This really is the problem. People who are quite willing to consider giving up their gas guzzlers or paying more for renewable energy won’t even think about a low-meat diet (I’m vegetarian but in terms of dealing with the food crisis we’d be best off if the global average diet had a small amount of meat rather than none at all).

We all know how important progress in renewable energy and low-emitting transport will be to getting through the coming crisis. I sometimes thing however, that the first person to produce a vegetable-based food indistinguishable from meat will do even more for our survival than Martin Green.

There’s an interesting article in the most recent edition of socialist worker in the UK that says actually food production has increased 17 per cent more than population in the last 30 years and that we now produce enough grain, wheat and rice to give everyone 3500 calories a day. That is before we talk about meat, veggies and fruit. The UK health department estimates we can live on 2,500 calories a day.

The problem seems to be the way capitalism is organised - for profit not people. These people are starving because they can’t afford the food, not because there isn’t enough to go around. Anyway, I’ll start on the long road of research on this. The article can be found at http://www.socialistworker.co.uk/art.php?id=14696

Cats and dogs food is mostly made of cereal and meat we won’t eat - offal, culled kangaroo, horse, marine by-catch.

Or which we will eat if we dine at one of the less salubrious curry or spaghetti restaurants.

Poppycock. Cats and dogs food is mostly made of cereal and meat we won’t eat - offal, culled kangaroo, horse, marine by-catch. Same as it ever was, they get our scraps.

“It’s the question that never gets answered.”

That isn’t correct, as John Quiggin notes: “The current food crisis should make subsidies for food-based biofuels politically and economically untenable, pushing the industry away from this easy short term solution and in the direction of sources such as switch grass, grown on marginal or non-arable land.” http://johnquiggin.com/index.php/archives/2008/04/16/food/

There is actually plenty of material on this Adrien, if you care to look. Sugar cane waste and forest waste are already fueling power plants in Australia. http://www.abc.net.au/landline/content/2006/s2202852.htm Obviously these are not endangering food security.

As to Paul Norton’s point about urban sprawl, I imagine the meat consumption of household cats and dogs is a greater land pressure. Another is the the growth in acreages- such as mine!

Absolutely.

There’s only one ten tonne elephant in this room. And he’s looking straight back at me in the mirror.

On that theme, on Monday we were told that Australia currently produced 800 Agricultural science students each year, whereas 2000 were needed.

Was it soylent green you were talking about …. or something else?

Quick! Tell us! Before we are overwhelmed in the First Malthusian War.

The Australian Greens want… an increase in new sustainable industries, including biofuel and bioenergy production, provided that they do not endanger food security.

How?
>
It’s the question that never gets answered.

And of course, Malthus described the basic problem some time back.

If current diet trends continue, the problem becomes harder; but then, I think there’s plenty of room to improve the state of agricultural practice around the world, particularly in places like Russia.

Responses to the current ructions in food supply have all been very 80s style bandaid solutions. I haven’t heard much of any sort of structural fixes to ensure that developing world people are able to ensure tehir own food security. Mostly it’s “give em food from our (non-existent) government stockpiles” combined with export restrictions. All a bit silly, wont stop it happening again.

I think debt relief, making capital and training/education available, and avoiding perverse subsidies would go a lot further to keeping these people fed.

At the nastiest level however, as Nabs alluded to, can the world afford a few more billion people (of whatever hue)?

There have been shortages for years - despite domestic production increasing, except one setback year owing to poor rain. Indonesian occupation gave ET a taste for rice, which is considered a prestige food. Older Timorese say they never ate it before 75.

‘Where will they get the money to subsidise rice imports?’

They’re loaded on oil money. The problem is getting a supplier - traditional exporters (eg Vietnam) are increasongly keeping it for their own markets.

In the USA and Europe, a lot of former agricultural land has been taken out of production through the 20th century, for instance in the Northeast.

At least some of that could be put into production again.

Also a lot of very good quality agricultural land in and around Australian capital cities has been taken out of production, and continues to be taken out of production, due to suburban sprawl. This could be curtailed and even reversed to some extent with better urban planning.

I am involved in the enzyme industry and I can safely say that the enzyme side of cellulosic ethanol is pretty much cracked - both from a cost and efficiency viewpoint.

The two major enzyme companies have met their committments to the US government on bringing enzyme costs down (off the top of my head, to something around 3-4% of the initial costs). The enzymes will be so cheap, that the cellulosic plants will have their own primitive enzyme manufacturing facilities - as the cost of transport:enzyme cost is too high. The first generation of these new enzymes are available for pilot trials currently. They will improve further yet.

The biggest issues are to do with the process pre-enzymatic action - the collection of bulky, low density feedstock and the pre-treatment regimes needed to allow the enzymes to get to the cellulose.

Which isn’t to say that it will be ready tomorrow or next year - but it isn’t dead by a long shot.

But biofuels are largely a creation of government mandates (and I should note that the Australian Greens were proposing such a mandate at the last election).

The actual Greens policy states that:

The Australian Greens want… an increase in new sustainable industries, including biofuel and bioenergy production, provided that they do not endanger food security. [emphasis mine]

Ethanol and biofuels generally may well also be a crock on other grounds, but the Greens aren’t unaware of the implications for food production.

And then you might also look to northern Australia, which is barely touched as to agricultural capacity.

Attempts in this direction have been made at various times, and have frequently foundered due to the local climatic and ecological conditions (extreme heat, extreme humidity, lots of pests and parasites, etc.) being unfavourable to the growing of the crops which were planted, frequently as part of government-mandated schemes such as the Ord River Scheme in Western Australia, which was a bonanza for the local wild geese who fed on rice to their hearts’ content. A thorough study of ecological constraints and possibilities in nothern Australia, taking into account the probable effects of climate change and the environmental services being provided by the land and waterways in their undeveloped state, would be required before decisions should be made about which of these areas could be turned over to agriculture, and in particular about which crops should be planted, which species of livestock farmed, etc.