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Comment by BirAdam | Hacker News Reader

So, reading comments… two things really stand out to me. First, people forget that the USA throws away more food than Africa produces. The planet is not really close to being out of food, stuff is just wasted by the comparatively rich countries. Second, farming is not all or nothing. There are practices that mix plants, offer diverse sections for pollinators, purposeful use of specific plants that keep predators off of cash crops without toxins, and so on. These could be done while fallow grass growing plots are used for grazing and fertilizer production (you know, animal poop).

People always want to believe doom and gloom for some reason, but humans are an incredible animal. We have always found solutions and adopted them because in most cases what is right also happens to be what works best.

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> stuff is just wasted by the comparatively rich countries.

I don't think it's fair to call that wasted, as if the food produced in these wealthy nations could be transferred to the poor nations.

The cause of food shortages in Africa is the fact it's a lot of non fertile land.

The cause of food waste in the United States is that we have a LOT of fertile land and relatively few people.

It would be like blaming my water usage for shortages in the southwest. You have to see that the two systems are disconnected and just because one nation wastes food does not mean other nations are denied it.

Global trade has eased a lot of regional shortages, but geography and environment still matter.

The same goes for famine. We may be able to adapt, but some regions simply will not and even with global increases we may still see regional shortages and famines.

As someone living in the USA, I'm not worried. We will be fine because we have such a large buffer. If you live in an area that doesn't. You have plenty reason to worry, especially if global trade hiccups or you're in a relatively poor nation vulnerable to trade disruption.

Africa has probably 60% of the world's arable land and is extremely fertile. The cause of food shortages in Africa is never, even in the worst droughts, that there is not enough land.

Food crises in Africa are always, with I think, no exceptions, caused by 1. political turmoil that makes it impossible or difficult to use the land well, or 2. wars or 3. genocidal policies by one or more population or tribe toward another.

4. Drought / lack of seasonal flooding?

Of course droughts happen. But when unaccompanied by any of the three above, Africa still ought to be able able to feed itself with plenty to spare, even in the most severe droughts experienced.

> Africa has probably 60% of the world's arable land and is extremely fertile.

That is completely untrue.

Looking it up [1], Africa has 219.2 million hectares of arable land as of 2007, compared to 1,406.5 million worldwide. That rounds up to 16%.

I can't imagine where on earth you're getting 60% from.

And if you've been to Africa (or looked at a map), you'd know that it's fertile only in certain parts. The cause of food shortages in Africa are very often that the land within economical transportation distance isn't producing even close to enough food in times of drought. And the idea that you bring up genocide as a major reason for famine is nonsensical.

Quite frankly, you don't have the slightest idea what you're talking about.

[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/269235/arable-land-world...

1. One of the main humanitarian catastrophes recently was the famine in Darfur. Which was very much genocidal.

2. Africa and the world definitely has more arable land than what you're suggesting there: https://www.afrik21.africa/en/africa-arable-land-increased-b...

Even statista (your source), claims that the total amount of arable land in Africa is 1119 million hectares: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1287280/agricultural-lan...

We are speaking of Africa as a continent here. Obviously central Sahara can not sustain a very large population. (And coincidentally, neither has it).

Are you sure you know what you're speaking of?

PS. the 60% was from memory, and constitutes currently uncultivated arable land. The total arable land seems to be a somewhat lower percentage of earth's total (but your numbers are way off), but not meaningfully so with regards to my main point.

The World Economic Forum says Africa has 60% of global uncultivated arable land. [1] This might be what you remembered?

Africa’s problem isn’t the availability of arable land it’s soil fertility. The soils in Africa are mostly bad to meh. [2][3] The less fertile the soil the more fertilizer inputs it needs to produce.

1. https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/01/how-africa-can-feed-t....

2. https://www.nrcs.usda.gov/wps/portal/nrcs/detail/soils/use/?...

3. https://www.isda-africa.com/isdasoil/?location=-17.741%2C-45...

