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A comment on Decline of Species That Pollinate Poses a Threat to Global Food Supply. Parent comment

Re:Decline of Species That Pollinate Poses a Threat to Globa... by nommm-nommm on Friday February 26, 2016 @09:13AM (#11181411)
Quite a lot of agricultural isn't to keep people from starving to death - think hemp, cotton, tea/coffee, sugar cane, natural rubber, chocolate, and coca in places it is legal. None of those things prevent people from starving at all.

A lot of agricultural foodstuff is terribly inefficient at meeting the goal of "keeping people from starving." We grow them though (and produce in the case of meat) because humans really enjoy them. If the main goal was to prevent starvation we wouldn't produce resource-intensive food products or we would produce them in moderation.

Agriculture's purpose is economic. Eating (and eating tasty food) does have a large demand though.

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Re:Decline of Species That Pollinate Poses a Threat to Globa... by proksoup on Friday February 26, 2016 @11:31AM (#11182262)
> Agriculture's purpose is economic. Eating (and eating tasty food) does have a large demand though.

I'm maybe just repeating what the parent comment said, but that seems backwards to me.

If we treat agriculture's purpose as economy for economy's sake, which we have been doing, it seems counter-productive to our goals of staying alive sustainably.

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Re:Decline of Species That Pollinate Poses a Threat to Globa... by swe on Friday February 26, 2016 @12:21PM (#11182595)
This really should be no surprise. Mainstream economics practices that the environment is a subset of the economy and not the other way around.

"Sure, I can live without fresh water and clean air, but a market? I need a market." /s

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Re:Decline of Species That Pollinate Poses a Threat to Globa... by brightball on Friday February 26, 2016 @01:11PM (#11182912)
If you lack fresh water and clean air, there would be a market for fresh water and clean air. :-)
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Re:Decline of Species That Pollinate Poses a Threat to Globa... by briandear on Friday February 26, 2016 @10:45AM (#11181934)
The US produces enough grain to feed the world -- as does Russia. Starvation is a function of government policy. See Somalia and the warlord-grain thefts in the early 1990s.
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