[kjmclark]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('hope_full', 'I')'ve always been puzzled why energy and food are left OUT of the CPI. It's not like we can get by without those two items...

[Ivan_M]

stop the food crisis, eh? so if you rub to politicians together does corn come out?

[Dreamtwister]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('virgincrude', '[')url=http://www.avaaz.org/en/world_food_crisis/5.php?cl=94737528]avaaz.org Stop the Food Crisis[/url]

[mystiek]

Well stated Ludi!

[municipal]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('virgincrude', 'H')ere's an online petition to be presented to Ban Ki Moon on Wednesday, (if they reach the One Million signatures) telling the leaders gathering there to get their heads out of the corporate feed trough and take concrete measures to stop the ongoing food crisis.

Please take a minute, this organisation is one of the best run activist sites, and believe it or not, these simple actions (signing online petitions) can get results. They rarely solve anything, but often they make things better. Isn't that better than nothing?

avaaz.org Stop the Food Crisis

[farmerleaf]

The UN Secretary General called for increasing the food supply by 50%, suggesting that this was a feasible goal. While it's a nice political statement, full of soothing sounds for hungry people, it is not grounded in the current reality. Growing food is a biological process, not an industrial process where output can be ramped up at will. One is left to wonder where the land to farm will come from, since so much arable land has been paved over, built upon, or flooded behind mega-hydro dams.

Although most food consumed in this country is produced on industrial scale farms, using industrial-type methods, it is still subject to the realities of the natural world. And those realities include drought, pestilence, soil depletion, floods, and extreme climate changes. (and let's not forget commercial development either) Furthermore, we have seen the negative results of industrial farming first hand: land and water pollution, soil compaction, desertification, mad cow disease, avian flu, honeybee colony collapse, e-coli tainted food, pesticide residues, malnutrition, etc.

When it comes to the contemporary industrial-petroleum based, so called scientific "green revolution" to solve the world food problems, I am certain I hear the fat lady singing. It is well past time to tear up the lawn and plant something useful, such as fruit trees and vegetables.

-farmerleaf

[wisconsin_cur]

First off, welcome to peakoil.com

I hope you look around and decide to stick around. Since I see you are interested in issues of food supply and world hunger I would invite you over to This discussion where we have been talking about the issue for a while now.

If you have any questions, please let me know.

Cur

[Homesteader]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('farmerleaf', 'T')he UN Secretary General called for increasing the food supply by 50%, suggesting that this was a feasible goal. While it's a nice political statement, full of soothing sounds for hungry people, it is not grounded in the current reality. Growing food is a biological process, not an industrial process where output can be ramped up at will. One is left to wonder where the land to farm will come from, since so much arable land has been paved over, built upon, or flooded behind mega-hydro dams.

Although most food consumed in this country is produced on industrial scale farms, using industrial-type methods, it is still subject to the realities of the natural world. And those realities include drought, pestilence, soil depletion, floods, and extreme climate changes. (and let's not forget commercial development either) Furthermore, we have seen the negative results of industrial farming first hand: land and water pollution, soil compaction, desertification, mad cow disease, avian flu, honeybee colony collapse, e-coli tainted food, pesticide residues, malnutrition, etc.

When it comes to the contemporary industrial-petroleum based, so called scientific "green revolution" to solve the world food problems, I am certain I hear the fat lady singing. It is well past time to tear up the lawn and plant something useful, such as fruit trees and vegetables.

-farmerleaf

[farmerleaf]

I'll be around, but being a farmer who actually touches the land (we don't own a tractor) and the seed planted therein, my time online is rather limited during the peak growing season. Even using permaculture principles, organic methods, and operating the farm in a holistic manner, we are hard pressed to keep ahead of the changes wrought by climate change.

[Ludi]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('farmerleaf', 'w')e are hard pressed to keep ahead of the changes wrought by climate change.

[farmerleaf]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Ludi', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('farmerleaf', 'w')e are hard pressed to keep ahead of the changes wrought by climate change.

[RedStateGreen]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('farmerleaf', '
')I hope this response will generate more concrete discussions of local, firsthand climate change effects.

[farmerleaf]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('RedStateGreen', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('farmerleaf', '
')I hope this response will generate more concrete discussions of local, firsthand climate change effects.

[RedStateGreen]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('farmerleaf', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('RedStateGreen', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('farmerleaf', '
')I hope this response will generate more concrete discussions of local, firsthand climate change effects.

[arretium]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('burtonridr', 'D')ude.... HOW? I would bet you could cut it down to $500 a month if really took a good look at what you are buying each month. It took me a few years to get it down to as cheap as we are now.

Basically we buy lots of fruits and veggies $30, 8 of the cheapest steaks we can buy $20, about $30 in canned food, plus what we used the previous month $10, a 5 lb bag of rice $3, 2 whole chickens $10, Yogurt $10, Milk $16, Frozen veggies $10, Frozen Juice $10, 2 bags of tortillas $6, 2 things of salsa $10, 5lb Cheese $10, 10lbs of hamburger $11, Beer $10, 5 dozen eggs $8.

