The World is Producing More Food Crops Than Ever Before (vox.com)
- Reference: 0179780388
- News link: https://news.slashdot.org/story/25/10/14/1525220/the-world-is-producing-more-food-crops-than-ever-before
- Source link: https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/464478/farming-crop-harvest-global-hunger-wheat-famine
The U.S. Department of Agriculture reported in August that American farmers would harvest a record corn crop at record yield per acre. The FAO Food Price Index has risen slightly this year but remains nearly 20% below its peak during the early months of the war in Ukraine. Average calories available per person worldwide have climbed from roughly 2,100 to 2,200 kilocalories daily in the early nineteen-sixties to just under 3,000 kilocalories daily by 2022. Cereal yields have roughly tripled since 1961. Yet the World Bank estimates around 2.6 billion people cannot afford a healthy diet, and current famines in Gaza and Sudan stem from political failures rather than crop failures.
[1] https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/464478/farming-crop-harvest-global-hunger-wheat-famine
Hunger and population. (Score:2)
On one hand, no one should go hungry. Especially children. On the other hand you don’t want to create a dependency and make it easier for people to have more children than they can afford. Contrary to the narratives in much of the developed world. There is no population crisis on the global scale. The world population keeps going up. It is on only in most of the developed world where populations are shrinking. Globally, the societies with the most have the least children and the societies with the le
Re: (Score:1)
The way to keep the population under control is education, not limiting people's ability to care for their children.
All the panic about 11 billion people by 2100 isn't really a big deal because it's mostly down to people living longer, and we have the ability to feed that many in a sustainable way already. The problems are all political.
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Just because you CAN do something doesn't mean you SHOULD.
Re:Hunger and population. (Score:4, Interesting)
The behavioral model you have isn't supported by data. When you raise the standard of living and food security of population, the fertility rate goes down. When you have nothing, children are economic assets whose labor can support the family. It's not a great option, but some people live in conditions where there are no good options.
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Except that the only point I actually agued was "There is no population [collapse] crisis on the global scale."
It was merely preceded by desired outcomes. And in fact I explicitly relayed, "Globally, the societies with the most have the least children and the societies with the least have the most children." Your stated premised is proved out. As a society becomes one of plenty, that society trends towards less children per adult. I did not actually advocate any position beyond that there is no populat
Re: (Score:1)
> Globally, the societies with the most have the least children and the societies with the least have the most children. This is the inverse for pretty much all animals on this planet.
In societies with a safe energy supply for having machines do the heavy and dangerous work there's not the same kind of need for many children to work for survival, and fewer children are likely to be lost to disease, injury, animals, or crime. The survival of the family depends on quality of the children than quantity. With fewer children each child gets more attention for education, as well as other things but education is very important, to lead to future success.
> Musk has what? 11.
When at the extremes of wealth like Mus
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So the faster we help them develop, the slower the world population climbs.
John Steinbeck (Score:1)
The works of the roots of the vines, of the trees, must be destroyed to keep up the price, and this is the saddest, bitterest thing of all. Carloads of oranges dumped on the ground. The people came for miles to take the fruit, but this could not be. How would they buy oranges at twenty cents a dozen if they could drive out and pick them up? And men with hoses squirt kerosene on the oranges, and they are angry at the crime, angry at the people who have come to take the fruit. A million people hungry, needing
Burning food (Re:John Steinbeck) (Score:1)
> Burn corn to keep warm, it makes a hot fire.
That makes me think of all the land set aside to make ethanol for fuel. That's a waste of food to me.
What makes this less disturbing to me is thinking that if there is anything that would disturb our access to food, such as a large war, then we could close the ethanol plants and eat the corn instead. The USA exports plenty of gasoline so if trade is cut off then so would the exports of gasoline which leaves room for not burning corn for fuel. I don't know how the gasoline exports compare to ethanol burne
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> That makes me think of all the land set aside to make ethanol for fuel. That's a waste of food to me.
Alternatively, it's bioengineering. Instead of fabricating solar panels out of silicon to generate electricity to synthesize chemical fuels, we harness biological processes. I recall reading a sequel to E.T. where the aliens of E.T.'s species used entirely biological technology for everything, including constructing and powering their spaceships. The book was probably utter nonsense, I was very young when I read it, but the idea of engineering biological systems isn't absurd.
When you think of nanotechnology
Keep in mind... (Score:2)
...that there's a LOT of minerals and other nutrients in food, only a fraction of which are produced from chemicals in fertilisers, O2, and CO2. If you produce too much with too little consideration of the impact on the soil, you can produce marvellous dust bowls but eventually that's ALL you will produce.
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> ...that there's a LOT of minerals and other nutrients in food, only a fraction of which are produced from chemicals in fertilisers, O2, and CO2. If you produce too much with too little consideration of the impact on the soil, you can produce marvellous dust bowls but eventually that's ALL you will produce.
I can assure you that the professional farmers in the USA are abundantly aware of this. While growing up on the family farm the education level of the typical farmer may have been high school but there were all kinds of government programs to educate the farmers on how to control for erosion and keep the land productive.
