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Topic: Agriculture

I keep hearing "the world is not making enough food" and even somehow "There is to many people in the United States compared to food sources" which just baffles the mind.

The largest argument is arable land. The second is water supplies


To answer the first. The United States hardly uses a significant portion of land in argiculture. In fact driving through the States I have found most land is just left alone. Vast forests also exist which could be instead fruit or nut growing areas, if we wanted to leave tree's there, or huge swaths of sound growing land.


The second is the ever getting cheaper costs of desalinization. As of a few years back it is cheaper to make a desalinization plant in the United States than to funnel water from another State to the State needing the water. IE California can supply it's own water needs and the States providing it water can use it for their own agriculture. Indeed California can export water as well if it builds enough plants.

There is easily enough sound land, if given water, to grow 10 times the food the United States currently grows.



Whats more is the waste I have found in the food system.

Food is grown, and pre-paid for by a business. If the food exceeds the amount paid for, the farmer is supposed to destroy the excess as to not disrupt the market, if the business does not wish to purchase the excess.

Some food never gets off the vine/stalk/etc prior to bad weather conditions, due to time constraints with harvesting (easily solved with more manpower/equipement).


Some food sits to long at a warehouse, and goes bad.


Some food goes bad in shipping

Some food goes bad waiting to be sent to stores

Some food goes bad waiting to go on shelves.

All you can eat buffets.... lots of waste

Food goes bad waiting on shelves, at home and the store


Good food gets thrown away when one bad food is found in relation with the good food

Environmentalism has caused a lot of good food to be lost to insects otherwise normally killed with pesticides

Environmentalism has cause a lot of good food and food lands to grow/change to fuel instead




All in all there is no food shortage, if the United States but tries. But then again... it's all how it's done.

Everything bad in the economy is now Obama's fault. Every job lost, all the debt, all the lost retirement funds. All Obama. Are you happy now? We all get to blame Obama!
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Re: Agriculture

"
All in all there is no food shortage, if the United States but tries. But then again... it's all how it's done."

sounds dangerously like socialism there, Einstein.

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  • Skoe
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Re: Agriculture

Witch! Burn him! Burn him!

Morbo: Morbo can't understand his teleprompter. He forgot how you say that letter that looks like a man with a hat.
Linda: It's a 't'. It goes "tuh".
Morbo: Hello, little man. I will destroy you!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cpP7b2lUxVE

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Re: Agriculture

Yea... wtf...

You go "socialism is baaad!" in one thread, and then in the next you pretty much make a commercial for it?

Have you been checked for multiple personality disorder lately?

NEE NAW NEE NAW

Primo

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Re: Agriculture

Don't you get it Primo, he wants all of the benifits of socialism but none of most of the time necessary disadvantages!

What do I have to work with?

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Re: Agriculture

The problem is not making food, but how it is distributed. To keep the prices high the goverment buys up some of the goods here and then just burns them since exporting them is too costly

Not many people know this, but I own the first radio in Springfield. Not much on the air then, just Edison reciting the alphabet over and over. "A" he'd say; then "B." "C" would usually follow...

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Re: Agriculture

Don't get it... how exactly is that socialism?

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8 Reply by Schniepel (edited by Gwynedd 21-Jan-2009 23:22:12)

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Re: Agriculture

many problems with food...
big part of this problem deffo is europes fault...
due to huge subsidies to our agricultural sector we can export food to 3rd world countries at a price which is so cheap that it can not be produced cheaper there... so now in the last decades most food was imported and the local food production was partly totally abandoned..
now that the food market prices got up due to several reason.. those countries are kinda [w00f!]
Philipnies for example once was worlds biggest export nation of rice.. meanwhile it became an import nation...

I heard same problem is with US grain and mexico...

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Re: Agriculture

But tries = Kill all environmentalists and every politician in California. Suddenly there would be the food being used for fuel, and the water from the oceans allowing more food.

Well not kill, thats an exxageration, but ignoring them, voting them out of power, eliminating the foolish laws they both made happen, that would work quite well.

Everything bad in the economy is now Obama's fault. Every job lost, all the debt, all the lost retirement funds. All Obama. Are you happy now? We all get to blame Obama!
Kemp currently not being responded to until he makes CONCISE posts.
Avogardo and Noir ignored by me for life so people know why I do not respond to them. (Informational)

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Re: Agriculture

@Schniepel

Europe's only half the problem.  The US does much the same thing.  We flood the market in wheat, corn, sugar, soy, and nonfood crops such as cotton, which used to be a big industry in Africa (spare the jokes, Decimus) until the US heavily subsidized it.