That all adds up to about $200, then there are misc things we usually have to by(condiments, spices, beer, etc) throughout the month. We clip coupons and watch for sales at the first of the month before going shopping, it saves us anywhere from $20 to $50 a month.

We do not waste anything, I eat left overs everyday at work, Anything that goes bad(which is very little) goes into the compost pile.

[strider3700]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('burtonridr', ' ')5 dozen eggs $8

[patience]

Egg prices are cyclical, because chickens don't lay as many in winter, when feed prices are typically higher, but egg price drops in spring. We pay $1.29 at Wal MArt, to $1.49 locally now. It was $2.29 last winter. We live in Indiana, where corn, chickens and eggs are produced and processed in massive quantities, so prices will be higher farther from production areas.

Big corporate egg producers hedge feed prices with future contracts, so what we see now is based on what they contracted maybe 6 months ago. With corn futures bouncing around $7 to $8 bushel, the next feed contracts will be higher, so eggs will go up when that hits. Depending on how this crop season goes, we could see some very high food prices next winter.

That includes the prices of beef, pork, and poultry, that will also suffer from high grain prices. Beef and pork will also be impacted by the current high prices of feed that have caused a lot of livestock to be sent to slaughter early, lowering herd numbers on the farm. With corn futures at record levels, farmers will continue to cull herds. At some point, possibly next winter, those depleted herds will cause a reduction in the amount of meat in the stores, and commensurate higher prices. I read somewhere beef could hit $7/lb., I think quoted from a WSJ article. Just a guess. But it will go up, nobody knows how much. I stocked the freezer this summer.

[jdmartin]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('burtonridr', '
')
Dude.... HOW? I would bet you could cut it down to $500 a month if really took a good look at what you are buying each month. It took me a few years to get it down to as cheap as we are now.

Basically we buy lots of fruits and veggies $30, 8 of the cheapest steaks we can buy $20, about $30 in canned food, plus what we used the previous month $10, a 5 lb bag of rice $3, 2 whole chickens $10, Yogurt $10, Milk $16, Frozen veggies $10, Frozen Juice $10, 2 bags of tortillas $6, 2 things of salsa $10, 5lb Cheese $10, 10lbs of hamburger $11, Beer $10, 5 dozen eggs $8.

That all adds up to about $200, then there are misc things we usually have to by(condiments, spices, beer, etc) throughout the month. We clip coupons and watch for sales at the first of the month before going shopping, it saves us anywhere from $20 to $50 a month.

We do not waste anything, I eat left overs everyday at work, Anything that goes bad(which is very little) goes into the compost pile.

[MonteQuest]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('hope_full', 'I')'ve always been puzzled why energy and food are left OUT of the CPI. It's not like we can get by without those two items...

[wisconsin_cur]

Previous Thread Found Here
Part One:
World Protein Consumption and the use of grain feeds Ok, that was not the original name of the FAO report but I like my title better.

Why the increased prices of grains over the last few years when, as has been demonstrated on earlier pages, the actual calorie per capita has gone up? We are using that increase to make meat, eggs and milk.

Pork has around a 6:1 conversion ratio (I will assume that the developing nations producing most of this meat are getting the same results as their American counterparts):



Chicken, when producing broilers, has ~2:1 ration



Eggs and milk are a little harder to figure. In 2003 the USDA reported (on average) that 51 pounds of grain were used to produce every 100 eggs and 69 pounds were required to produce 100 pounds (~11.5 gallons) of milk.




So what does all of this mean for grain usage for animal feed?



So while grain production has gone up 1,500 tonnes over the last few decades,

only about 1/2 of this increase is available for human consumption (~600 million tonnes) all of this during a time when population has doubled.



So doing the math quickly and in my head this translates into treading water since the 1960's, no improvement, no loss in respect to grain available per person.

If we are to in anyway "blame" corn based ethanol it really seems to be a secondary problem since so little is used compared to how much the world puts into the production of meat as to make it a small portion of overall usage.



Part Two:
So the question remains, while there were famines in the past, is there anything different about today, in respect to that ability of people to purchase from the pie of food that is available?



The purchasing power of the top 2 Billion has gone up compared to the middle and lower 2 Billion. That increased purchasing power has a number of effects. Among them,

Obesity rate in China growing

Conclusion:
I have already been too brief and cursury. I expect and hope for some useful additions and corrections in response, but let me add just a few more thoughts.

1. Most of the concepts that we use for Oil production and consumption apply to food and grain production and consumption. Jeavon's Paradox, for example, goes a long way to explain why the excess grain production has been eaten up by increased meat production and human population expansion. Export Land Model is helpful in thinking about how things will unfold as time goes on.


Field Depletion rates even find a rough correlary in the way that the green revolution has resulted in increased but unsustainable yields as
the impacts of the Green Revolution undermine the soil and water upon which it depends..

How long will the plateau last?

So I'm sure I have over simplified or forgotten something. Have at it!

Moved to Open Discussion = “Post off-topic (non-peak oil) current events news & media here.” –FL