One example would be that the government would survey the land and make note of slopes and such where there could be heavy erosion. Then the government would pay the farmers to plant gras
The problem (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is not a lack of food; it is a lack of distribution. Some countries, notably the US, produce far more food than the population requires, while others starve. Poverty is an issue, but there is also the simple inability to move the food from where it is grown to where the hungry people are. Food is bulky and much of it does not keep well. The average number of calories per is of no value to those on the wrong side of the distribution curve. You cannot eat an average.
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We export twenty percent of our food grown. The number was LESS than I expected, I thought we exported more. But yes, I agree with you.
Expect more political failures impacting food (Score:1)
While we might not see famines from political failures we could see people with rising food prices and farmers unable to pay their bills because of government policies.
There's been a global trend to limit or ban artificial fertilizers because of concerns on CO2 and/or nitrogen compounds impacting air quality or something. I'm not clear on the issues but there's a lot of governments that don't like artificial fertilizers. Without adding nitrogen to the soil the yields on crops drops quickly, it doesn't fad
And soybeans? (Score:2)
How much have U.S. farmers grown this year which will sit and rot because [1]not a single bean has been purchased by China [kcur.org] due to tariffs?
While growing food isn't the main issue, distribution is, how many tons of food goes to waste each year because of price supports or deliberate over production due to government programs?
[1] https://www.kcur.org/environment-agriculture/2025-09-25/china-trade-american-soybean-farmers-limited-options-sell-grain
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That's fine, we need a bunch of animal feed to rebuild the beef herd. I dunno why they aren't just feeding it to cattle.
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> How much have U.S. farmers grown this year which will sit and rot because not a single bean has been purchased by China due to tariffs?
I can recall as a kid seeing *HUGE* piles of corn all over the place because floods prevented barges from moving out the corn. A common practice I saw was to set up concrete barriers on an empty parking lot as a kind of quick-n-dirty corral then just pile in the dried corn. Some of the piles were large enough to hide a two story home inside. If they could then a sheet of plastic would be put over it to keep out rain and birds. No doubt some of the corn on the bottom would rot because it would take up so
Don't worry (Score:2)
Climate change will fix that soon. And then drive it below of what is needed. The first effects are already visible.
World hunger (Score:2)
To solve world hunger, deliver a gift of lead to every despot, war lord, and every other evil bastard in power who thinks it's a good idea to use starvation as a weapon, as a way to keep people in line, or to motivate people. That's the only way.
The good and the bad (Score:2)
It's a good thing to have an overproduction of food. It means that, with the proper distribution channels, everyone can eat; and if there's a bad year or two, like a volcano spewing ashes in the upper atmosphere like happens every 200 years or so, we won't all starve.
On the other hand having an overproduction means the prices fall down and farmers go broke. No easy way out...
Of course (Score:2)
US farmers are currently stuck producing gigantic amounts of soybeans they can't sell to China. Because of the fallout from the Trump tariffs, China instead signed massive 20-year contracts with South American nations.
Now, US farmers are forced to store their surplus beans, and the intended "bailout" money—funded by the very tariffs US citizens paid—is barely enough to cover storage costs.
The bitter irony is that the US consumers who paid the tariff tax don't even get the soybeans!
Yeah but we weren't hungry children (Score:2)
Because it makes us feel better to think that somebody out there is hungry and has it worse than we do.
When asked we will say hunger builds character even though we know from science that it does not.
We've been able to feed everyone on the planet since the seventies. Just like homelessness hunger and starvation are choices we as a species make and impose on each other.
The Christians are the ones I find noticeable. Some of the American evangelicals will say that because they believe in Jesus they
I'm calling ICE (Score:1)
This guy isn't fully on board with capitalism!
Re: (Score:1, Troll)
You are confused. ICE (a.k.a. the GeStaPo) is not supporting capitalism. They are into an oligarch version of Fascism.
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> Jesus explicitly called this out in the bible. People who would make a show of publicly visible religious displays versus actually following God.
Well, most people are fucking dumb. And the evangelicals are a lot worse than the average.
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I am sorry you have met pseudochristians the way you have. As I live in the Bible Belt I know exactly ZERO Christians who believe like that.
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> As I live in the Bible Belt I know exactly ZERO Christians who believe like that.
You must not hang out with many people or with a leftist crowd then because the bible belt routinely votes against the type of government that helps the less fortunate. They certainly arent walking their Jesus talk if they're voting for an administration that wants to cut back on food aid to the poor both here in the US and abroad.
Re:Yeah but we weren't hungry children (Score:4, Informative)
Let's face it, many evangelical Christians have voted for an administration that would instantly deport Jesus to El Salvador if he appeared today.
Trump literally said he's not going to heaven (Score:1)
And if you're an Evangelical that means he's going to hell.
You would think that would be bigger news but we have a lot of industry corporate capture in our media so there you go.
Re: Yeah but we weren't hungry children (Score:2)
They don't want the government to help people. They want the church to help. Then they can help who they want, how they want and nothing else.
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> The Christians are the ones I find noticeable.
Of all the religions in the world you find Christians as "noticeable"? Um, okay, I guess you need to get out more.
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>> The Christians are the ones I find noticeable.
> Of all the religions in the world you find Christians as "noticeable"? Um, okay, I guess you need to get out more.
To be fair, I've never had someone outside a "Christian" sect show up unannounced at my front door peddling their religious bullshit.