The recent release of 21 scientific documents which address the overpopulation problem misses the point. It's a high-tech response typical of scientists. They propose manufacturing synthetic meat to feed the expected 9 Billion people worldwide by 2050.
The documents do argue that dependence on oil and other fossil fuels must be reduced for the world food system to survive. Also argued is the fact that select multinationals led by Monsanto are accumulating intellectual property to the disadvantage of the global commons. This cannot bode well for countries already struggling to feed its people.
Technical solutions to the world food problem will not improve accessibility to even the basic staple foods, nor improve its quality. Food will still need to be transported around the world and doing that without oil will be very difficult if not impossible. Local food systems combined with a steady-state economy and a worldwide effort to live within the limits of our environment are the only way forward. At the rate we're going we won't make it to 2050 without a lot of pain. Our sustainability plan is still "overshoot and collapse".
1 comment:
Hey there!
The Archdruid has a timely post up that addresses this from the low tech perspective.
"...the way we produce food nowadays is not long for the world, and will be replaced by other ways of producing food that don’t depend on mass infusions of nonrenewable resources.
Those other ways already exist, and have the benefit of well over a century of practical experience and testing. What makes it difficult for many people to notice them, or factor them into a sense of the future, is that they don’t look like industrial agriculture at all. To borrow a metaphor from computer technology, they aren’t plug-and-play components; they presuppose radically different relationships among land, resources, farmers, crops, and consumers; and as they expand into the space left blank by today’s faltering industrial agriculture – a process already well under way – the new social forms defined by these relationships differ so starkly from existing forms of food production and distribution so greatly that many people have trouble fitting the new possibilities into their view of the future."
Some good stuff there.
Cheers!
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