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From Phys.org:
Global food consumption and production is seriously unbalanced. In the UK alone we threw away 4.4 million tonnes of "avoidable" food waste in 2015 – that is food that was edible before it was discarded – which equates to £13 billion worth of food wasted, or £470 per household. Meanwhile, nearly 800 million people globally are chronically undernourished.
The world population is projected to grow to 9 billion people by the middle of this century. We face a huge challenge in finding ways to adequately feed this rapidly growing population whilst also protecting the natural environment.
However it is not just the amount of food production and the balance of its distribution that are key concerns for sustainably feeding the planet. We also need to think about what we are eating.
Presently western diets are characterised by a high proportion of animal foodstuffs, and this is a problem not just for our health, but for the environment. The Hunger Project has cited climate change as one of the hidden sources of hunger. In doing so it highlights how food production and the environment are inextricably linked.
Meat and dairy production requires more land, more water and has higher greenhouse gas emissions than plant based alternatives. As the global population continues to grow, we will need to be ever more prudent with the resources that are required for food production. We must consider whether the proportion of resources currently devoted to meat and dairy production is optimal given the numbers needing to be fed and the environmental impacts such diets can cause.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 02 2017, @02:14PM (4 children)
Wow, the conservative ignorance and rage is strong. "Don't touch our meat!" The water estimates include the water required to grow the feed (factory farms don't graze their cattle genius) and cows do drink more water than a human I'd imagine. Exhaled water vapor, pissed water, that may not leave the earth system, but it sure doesn't go right back into acquifers. We only get a certain amount of rainwater, lots of farming still relies on pumping out acquifers. We are going to be totally fucked when those acquifers are depleted.
Try learning instead of raging, its better for everyone. Raging against hipsters really shows your true motivation: hatred and ignorance.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Phoenix666 on Friday June 02 2017, @03:49PM (2 children)
Will we really? Some places might be fucked, others may gain. If we have the means to redistribute production and output, does it really matter to global society as a whole? Even the Ogallala Aquifer, which people have been ringing the alarm bell about since I was a kid decades ago, is not uniform. Some parts of its extent may draw down the supply faster than it recharges, but other parts of it will be fine for a long, long time. And the geographical machinery in the depleted regions is still there and will still recharge eventually.
Meanwhile, where does all that evaporated and precipitated water go? It goes somewhere on earth. Whereever that somewhere is, agriculture will go there and continue. If the only place it goes is the ocean, then we'll have to devote more resources to large scale desalinization. Human beings can be remarkably adaptable when they need to be.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 02 2017, @06:25PM (1 child)
Human agriculture is widely believed to have created the Saharan desert, caused a lot of problems with the Dust Bowl, and in general is depleting topsoil and draining acquifers. In many areas wells have to be dug 10X deeper due to the dropping water table. There are long terms consequences and no guarantee that rainfall will move to a location suitable for agriculture. Perhaps the rains will happen more over the oceans, perhaps over mountains, or even deserts. Maybe weather patterns will keep things bouncing around so no region is very stable.
Regardless, I see no reason for humanity to not be smarter about food production. At the least it would be good to reduce humanity's global footprint and promote ecological regrowth. Diversity is strength when it comes to evolution and survival.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Friday June 02 2017, @07:45PM
Widely believed by whom? That's one theory. There's also a widely favored theory that human arrivals across the Bering land bridge caused the extinction of mega-fauna in North America, but despite a lot more studies having been done it's far from settled.
Yes, but they still do plenty of agriculture there, and topsoil replenishes itself naturally or through human intervention. Marginal land can be remediated and made productive--see the Dutch. Or the Wari. Or the Israelis. Farmland won from the sea, mountains, and deserts, in that order.
That is the key. Humans already are and have been smarter about food production. Britons learned how to garden during the Nazi blockade, because they had to. Inhabitants on the Arabian peninsula learned to build check dams to capture rainwater, because they had to. I'm pretty sure we can figure something out as a species if the Ogallala Aquifer does dry up, with all the potential we have for huge civil engineering projects.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday June 03 2017, @03:13AM
My view is that human preference for meat trumps these weak environmental concerns. So yes, don't touch our meat! Or at least, have a better reason than what's been given so far.