[Widdekind]

If humans gradually cultivated various food crops, over hundreds to thousands of years; then could not the same tried-and-true tactic be applied, to cultivating salt-water crops, which could be irrigated, with ocean water ? I.e. take "durum wheat", grow it for hundreds of years, in increasingly saline conditions, and gradually cultivate "beach wheat" ?

(Can humans consume sea-weeds ?)

[questionposter]

Widdekind, on 23 January 2012 - 09:40 AM, said:

If humans gradually cultivated various food crops, over hundreds to thousands of years; then could not the same tried-and-true tactic be applied, to cultivating salt-water crops, which could be irrigated, with ocean water ? I.e. take "durum wheat", grow it for hundreds of years, in increasingly saline conditions, and gradually cultivate "beach wheat" ?

(Can humans consume sea-weeds ?)

Sure it could happen, the only problem is doing it at a slow enough rate to not actually kill every plant, because if you just put any random plant in sea water, it's just going to die, that's like throwing someone into a valconoe, just too big if a difference. But, if you perhaps have only .01 percent salt for one generation, then .02 percent for hte next and so on, you might see some results, but it's still purely random if it would even happen.

[CaptainPanic]

It could be done, but as you correctly say, it would take hundreds to thousands of years. Not a good business plan then.

Answer to the other question: yes, some sea weeds are edible.
And that's a plant which is already suited for living and growing in the sea.

[Moontanman]

Genetic manipulation has produced some crops that can live in brackish water but this might be a faster way...

http://www.wired.co....with-salt-water

[jeskill]

There's a really cool sea water horticulture project going on in Eritrea that involves foresting marginal areas with mangroves and feeding salt water grasses to livestock and creating a habitat for fish (that can also be eaten). Not really an example of salt water plants being eaten by humans, but a good use of formally marginal land and it does seem to reduce hunger.

[Santalum]

jeskill, on 24 January 2012 - 12:22 AM, said:

There's a really cool sea water horticulture project going on in Eritrea that involves foresting marginal areas with mangroves and feeding salt water grasses to livestock and creating a habitat for fish (that can also be eaten). Not really an example of salt water plants being eaten by humans, but a good use of formally marginal land and it does seem to reduce hunger.

What happens when all such marginal land is fully utilised and there are yet more starving mouths to feed?

[StringJunky]

Santalum, on 24 January 2012 - 04:14 AM, said:

What happens when all such marginal land is fully utilised and there are yet more starving mouths to feed?

Soylent Green?

[Santalum]

StringJunky, on 24 January 2012 - 04:27 AM, said:

Soylent Green?

Canibalism more like it.

[questionposter]

Santalum, on 24 January 2012 - 04:41 AM, said:

Canibalism more like it.

No, you build upwards, no outwards

http://www.wellespar...ards-greenhouse

The same thing is happening with silicon chips, only instead of silicon it's micro-pillars of carbon non-tubes.

This post has been edited by questionposter: 24 January 2012 - 04:50 AM

[CaptainPanic]

questionposter, on 24 January 2012 - 04:49 AM, said:

No, you build upwards, no outwards

http://www.wellespar...ards-greenhouse

The same thing is happening with silicon chips, only instead of silicon it's micro-pillars of carbon non-tubes.

If I follow the thread, then you propose a multi-story greenhouse in Eritrea?

The idea of a multi-story greenhouse assumes an abundantly available cheap sustainable form of energy. That assumption is false in modern day Eritrea, which is one of the poorest countries in the world.

[questionposter]

CaptainPanic, on 24 January 2012 - 08:50 AM, said:

If I follow the thread, then you propose a multi-story greenhouse in Eritrea?

The idea of a multi-story greenhouse assumes an abundantly available cheap sustainable form of energy. That assumption is false in modern day Eritrea, which is one of the poorest countries in the world.

So...what about sunlight? Or what about geothermal energy? Or what about the energy in the Earth's tides? Or what about wind? Or what about genetically engineered microbes?
I mean the alternative energy and multi-story greenhouse would solve that food problem, but the only problem is right now it's very expensive. And money is also why you don't have those huge ocean water purifiers all over Africa.

This post has been edited by questionposter: 24 January 2012 - 11:25 PM

[Santalum]

questionposter, on 24 January 2012 - 11:23 PM, said:

So...what about sunlight? Or what about geothermal energy? Or what about the energy in the Earth's tides? Or what about wind? Or what about genetically engineered microbes?
I mean the alternative energy and multi-story greenhouse would solve that food problem, but the only problem is right now it's very expensive. And money is also why you don't have those huge ocean water purifiers all over Africa.

All those energy sources require massive amounts of energy intensive infrastructure and we return to the same problem of there being no cheap energy source.

The africans cannot build and maintain these things with their beasts of burdon or with man power alone.

And nor can you run heavy earth moving machinery etc on geothermal and solar power. The only way the west can currently build such massive infrastructure on a wide scale is with oil power. Once cheap oil is gone even our ability to exploit renewable energy sources on a large scale will be severely handicaped.

