Letters to the Editor
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Why would the #1 or #2 rice EXPORTER want to conserve?
Thailand is one of the world's biggest rice exporters. What sane person would hold back a big piece of their crop which they already don't need for domestic consumption, from export in times of rising prices?
It sounds like Thailand wants to drive the prices even higher then dump their crop on the market in order to crush other exporters like Viet Nam.
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The problem is not a technological one.
It's a social one.
The solutions to our problems of resources and population exist already. What is not there is any will, collective intelligence, or desire (by the powerful) to implement them. We are currently engulfed in a wave of neoliberal Friedmanite economics which precludes any planning (which can be described as the application of knowledge to meet goals and solve problems). The Market is supposed to handle it all. But it can't. It is a beast with no brain. And so we muddle on.
nkennedy is right. You can't eat knowledge. No new magic bullet technology is going to come and save our butts. Not even GM (see http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/green-living/exposed-the-great-gm-crops-myth-812179.html)
We will just have to muddle on some more until we suffer enough to overthrow those who profit most from the status quo.
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@Robot
"But what does this mean? It means Egypt and all the Egypts do the best they can to buy what food they need. Sometimes it works, like in Egypt, sometimes it does not, like in Zimbabwe or North Korea."
You seem to have confused "ability" with intent. These countries you mention have and have always had the ability to feed themselves, they simply don't want to due to self-imposed policies. South Korea, for example, is rapidly becoming one of the most prosperous nations in the world and is very much able to feed itself. In terms of climate and resources it is virtually identical to the land north of the 38th parallel. Yet while a South Korean's diet is rich in seafood, grains and vegetables and delivers plenty of daily calories, North Koreans as recently as 2004 were told by their government that grass is better for you than rice, due to chronic shortages. North Korea can feed itself, it merely chooses to spend its resources on other things, and curtails/eliminates the entire private sector that has always been the engine for greatest productivity.
Zimbabwe is the same way. The former Rhodesia was able to feed itself just fine. But after 30 years of Mugabe's policies of corruption and heavy-handedness, the country is on the brink of economic collapse. Part of the food problem is a direct result of the land seizures of the 1980's when white farmers had their farms appropriated, then sold off to local blacks, without training, resources or credit to purchase equipment, seed or fertilizer. The result is a catastrophe.
Malthus himself never realized that England proper never had a peacetime famine after 1624, due to the rise of enclosures, large-scale farming and agricultural development. Throw in the railroad and steam powered shipping, and famine could be averted almost anywhere there was a will to avert it. Throw in private enterprise and productivity can be sustained indefinitely.
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Knowing is not solving
I'll take ramoncreager and nkennedy over Michael Mandel. Knowledge is only as useful as its application to the problem at hand. Climate change and peak oil are both good examples of a failure to apply knowledge. We "know" literally hundreds of measures that would help to reduce emissions and oil consumption but we apply relatively few on any scale beyond the voluntary individual level.
The solution for avoiding a "Malthusian" end is a social one, and it requires leadership, evidence-informed decision making and restraint.
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@cdunlea
Well spoken sir (madam?)
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Malthus merely overestimated our enlightened self-interest.
Anyone who thinks Malthus wrong is ultimately living in the neoclassic economic delirium of ‘infinite resources’ (see Julius Simon and others), which is of course the unchallenged assumption of global market capitalism. Our entire economic model is fundamentally detached from the ecological carrying capacity of the planet over the longterm. The fact most people view declining populations as problematic shows how far our hubris has over-extended us.
Enhanced exploitation of natural resources (especially synthetic Nitrogen fixation) in the Industrial Age has merely extended and exacerbated the situation for an already potentially unsustainable human population. That model cannot continue forever and after the exponential growth of an organism often comes a steep decline if not total demise.
Until we develop an energy model which sustains itself through solar power (photovoltaic or indirect effects like wind) NO CIVILISATION ON EARTH IS SUSTAINABLE. The only sustainable groups are pre-agrarian cultures subject to natural checks on population growth. Since people will not be satisfied until they reach a certain standard of material comfort (if even then) human populations may be over extended by 4-6 billion people.
We are far more likely to preserve our noble civilisational achievements with a very small population with a higher standard of living than a large one with a very low standard of living. Who reading this would trade places with a peasant woman in Bangladesh?
A sustainable population will have to practise strict population control. In order to preserve other human rights and indeed the survival of the species, the freedom to reproduce at will may need to be curtailed. America is one of the most poorly positioned nations to make the necessary changes then because every family planning effort affronts religious superstitions about birth control, abortion, etc.
Of course I think the Hubris which comes with believing ourselves 'created in God's image' is largely responsible for the predicament we find ourselves in.
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@cdunlea
I take (and agree with) your general point about systemic inefficiencies but your examples won't win any points for factuality.
South Korea is probably not agriculturally self-sufficient. They've been pursuing an aggressive policy aimed at self-sufficiency, subsidizing native agriculture and imposing high tariffs on imports. Despite which they remain a food-importing nation. South Korean agriculture would find itself outclassed by imports from SE Asia absent these controls; they're subsidizing local production with imported capital. If the world market for electronics were to collapse, for example, South Korea might (again) go hungry. In this regard at least, North Korea is the more self-sufficient nation. South Korea's climate and terrain is also warmer and wetter than in the North, and they have an additional rice-planting season.
Rhodesia's population in 1978 was 6-7 million; Zimbabwe today has 10 to 12 million. The rate of urbanization has trebled, and Zimbabweans suffer from one of, if not THE, highest rates of AIDS-related deaths in the world, which is a structural drain on resources. You may
be correct about Mugabe's policies and the expropriation of white-owned land as being responsible for the current situation, but to compare rates of productivity in 1978 with those in 2008 is misleading.
References:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhodesia
http://www.iss.co.za/AF/profiles/Zimbabwe/Population.html
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/zi.html
http://www.ers.usda.gov/Briefing/SouthKorea/
http://goliath.ecnext.com/coms2/gi_0199-2973976/Food-security-and-agricultural-protection.html
http://www.ap-foodtechnology.com/news/ng.asp?id=76347-south-korea-corn-imported-grains
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/zi.html
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/kn.html