@Flint

You forgot about GM crops.  Those things could grow just about anywhere.  However, there becomes the added problem that GM crops are so powerful that they completely overrun competing plants.  The solution would probably be to modify crops to have limits on reproduction (rice companies started secretly selling sterile rice to poor farmers a while ago, which would not reproduce at all.  While this screwed up a lot of farmers, it would have a possible use something similar in the United States, depending on how cheap it could be produced).


@Everyone who thinks Flint is talking about socialism

Wrong.

The only thing he is saying is that, if circumstances become extreme, the United States could increase its total production and reduce its total consumption to increase productivity.  Right now, it's not occurring because the market isn't favorable toward it.  For example, it's just more profitable right now for businesses to keep their food out at a buffet than to sell that food normally, probably because we are more accustomed to luxurious eating, and some waste in our eyes isn't something to worry about.  However, if food became a major global issue, to greater proportions than we are even feeling today, food prices would inevitably rise.  As food prices rise, businesses slowly shift their practices to account for the change in potential profits.

It's pretty simple: a person at a buffet is willing to pay $8.99 for as much food as they can eat (or less... there's some really awesome buffets in my town that are ridiculously cheap.  I've seen some as low as $3.00).  A starving person is willing to kill for a sandwich.  As the number of the latter increases, it becomes relatively less profitable to give food to the first guy, relative to the second.  Food efficiency increases, and we're accomodated.

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Re: Agriculture

"But tries = Kill all environmentalists "

Die Endlosung?

Lemming of Fountains and Eltie Worshipper

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Re: Agriculture

> Deci wrote:

> "I keep hearing "the world is not making enough food" and even somehow "There is to many people in the United States compared to food sources" which just baffles the mind."

if you're hearing voices in your head, go see a doctor. if someone said that on this forum, quote him. or quote whoever you believe has said those things.


Deci, check the "resource-based economy" thread.  That may be what Flint is referring to.  Just a guess, though.

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Re: Agriculture

To answer Zarf, not Deci, I can say that in real life I hear it from hardcore leftist crybabies. "THERE ARE PEOPLE STARVING BECAUSE WE DO NOT MAKE ENOUGH FOOD!!!!"

I hear it very often. To tell the truth however there is no food shortage, and many steps where food goes bad because it's a "shrug" there is so much more where that came from of an issue.

Everything bad in the economy is now Obama's fault. Every job lost, all the debt, all the lost retirement funds. All Obama. Are you happy now? We all get to blame Obama!
Kemp currently not being responded to until he makes CONCISE posts.
Avogardo and Noir ignored by me for life so people know why I do not respond to them. (Informational)

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Re: Agriculture

There is no food production shortage, only a shortage of correct distribution

Not many people know this, but I own the first radio in Springfield. Not much on the air then, just Edison reciting the alphabet over and over. "A" he'd say; then "B." "C" would usually follow...

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  • Han
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Re: Agriculture

Sounds like Flint left his home town for the first time in his life and he saw some trees on the road while driving. Fallow farm land is not necessarily unused. And some of those trees you saw are probably managed forests.

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Re: Agriculture

If food trading were to stop I have nothing to worry about:
Currently the UK is capable of meeting ~70% of its own food needs. In a crisis situation I have no doubt that we could pull together and make it ~100%.

Damn it, I can't find that link... who posted the link to the list of countries and how much of their own food needs they can meet?

"So, it's defeat for you, is it? Someday I must meet a similar fate..."

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Re: Agriculture

I think we should kill fat people.

tweehonderd graden, dat is waarom ze me mr. fahrenheit noemen, ik reis aan de snelheid van het licht, ik ga een supersonische man van u maken

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Re: Agriculture

> [TI] Sitting Duck wrote:

> I think we should kill fat people.


How many starving villagers could one fat person feed?

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Re: Agriculture

@zarf:
I wanted to say that!

anyway, the problem indeed lies in gov funding like schniepel and zarf said. I can understand a strategic reserve to make sure people don't starve but right now we pay five times for our EU food products:
1.)We pay taxes to help them produce. Because production prices are higher as consumer prices
2.)We pay export taxes to make sure we don't have the destroy food on TV-movies which disturb us
3.)We pay for it with a lot of useful space.
4.)We pay for them not to grow some fields because there is overproduction because of subsidies
5.)We pay for it by having pollution.

Gov should stop funding these large amounts of cash into this crazy business. It would save us a lot of money and troubles and at the same time mean the biggest development aid (be it indirect) in history.

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Re: Agriculture

same goes for US, though EU is still worse.

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