Or 4. The pressure to grow cash crops to service debt.

> I don't think it's fair to call that wasted, as if the food produced in these wealthy nations could be transferred to the poor nations.

I don't think that's the claim. The claim is that the title implies that we've reached peak supportable population but because of the waste the USA's food production could support more population than it does. Nobody's getting mad at you for not sending your cheese rinds to Africa.

Phew, European Union mandates destroying crops if they go beyond quotas assigned to a given country. It is not even like throwing away some leftovers that should have better use, they just destroy ready to eat food.

> People always want to believe doom and gloom for some reason

Sometimes, the burden of responsibility is too much for some people. Fatalism and cynicism are an easier way out.

Yes, we can and should continue to increase food production. It’s a prerequisite to eradicating poverty worldwide.

These narratives are supported by people who are threatened by the prospect that there are no limits to human growth and potential.

>People always want to believe doom and gloom for some reason, but humans are an incredible animal. We have always found solutions and adopted them because in most cases what is right also happens to be what works best.

https://proteindirectory.com/alt-protein-database/?_ingredie...

For example these 6 companies are working on single cell protein (SCP) food from CO2 + energy input, by for example hydrogenotrophs. This may sound like technology that is not democratically accessible, as they are found for example in hydrothermal vents. However they are also found in more mundane places like soil, or ... the human gut, and hence faeces.

Let the world turn to shjt ... for dinner. Finding out how to culture them is probably the bigger challenge. An open science community on how to collect, identify, culture these would probably have the highest impact on combating climate change per buck of effort.

Solein / Solar Foods was recently featured on HN, with claimed figures of protein production efficiency:

SCP protein is about 20x more efficient than vegetable protein

SCP protein is about 200x more efficient than animal protein (and vegetable protein is about 10x more efficient than vegetable-protein fed animal protein)

Incidentally this implies SCP-protein fed animal protein to be about 2x as efficient as vegetable protein!

It turns out plants (or at least the cells of plant roots) can release proteases and absorb the resulting smaller peptide fragments, but it seems far from obvious that it is cost-effective to feed single cell protein to plants especially in competition with other consumers of soil proteins...

To grow these hydrogenotrophs you need CO2 and hydrogen and some trace minerals.

I suggest using radiative cooling near the south pole to:

* condense CO2 out of air

* to generate electric power by using the local (cold) environment as the hot bath, and the atmospheric infrared window (8-13 micrometers) as the cold bath. This way energy generation does not heat the polar environment (to the contrary it helps cool the poles).

* this energy can then be used make hydrogen, and heat well isolated ovens in which the cultures are grown.

So we can generate large amounts of food on otherwise unused area (without competing with solar panels or agriculture for land use), helping to cool the environment, helping to remove CO2, lowering demand of agricultural land by competing on price point, allowing us to rewild large amounts of agricultural land.

Any yearly surplus could be turned into a form of low bio-accessibility and buried where it came from...

While I'm on the climate change topic: we've known for a long time how to help water freeze over (Snomax, Pseudonomas Syringae) to ensure the basic human necessity of sliding down a snow covered hill on wooden planks but don't know how to help the ocean freeze over?

https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/7ec7/8b0733c1cdae7ced5d7388...

or 1989:

https://journalofweathermodification.org/index.php/JWM/artic...

the seasonal ice region is the region around the poles which melt and refreeze each year, the ocean in this region is super-cooled (a meta-stable state):

https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/202...

why don't we sprinkle ice nucleating proteins (INP's) in this region? especially shortly around fall (northern hemisphere) or spring (southern hemisphere) when it is about to refreeze. If it starts freezing over a month earlier its reflecting light a month earlier... If we could actually farm ice, without dumping the heat in the local environment, but by actually reflecting energy to space, it might make sense at some point to ship eventual superfluous ice around the world to increase the energy efficiency of thermal power plants (fossil fueled, nuclear,... for as long or short as we still utilize them). This would also result in freeze desalinated sea water in the destination country.

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