[kublikhan]

Ehrlich made much the same prediction in his book "The Population Bomb" back in 1968. Turns out, he was wrong. I don't see your prediction of millions of Egyptians starving to death coming true either.

[vtsnowedin]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('kublikhan', 'E')hrlich made much the same prediction in his book "The Population Bomb" back in 1968. Turns out, he was wrong. I don't see your prediction of millions of Egyptians starving to death coming true either.

[Pretorian]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('kublikhan', 'E')hrlich made much the same prediction in his book "The Population Bomb" back in 1968. Turns out, he was wrong. I don't see your prediction of millions of Egyptians starving to death coming true either.

[kublikhan]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Pretorian', 'H')e was? Millions had died of malnutrition since 1968. In any case, 40 years is less than 0.001 % of humanoid existence, don't give up hope.

[Pops]

Eirlich didn't see the significance of increasing efficiency and productivity in every sphere - I think actually brought about by high energy prices. I don't think people realize exactly how different things are today from the pre-plastic-made-in-China era. I have a '69 pickup out in the barn and it is a pretty crude unit compared to the '99 pickup in the drive. We talk about this all the time here

This is an interesting article with lots of charts indicating increasing crop yields on the main grain crops, but virtually every trendline save for beans and a few minor crops looks to be bending down.


This one is particularly disturbing because the primary fallback to avert hunger - in my book anyway, is to feed beef and dairy less of the food we can eat and more that we can't - grass:




Oh well, let 'em eat tofu.

.

[Pretorian]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('kublikhan', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Pretorian', 'H')e was? Millions had died of malnutrition since 1968. In any case, 40 years is less than 0.001 % of humanoid existence, don't give up hope.

[kublikhan]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Pops', '[')url=http://energyfarms.wordpress.com/2009/09/03/crop-yield-projections-miss-biofuel-report-target/]This is an interesting article[/url] with lots of charts indicating increasing crop yields on the main grain crops, but virtually every trendline save for beans and a few minor crops looks to be bending down.

[Pops]

Pretty funny, I see most increasing over time but an overall slowing in the rate of increase, which is the authors conclusion I think.

A whole lot has to do with ethanol, corn has pushed other corps onto poorer soil, that's probably what's happening to wheat, though I suspect it was already happening because of HFCS and the myriad other uses for corn.

Look at hay, it can only bring so much and if the cost of fertilizer is prohibitive, people just don't fertilize and production drops. In the bean/corn rotation, corn is gold now so the beans that are rotated with corn get the benefit of the P & K applied to increase the corn yield and so bean production rises.

[kublikhan]

Oh my bad, I misread your post. I thought you meant the yields were decreasing. Yeah I agree the rate of yield increase is slowing down for most crops.

So beans are riding the coattails of corn? That would explain why its one of the few with accelerating yield increases. Corn ethanol is such a waste of resources though :/

[Pretorian]

What about breeding Egyptians, is it a waste of resources or not?

[kublikhan]

Give me some time my friend, my mind is still tripping balls from your revelation that all people eventually die.