[jeskill]

Santalum, on 26 January 2012 - 01:44 PM, said:

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

OK. So you're admitting then that there's not a direct cause/effect relationship between food production and fecundity because the availability of contraception affects fecundity regardless of food availability? Great. Thank you for making my point. Would you disagree that fecundity is also affected by the level of political stability and the availability of education? After all, less politically stable places do tend to have more war/rape and have less availability of contraceptives. On the other hand, it's well known that the more education a female gets, the less likely she is to have lots of children regardless of the amount of food available.

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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.

USAID and other large organizations are fixated on short term damage control, but there are aid providers who are working on long-term fixes as well. I've mentioned some of them in my previous posts, but there are a lot of small NGOs that are helping farmers grow hardier and healthier crops to reduce malnutrition. If you are someone who doesn't like the quick fixes, you might consider donating to the small NGOs that are taking the long-term route.

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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.

Do you have evidence to support this statement?

[Moontanman]

Santalum, on 26 January 2012 - 01:44 PM, said:

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 is not true, in fact the USA grow far more food than we need and we export a great deal to other countries, so this statement is false.

[jeskill]

I've just realized that we've gone a bit off topic. Apologies. With respect to the OP's original question, it would seem that by focusing on edible halophytes, we could start growing salt water crops right now, instead of waiting for natural selection and adaptation to create salt-loving wheat or durum. Wired writer Alexis Madrigal wrote an interesting article about salt water crops in 2008:

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These plants [halophytes] are attractive candidates for both food and fuel because they have very high biomass and oil seed yields. The Science authors note that one leading halophyte-candidate, Salicornia bigelovii, produces 1.7 times more oil per acre than sunflowers, a common source of vegetable oil.

A quick search on google scholar brought up a recent study on the productivity and nutritional value of Salicornia:

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In this study, we thus demonstrated the feasibility of cultivating Salicornia and Sarcocornia by applying a multiple harvest system and 100% percentages of seawater in the irrigation water generating economic yields with high nutritional value. The findings also showed thatSalicornia and Sarcocornia leafy vegetables may attract additional interest as an alternative source of omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids for human consumption, even when the crop irrigated solely with seawater.

This post has been edited by jeskill: 26 January 2012 - 04:22 PM

[Santalum]

jeskill, on 26 January 2012 - 02:44 PM, said:

OK. So you're admitting then that there's not a direct cause/effect relationship between food production and fecundity because the availability of contraception affects fecundity regardless of food availability? Great. Thank you for making my point. Would you disagree that fecundity is also affected by the level of political stability and the availability of education? After all, less politically stable places do tend to have more war/rape and have less availability of contraceptives. On the other hand, it's well known that the more education a female gets, the less likely she is to have lots of children regardless of the amount of food available.



USAID and other large organizations are fixated on short term damage control, but there are aid providers who are working on long-term fixes as well. I've mentioned some of them in my previous posts, but there are a lot of small NGOs that are helping farmers grow hardier and healthier crops to reduce malnutrition. If you are someone who doesn't like the quick fixes, you might consider donating to the small NGOs that are taking the long-term route.





Do you have evidence to support this statement?

There is abundant evidence to support this.

I will give you two well documented cases.


1) The US, Australia and Britain are dependant upon middle east oil and they are in turn dependant on steady supply of oil energy and fertilisers to sustain its current agricultural out put.....apart from their other industrial outputs. If the middle east stops selling oil to them then their agricultural out puts would alone plummet and they would not be able to feed their large over consuming populations. Which is clearly why all three countries are prepared to go to extraordinary military lenghts to maintain their oil supply lines from the middle east.


2) Don't know about the US and Britain, but recent figures in Australia show that we are now net importers of fresh produce and other non-grain and non-animal foods: http://en.wikipedia....re_in_Australia for starters. Climate change and peak oil/peak fertiliser is expected to further diminish our agriculutral output and we may well become a net importer of grains as well at some point in the near future.

This post has been edited by Santalum: 27 January 2012 - 01:30 PM

[CaptainPanic]

Good one, jeskill. Salicornia is indeed suited for seawater conditions, and it tastes good too (although it's a little salty, for obvious reasons).

I wonder what the yield per hectare (or per acre) could be. Too lazy to look it up

[jeskill]

Have you eaten it before? I feel like I should try it now ...

Santalum et al., I've started a new thread on ag productivity so that we don't hijack this one.