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Comment by coldpie | Hacker News Reader

Yup. We're already pretty much at capacity in terms of using arable farming land[1]. We need more efficient farming, which means GMOs and advanced farming methods; we don't need less efficient farming like organic and anti-GMO.

[1] https://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/how-much-arabl...

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>> We need more efficient farming, which means GMOs and advanced farming method

Considering the fact that so much of the farmlands are devoted to producing animal feed -- how about we as a species start eating less meats ? Make meats more expensive all around the world by imposing ... dare I say it .. caps on Carbon emission.

Issue is that we are not going to. Just like we are not going to solve global warming by individuals making better carbon choices or even nations as other nations will just do whatever they want. We are only going to win these battles by creating cheaper better alternatives.

India and China are not going just stop using coal in the middle of their economic expansion. People are just not going to stop eating meat, especially as many 3rd world nations are just reaching the point they can afford it.

Only way we can come out ahead on this is scientifically devised cheaper and better alternatives.

The issue is that we cannot rely on it to actually be there, and to come in time. I agree that we cannot efficiently regulate our behaviour, but I believe that will be our end eventually, science and engineering marvels not withstanding.

Yeah but what about YOU? Are YOU going to choose to not eat meat? Or are YOU going to wait to see what everyone ELSE does first? Its a game theory problem.

It is indeed the tragedy of the comments. That's why we need regulations, sanctions etc. This needs to be the number one issue for all international negotiations.

I say that as someone who cut down on 95-99% of meat consumption to reduce my carbon footprint and because I feel terrible for the animals

>> India and China are not going just stop using coal in the middle of their economic expansion

Why not ? Both these countries need foreign investments and free trade with the industrialize world. Could the OECD countries not coerce them into capping carbon emissions ? As long as Carbon emission caps are fair -- that means accounting for the fact that the bulk of the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere came from the OECD countries.

However, Carbon taxes is a four letter word in North America. Sometime back , I saw a pickup modified to emit black soot -- here in Ontario Canada of all the places.

Organic and sustainable methods are more efficient, even without GMOs [1]. It is a myth that GMOs or high-tech is the answer to food production/land scarcity concerns, as simply managing a farm properly can lead to yield increases multiple times over conventional, unsustainable methods (annual tillage, broad spectrum pesticides, etc). This is in part because GMOs that are in wide use are little more than ways to deal with pests or herbicides, which high efficiency sustainable farms deal with much more cost-effectively anyway.

[1] https://www.greenbiz.com/article/how-mini-farms-can-yield-fo...

No they aren’t. Organic for the most part is a myth. What they do is either spray with a pesticide that can be classified as organic (often nicotine derived) or create an island of organic surrounded by a conventional buffer. Often both.

>> Organic for the most part is a myth. What they do is either spray with a pesticide that can be classified as organic

That's demonstrably untrue. Many organic methods use no pesticides at all because they use things like row covers or greenhouses which replaces them, or crop-timing to avoid source pests. Look at any farm inspired by Eliot Coleman methods, which can produce crops cost-competitively with conventional agriculture.

Some boutique farms for farmers markets can do that, the organic shit you get at Safeway is just organic pesticides

> Organic for the most part is a myth

This is not really true, I think the problem is every country has a different definition and standards, sometimes multiple.

We could try harder not to lose or waste food that we produce: FAO estimates that each year, approximately one-third of all food produced for human consumption inthe world is lost or wasted.[1] (Note that this is not just about people throwing away food they bought, though it's a big part of it.)

And at first glance it seems obvious that eating less meat, globally, is going to increase available calories/area; the fact that some areas are viable for livestock but not vegetables notwithstanding. About half of the area used for agriculture is used for livestock, if I read [2] correctly.

[1] http://www.fao.org/3/i3347e/i3347e.pdf

[2] http://www.fao.org/3/ar591e/ar591e.pdf

Though we could feed many more people with current farming capacity if we ate all the corn we grow ourself instead of feeding it to cows that we eat. Meat production is incredibly inefficient.

If we eventually manage to produce most of our meat demand from lab-grown meat this will likely free up enormous amounts of agriculture capacity.

In what world is lab-grown meat production more efficient than cattle farming?

Given enough resources to refine the process and a few years, I don't see how in the long run it cant become more efficient than farming.

I don't buy it. You're comparing the energy inputs required to support large-scale tissue engineering operations with those needed for grazing cattle on pasture. It's not even close.

If it was just pastures I would agree. But 30-40% of all corn produced in the US (the largest corn producer in the world) is used to feed lifestock [1]. That's a lot of perfectly good farmland that could directly produce food for human consumption.

Even if the lab process takes more energy, as long as producing the growth medium takes up less farmland that is a win towards the goal of having enough farmland to feed the world.

1: http://www.worldofcorn.com/#corn-usage-by-segment

Hard to say now if it will actually be MORE efficient or environmentally friendly, but initial indications once price parity is achieved would lean to YES. In terms of timeline, reports show at least 5 years before it can hit the grocery stores and that doesn't take into account the regulation. Here is a good resource that shows the process, companies making it, etc. https://cellbasedtech.com/lab-grown-meat

Is this not exactly what you would expect in a free market? All arable farming land will produce whatever crop brings in the best return; no arable land will be left fallow long term.

But just because we are using all of it doesn't mean we need all of it or else starve. Vast quantities of crops are used to produce biofuel, or feed for livestock, or raw materials for other non-food products.

Correct. Farming/ag is fine. Its already scaled and efficient. Now we need to make it sustainable

https://thinkingagriculture.io/what-silicon-valley-doesnt-un...

Global warming will free up an enormous amount of arable land (most land is in the northern hemisphere anyway)

Any good studies estimating the carrying capacity of Earth with current ag tech?

can't remember where but I think theoretical upper bound was about 11-12B, but realistically I think 9.5-10B based off nothing in particular.

It's worth noting that every time there's been estimations on carrying capacity applied to humans, it's eventually turned out to be wrong.

The reality is that we are not very efficient at agriculture in all of the places where agriculture is practiced. Most carrying capacity models make the assumption that we are at or near peak agricultural output, but this simply isn't true, so the models' predictive powers fall apart.

For an example from another industry, where people have been similarly predicting capacity-related doom since the 80s, look at oil. In the 80s, people thought we were going to run out of oil, because "proven accessible reserves" were dwindling. Between the innovations of low-cost fracking and more effective "proving" tools, this problem evaporated.

The moral of the story is that, where demand is high, capitalistic pressures means that, given enough time, we will always finds a way to open up more supply.

All this to say, be very critical of the assumptions made by whatever models you find, or doomsday claims you may come across. If agriculturalists are not concerned about this, the burden of evidence for us to be concerned should be rather high.

Exactly if Americans spent more resources on food there would be more innovative approaches in this sector. Currently food is too cheap and there is barely any opportunity for innovation.

What? Agriculture is hyper-efficient in the biggest areas of the world (US Midwest, Brazil, Eastern Europe).

Sorry, I'd rephrase my original statement a little bit for clarity. I didn't mean at all to say that "nowhere is efficient", which in retrospect is one valid way of interpreting my original statement.

It's not that agriculture isn't hyper-efficient in certain locales. It's that it could be more efficient, if its operators cared to invest in making it so. Until demand rises relative to supply (from supply shortages), there isn't a price pressure to innovate on efficiency. This doesn't stop the "big farms" from innovating, because "big farm crops" are a race-to-the-bottom commodity business. That's why we get more corn, soy beans, whatever every year.

This is all without mentioning the places where agriculture is rather undeveloped, compared to the places you mention (many locales in Africa, central Asia, even the United States and Canada).

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