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Made in nl
Tzeentch Aspiring Sorcerer Riding a Disc





 MinscS2 wrote:
I understand his point completely.

Fact is however, that if Swedens population doubled in the next 50 years, it would have nowhere near the global impact that we would see if Indias population doubled.

Let alone the fact that Sweden could support twice its current number of inhabitants while India couldn't.

Is controlled population reduction needed in Sweden? Hardly.
Is controlled population reduction needed in India? Possibly.

See, I didn't even use the word "necessary".

Yet per person Sweden has a much larger impact than India, so if we reduce the population of Sweden too we will see a much earlier impact than if we do India alone for example. Now you have just decided on an arbitrary standard of international borders while the climate doesn't stay neatly within those lines. Saying Sweden could support twice its number is pretending Sweden doesn't participate in global economic consumption and it ignores the fact that the demand we have affect the polution in production over there. You could say Brazil and Indonesia be a large impact because they burn down their rainforests for plantations, but why do they do that? Because we provide the demand.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
 Grey Templar wrote:

Meat also gets a bad rap. Yes, feeding cows grain isn't efficient. However we have so much excess land for agriculture that we can afford to do that. And even if we stopped grain fed animals completely, we could still have a lot of meat because most grazing land is unsuitable for anything other than to have some cows/goats/sheep munch on it. Pigs and Chickens are also very efficient meat producers so they are worth being grain fed because the gain in protein make it worth it.

I think the issue with meat is more water consumption and the effect all those farting cows+creating their pastures has on the enviroment than what we feed them. They better hurry up with artificially grown meat, that is going to be a big step in balancing these things.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2018/08/06 16:19:23


Sorry for my spelling. I'm not a native speaker and a dyslexic.
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Decrepit Dakkanaut




UK

 Grey Templar wrote:
Its unnecessary to make more farmland out of wilderness right now, since there is a huge amount of farmland which is unused in the US. In fact, US farmland is shrinking. Whats swallowing up land is urban expansion, not increased farmland.

Plus you can actually use 'untouched' wild land for grazing, and it actually benefits the area. Grasslands are healthier when they have herds of herbivores on them.


I do agree urban sprawl is a huge issue and it is indeed eating up land at a very scary rate; as is industry and infrastructure (China again leading the way in vast projects!)



Grasslands and herbivores is a yes no situation on if it benefits. It will benefit if it is managed correctly. See the issue is from the farmers perspective they want the maximum number of head per unit area of land so that they can maximise their profits; however that value is often more damaging than it is good in conversation terms. Meanwhile conversation not only wants reduced herd density but also increased herd rotation and fallow years.

In general, at least in so far as the UK is concerned, if we turned farming practice back to the turn of the 1900 or so then there'd be almost instant benefit to wildlife. Sadly such isn't hte case; fields are far bigger with far few hedges (even grazing areas); many meadows are now cut for silage not hay and thus are often cut more times in the year (esp earlier in the season when its the most damaging to insect and plantlife); nutrient levels are artificially high (natural systems tend to do better on lower nutrient loads in the soil which thus promotes stress and thus allows for competition - if the nutrient load is kept high for long periods then you see plants that thrive on such conditions dominate other species).



So yes it would indeed benefit, but only if its managed from a conservation viewpoint rather than meat productivity. Of course there is a rough middle ground that can be found; but even then that only works if the farmer wants it too; if they are paid in subsidies to allow them to take a shortfall in profit or if the market just can't take the meat produced from higher stocking (ergo the farmer would be wasting meat/resources or have stock that wouldn't sell).

The latter is near impossible; the middle works well but only works so long as government wants it too (conservation payments are very controversial* and often one of the first things that gets hit whenever there are budget cuts)


*often because big and rich land owners often get BIG payouts for them which appears wrong to many that they get paid lots of money to "do nothing". Even though those complaining don't realise that without the big payments the land would likely be farmed to a higher degree and thus not have the wilderness benefit.



The USA is probably better off than the UK in this regard as you've a much lower population density in many areas; whilst the UK is far more dense and our farming system went into overdrive after WWII (both as a reaction to the shortfall of food production durign the war but also because the excess was a big part of being able to pay off our war debt)

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Decrepit Dakkanaut





 Overread wrote:
 Disciple of Fate wrote:
Because there is no way we're going to reduce the world's population by over more than half in this century, we just have to waste less and settle for a little less.


Actually there are several ways this can be done.

1) Disease

2) War

3) Major climatic change resulting in massive food production reduction.



You forgot one:

4) Thanos
   
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Omnipotent Necron Overlord






You could easily reduce the population by having less kids. There is nothing wrong with that. We should in fact - start doing it.