The reason why renewable energy sources require massive infrastructure is that they are all very diffuse energy sources compared to oil. Hence you need to harvest them over a very wide area to obtain economically viable amounts of energy. But then you need to spend rather large amounts of energy on building an maintaining the infrastructure. In the end the energy profit you make is very much smaller than is the case with oil at present.


So the bottom line is that renewable energy sources cannot and will not replace oil on the current scale required for the current number of people on earth at their current energy consumption habits.

This post has been edited by Santalum: 25 January 2012 - 12:41 AM

[CaptainPanic]

questionposter, on 24 January 2012 - 11:23 PM, said:

So...what about sunlight? Or what about geothermal energy? Or what about the energy in the Earth's tides? Or what about wind? Or what about genetically engineered microbes?
I mean the alternative energy and multi-story greenhouse would solve that food problem, but the only problem is right now it's very expensive. And money is also why you don't have those huge ocean water purifiers all over Africa.

You want to convert sunlight into electricity, and then back into light to grow plants in a 3-story greenhouse?
Why not just put plants in a field, and let them enjoy the sunlight directly, in a 1-story field ?

If sunlight is your bottleneck, then surely applying the sunlight directly onto a plant would be the most efficient method to use it.

Anyway, if we ever have electricity in such abundance, and at such a low price that we can waste it to grow even our most basic crops, then the multi-story greenhouse would work. Until then, it is pointless.

[questionposter]

CaptainPanic, on 25 January 2012 - 08:35 AM, said:

You want to convert sunlight into electricity, and then back into light to grow plants in a 3-story greenhouse?
Why not just put plants in a field, and let them enjoy the sunlight directly, in a 1-story field ?

If sunlight is your bottleneck, then surely applying the sunlight directly onto a plant would be the most efficient method to use it.

Anyway, if we ever have electricity in such abundance, and at such a low price that we can waste it to grow even our most basic crops, then the multi-story greenhouse would work. Until then, it is pointless.

Sometimes there isn't enough sunlight or there isn't enough land horizontally to cultivate many crops, but I would agree that sunlight is still themore efficient energy.

This post has been edited by questionposter: 25 January 2012 - 04:28 PM

[jeskill]

Santalum, on 24 January 2012 - 04:14 AM, said:

What happens when all such marginal land is fully utilised and there are yet more starving mouths to feed?

Are you implying that the more food there is, the more the population will grow? Humans are not bacteria -- fecundity is not solely affected by the amount of food available. It's affected by poverty, education, stability, and a host of other socio-economic factors. If you want to lift people out of starvation and poverty, you need to give them stability and a means to survive on their own. This is just one example of how to do it. There's a lot of good evidence to suggest that projects like this can help to lift a significant proportion of people out of starvation and poverty.

Moreover, the main cause of starvation is not a lack of food production. According to FAO and worldhunger.org, poverty and the unequal distribution of food are the main culprits.

Does the world produce enough food to feed everyone?

Quote

The world produces enough food to feed everyone. World agriculture produces 17 percent more calories per person today than it did 30 years ago, despite a 70 percent population increase. This is enough to provide everyone in the world with at least 2,720 kilocalories (kcal) per person per day according to the most recent estimate that we could find.(FAO 2002, p.9). The principal problem is that many people in the world do not have sufficient land to grow, or income to purchase, enough food.

[questionposter]

jeskill, on 25 January 2012 - 06:16 PM, said:

Are you implying that the more food there is, the more the population will grow? Humans are not bacteria -- fecundity is not solely affected by the amount of food available. It's affected by poverty, education, stability, and a host of other socio-economic factors. If you want to lift people out of starvation and poverty, you need to give them stability and a means to survive on their own. This is just one example of how to do it. There's a lot of good evidence to suggest that projects like this can help to lift a significant proportion of people out of starvation and poverty.

Moreover, the main cause of starvation is not a lack of food production. According to FAO and worldhunger.org, poverty and the unequal distribution of food are the main culprits.

Does the world produce enough food to feed everyone?

Ok, well then relatively speaking, from a single given frame of reference, there is not always enough food. Even though the food still exists miles and miles away, in a localized situation, enough food is not necessarily available.

This post has been edited by questionposter: 25 January 2012 - 08:27 PM

[Santalum]

jeskill, on 25 January 2012 - 06:16 PM, said:

Are you implying that the more food there is, the more the population will grow? Humans are not bacteria -- fecundity is not solely affected by the amount of food available.

Yes, that is what I am suggesting.

And yes I am suggesting that humans, collectively, are much like bacteria in always expanding their population to take up available food until they exhaust supplies and then the population crashes.

The oil age has dramatically increased the supply of food available to humans, our population has expanded exponentially to take up that food supply and now the end of the oil age is upon us.

Food supplies will be dramatically cut and the human population must inevitably crash and there will be little that anyone can do about it unless reproduction is banned for a few decades or there is a major deadly epidemic or global conflict to slash our numbers.

