem to have decreased agricultural production, where are the symptoms? Do we know why this is happening? Agriculture didn't change all that much between 1995 and 2016 in Germany did it?

A third of the planet’s land is severely degraded and fertile soil is being lost at the rate of 24bn tonnes a year, according to a new United Nations-backed study that calls for a shift away from destructively intensive agriculture.
...
“As the ready supply of healthy and productive land dries up and the population grows, competition is intensifying for land within countries and globally,” said Monique Barbut, executive secretary of the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) at the launch of the Global Land Outlook.

“To minimise the losses, the outlook suggests it is in all our interests to step back and rethink how we are managing the pressures and the competition.”

The Global Land Outlook is billed as the most comprehensive study of its type, mapping the interlinked impacts of urbanisation, climate change, erosion and forest loss. But the biggest factor is the expansion of industrial farming.

Heavy tilling, multiple harvests and abundant use of agrochemicals have increased yields at the expense of long-term sustainability. In the past 20 years, agricultural production has increased threefold and the amount of irrigated land has doubled, notes a paper in the outlook by the Joint Research Centre (JRC) of the European commission. Over time, however, this diminishes fertility and can lead to abandonment of land and ultimately desertification.

The JRC noted that decreasing productivity can be observed on 20% of the world’s cropland, 16% of forest land, 19% of grassland, and 27% of rangeland.

A 2008 report entitled "Global soil degradation" estimated that land degradation (about 2 billion hectares of land worldwide) affects 38% of the world’s cropland and has reduced water and nutrient availability (quality and access). for perspective, that represents about 15 per cent of the Earth's land area (an area larger than the United States and Mexico combined) that has been degraded through human activities. The report was prepared by IAASTD - International assessment of agricultural science and technology for development, and authored by Philippe Rekacewicz, UNEP/GRID-Arendal.

Non-celiac gluten sensitivity (NCGS) or gluten sensitivity[11] is defined as "a clinical entity induced by the ingestion of gluten leading to intestinal and/or extraintestinal symptoms that improve once the gluten-containing foodstuff is removed from the diet, and celiac disease and wheat allergy have been excluded".[12]

NCGS is included in the spectrum of gluten-related disorders.[2][3] The definition and diagnostic criteria of non-celiac gluten sensitivity were debated and established by three consensus conferences.[3][11][12][13][14]

The pathogenesis of NCGS is not yet well understood. There is evidence that not only gliadin (main cytotoxic antigen of gluten), but also other proteins present in gluten and gluten-containing cereals (wheat, rye, barley, and their derivatives) may have a role in the development of symptoms.[2] FODMAPs are present in gluten-containing grains and have recently been identified as a possible cause of gastrointestinal symptoms in NCGS patients,[2][7][15] but do not justify extra-digestive symptoms.[2]

For these reasons, NCGS is a controversial clinical condition[16] and some authors still question it.[17][18] It has been suggested that "non-celiac wheat sensitivity" is a more appropriate term, without forgetting that other gluten-containing cereals are implicated in the development of symptoms.[8][17]

A systematic overview of more than 100 studies comparing organic and conventional farming finds that the crop yields of organic agriculture are higher than previously thought. The study, conducted by UC Berkeley researchers, also found that certain practices could further shrink the productivity gap between organic crops and conventional farming.
...
“In terms of comparing productivity among the two techniques, this paper sets the record straight on the comparison between organic and conventional agriculture,” said the study’s senior author, Claire Kremen, professor of environmental science, policy and management and co-director of the Berkeley Food Institute. “With global food needs predicted to greatly increase in the next 50 years, it’s critical to look more closely at organic farming, because aside from the environmental impacts of industrial agriculture, the ability of synthetic fertilizers to increase crop yields has been declining.”

The researchers conducted a meta-analysis of 115 studies — a dataset three times greater than previously published work — comparing organic and conventional agriculture. They found that organic yields are about 19.2 percent lower than conventional ones, a smaller difference than in previous estimates..

The researchers pointed out that the available studies comparing farming methods were often biased in favor of conventional agriculture, so this estimate of the yield gap is likely overestimated. They also found that taking into account methods that optimize the productivity of organic agriculture could minimize the yield gap. They specifically highlighted two agricultural practices, multi-cropping (growing several crops together on the same field) and crop rotation, that would substantially reduce the organic-to-conventional yield gap to 9 percent and 8 percent, respectively.

The yields also depended upon the type of crop grown, the researchers found. There were no significant differences between organic and conventional yield gaps for leguminous crops, such as beans, peas and lentils, for instance.

On November 01 2017 03:46 Nyxisto wrote:
To feed everybody the production still needs to increase.

increase in food production elsewhere

On October 31 2017 22:00 Artisreal wrote:

Why farmers degrade their own soil and thus their own liveliehood? The fuck do I know? Maybe it's because scientific knowledge is slow to dissipate into actual politics, maybe because the infornmation doesn't reach farmers or there are no instruments impremented to manage or even envision the transition to a sustainable land use strategy because its helluva complicated and people (i.e. farmers in the first instance and imo most likely the broad populace later as well, bullet point animal products) have to change their ways that have worked for ages. It's easy to tell someone who demands that to come again, but the title of the UNEP publication wasn't named "Agriculture at a Crossroads" for funzies. Its a huge challenge.

On November 01 2017 03:46 Nyxisto wrote:
food is also subject to supply and demand like any other good. Reducing the amount of food produced will not just decrease the surplus, it will also drive up prices. The hunger argument isn't "retarded" at all. If it were, nobody would be hungry after all. There is an excess of food nominally because lots of food is not be able to be redistributed, shipped, transported and so forth. There's no magical button in the global supply chain that somehow gets 'excess' food to every person in need. To feed everybody the production still needs to increase.