Re:The world’s climate goals are not sufficient. They are al...
by belorn on Thursday November 21, 2019 @11:51AM
(#21596135)
I doubt food productions will be a issue. The problems I foresee is transporting food to people and the willingness of the rich to give to the poor.
Aquaculture and particularly aquatic plants and algae are such as small part of the global diet that statistically it might not even exist, and yet civilization could almost exclusive survive on it if needed. We have the know how to make such food edible. Oceans like the Baltic sea is basically in a death spiral because too much eutrophication. The nutrients is there, the farming technique is available, but the culture and economics are not. Similar to how people don't want bread made with grinned down insects, which is also a food production efficiency concept, algae is something that we could produce but won't because people will not buy the products. Even when giving away food we tend to use food that we culturally would also eat.
Right now in local context, this kind of culture crash can result in edible food having a value that is below transport costs. In lakes that suffer from overpopulation you sometimes do a push where you extract hundred of tons of fish in order to restore health to the ecosystem. As I hear, that fish usually get turned into methane and burned as bio fuel.
Food production all over the world is mostly the result of culture and tradition. With global trading we can add a bit more nuances, but even here we can find plenty of example where something which people eat in one place get thrown on the garbage heap in places which don't share the same food culture.
Aquaculture and particularly aquatic plants and algae are such as small part of the global diet that statistically it might not even exist, and yet civilization could almost exclusive survive on it if needed. We have the know how to make such food edible. Oceans like the Baltic sea is basically in a death spiral because too much eutrophication. The nutrients is there, the farming technique is available, but the culture and economics are not. Similar to how people don't want bread made with grinned down insects, which is also a food production efficiency concept, algae is something that we could produce but won't because people will not buy the products. Even when giving away food we tend to use food that we culturally would also eat.
Right now in local context, this kind of culture crash can result in edible food having a value that is below transport costs. In lakes that suffer from overpopulation you sometimes do a push where you extract hundred of tons of fish in order to restore health to the ecosystem. As I hear, that fish usually get turned into methane and burned as bio fuel.
Food production all over the world is mostly the result of culture and tradition. With global trading we can add a bit more nuances, but even here we can find plenty of example where something which people eat in one place get thrown on the garbage heap in places which don't share the same food culture.