[questionposter]

Santalum, on 25 January 2012 - 10:39 PM, said:

Yes, that is what I am suggesting.

And yes I am suggesting that humans, collectively, are much like bacteria in always expanding their population to take up available food until they exhaust supplies and then the population crashes.

The oil age has dramatically increased the supply of food available to humans, our population has expanded exponentially to take up that food supply and now the end of the oil age is upon us.

Food supplies will be dramatically cut and the human population must inevitably crash and there will be little that anyone can do about it unless reproduction is banned for a few decades or there is a major deadly epidemic or global conflict to slash our numbers.

It's not that "the more food there is, the more humans there are", it's if a system can sustain the existence of more humans, then it will unless there's some major catastrophe.

[jeskill]

Santalum, on 25 January 2012 - 10:39 PM, said:

Yes, that is what I am suggesting.

And yes I am suggesting that humans, collectively, are much like bacteria in always expanding their population to take up available food until they exhaust supplies and then the population crashes.

The oil age has dramatically increased the supply of food available to humans, our population has expanded exponentially to take up that food supply and now the end of the oil age is upon us.

Food supplies will be dramatically cut and the human population must inevitably crash and there will be little that anyone can do about it unless reproduction is banned for a few decades or there is a major deadly epidemic or global conflict to slash our numbers.

OK. The problem with your argument that "we are always expanding our population to take up available food", though, is that there's evidence to refute it: the regions of the world that currently have the most food also have the lowest fecundity. The regions with food scarcity currently have the highest fecundity. If there were a direct correlation between human population growth and food production, developed countries would have the highest population growth rates and developing countries would have the lowest.

questionposter, on 25 January 2012 - 08:27 PM, said:

Ok, well then relatively speaking, from a single given frame of reference, there is not always enough food. Even though the food still exists miles and miles away, in a localized situation, enough food is not necessarily available.

In certain spaces and certain times, yes, I agree with you. But as stated before, most NGOs working on this issue agree that starvation is a primarily a product of poverty (i.e. lack of purchasing power). Ergo, increasing purchasing power can also decrease starvation due to the fact that many places in the world currently produce an excess of food. To take the Eritrean example, we have people literally creating a mangrove forest on former wasteland, not only creating a habitat that houses their food, but also creating a resource that can be extracted and exchanged for money/food (the resource is wood). So, the mangroves are reducing hunger by increasing the availability of food and increasing the purchasing power of the people.

[Santalum]

questionposter, on 26 January 2012 - 01:03 AM, said:

It's not that "the more food there is, the more humans there are", it's if a system can sustain the existence of more humans, then it will unless there's some major catastrophe.

I am not at all suggesting that humans consciously make a decision to expand their population to take up all available food.

I am merely pointing out that, like all other animal populations, humans behave in excatly the same way at a collective population level.

If times are good then more humans survive and individuals are more likely to precreate at a higher level.

If you are starving to death and fleeing a conflict then it is less likely that you will take the time out to precreate, sustain a pregnancy or that many or any of your children will survive. X that 100s of 1000s and you have downward pressure on population levels.

jeskill, on 26 January 2012 - 01:37 AM, said:

OK. The problem with your argument that "we are always expanding our population to take up available food", though, is that there's evidence to refute it: the regions of the world that currently have the most food also have the lowest fecundity. The regions with food scarcity currently have the highest fecundity. If there were a direct correlation between human population growth and food production, developed countries would have the highest population growth rates and developing countries would have the lowest.

Only because the west has cheap contraception. If we did not then our populations would have continued expanding exponentially.

jeskill, on 26 January 2012 - 01:37 AM, said:

In certain spaces and certain times, yes, I agree with you. But as stated before, most NGOs working on this issue agree that starvation is a primarily a product of poverty (i.e. lack of purchasing power). Ergo, increasing purchasing power can also decrease starvation due to the fact that many places in the world currently produce an excess of food. To take the Eritrean example, we have people literally creating a mangrove forest on former wasteland, not only creating a habitat that houses their food, but also creating a resource that can be extracted and exchanged for money/food (the resource is wood). So, the mangroves are reducing hunger by increasing the availability of food and increasing the purchasing power of the people.

That is the trouble with emergency food and medical aid providers. They reduce the death rate but do not meanifully compensate for it by also providing them with adequate contracpetion.

Hence in places like africa all they have ever succeeded in doing is providing a temporary pin prick solutions to hunger only to have the region plunged back into human misery when the next drought or war comes along. But as they faciltate the populations to grow they create an ever larger aid burdon for future generations to deal with.

Sadly aid providers are largely fixated on short term quick fixes that will never eliminate poverty in the long term for future generations.




And we should also keep in mind that the only way that most western countries can sustain their current populations is by taking various resources, including food, from less developed parts of the world.

If western countries were forced to sustain their current populations on the resources remaining within their current borders then the populations of most if not all of them would crash.

This post has been edited by Santalum: 26 January 2012 - 01:49 PM