If we fail to anticipate the unforeseen or expect the unexpected in a universe of infinite possibilities, we may find ourselves at the mercy of anyone or anything that cannot be programmed, categorized or easily referenced.
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Decrepit Dakkanaut




UK

 Xenomancers wrote:
You could easily reduce the population by having less kids. There is nothing wrong with that. We should in fact - start doing it.


It is happening already in many developed nations.

Sexual education helps create awareness of concepts like family planning and contraception measures.

Contraception access is getting easier and easier with many school/uni systems having free/easy access or at least provision to allow for access. A relaxed attitude toward religion also helps as this reduces the impact of religious opposition toward the use of contraception.

Women being more empowered and giving a free choice of career paths means that they are not just focusing their life on homemaking and having kids. This does mean many are putting off kids until their latter childbearing years so that they can go to uni; build a career and have a job.

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London, Ontario

Again... all the power to the fewer kids crowd having themselves sterilized.

A&W (the burger chain) has recently released a "Beyond Meat" burger made from 100% vegetable protein. I've tried it, I liked it. I'd eat that in place of a regular burger, and it seems that said veggie production is less "harmful" to the environment by virtue of being less demanding of resources. I'm not really concerned about humanity's ability to adapt to the mess we're making.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2018/08/06 18:26:31


 
   
Made in se
Longtime Dakkanaut




 Overread wrote:
 Xenomancers wrote:
You could easily reduce the population by having less kids. There is nothing wrong with that. We should in fact - start doing it.


It is happening already in many developed nations.

Sexual education helps create awareness of concepts like family planning and contraception measures.

Contraception access is getting easier and easier with many school/uni systems having free/easy access or at least provision to allow for access. A relaxed attitude toward religion also helps as this reduces the impact of religious opposition toward the use of contraception.

Women being more empowered and giving a free choice of career paths means that they are not just focusing their life on homemaking and having kids. This does mean many are putting off kids until their latter childbearing years so that they can go to uni; build a career and have a job.


Additionally, having children is prohibitively expensive for a growing segment of the population.
   
Made in nl
Pragmatic Primus Commanding Cult Forces






 Overread wrote:
 Grey Templar wrote:
Its unnecessary to make more farmland out of wilderness right now, since there is a huge amount of farmland which is unused in the US. In fact, US farmland is shrinking. Whats swallowing up land is urban expansion, not increased farmland.

Plus you can actually use 'untouched' wild land for grazing, and it actually benefits the area. Grasslands are healthier when they have herds of herbivores on them.


I do agree urban sprawl is a huge issue and it is indeed eating up land at a very scary rate; as is industry and infrastructure (China again leading the way in vast projects!)



Grasslands and herbivores is a yes no situation on if it benefits. It will benefit if it is managed correctly. See the issue is from the farmers perspective they want the maximum number of head per unit area of land so that they can maximise their profits; however that value is often more damaging than it is good in conversation terms. Meanwhile conversation not only wants reduced herd density but also increased herd rotation and fallow years.

In general, at least in so far as the UK is concerned, if we turned farming practice back to the turn of the 1900 or so then there'd be almost instant benefit to wildlife. Sadly such isn't hte case; fields are far bigger with far few hedges (even grazing areas); many meadows are now cut for silage not hay and thus are often cut more times in the year (esp earlier in the season when its the most damaging to insect and plantlife); nutrient levels are artificially high (natural systems tend to do better on lower nutrient loads in the soil which thus promotes stress and thus allows for competition - if the nutrient load is kept high for long periods then you see plants that thrive on such conditions dominate other species).



So yes it would indeed benefit, but only if its managed from a conservation viewpoint rather than meat productivity. Of course there is a rough middle ground that can be found; but even then that only works if the farmer wants it too; if they are paid in subsidies to allow them to take a shortfall in profit or if the market just can't take the meat produced from higher stocking (ergo the farmer would be wasting meat/resources or have stock that wouldn't sell).

The latter is near impossible; the middle works well but only works so long as government wants it too (conservation payments are very controversial* and often one of the first things that gets hit whenever there are budget cuts)


*often because big and rich land owners often get BIG payouts for them which appears wrong to many that they get paid lots of money to "do nothing". Even though those complaining don't realise that without the big payments the land would likely be farmed to a higher degree and thus not have the wilderness benefit.



The USA is probably better off than the UK in this regard as you've a much lower population density in many areas; whilst the UK is far more dense and our farming system went into overdrive after WWII (both as a reaction to the shortfall of food production durign the war but also because the excess was a big part of being able to pay off our war debt)

Modern intensive farming practices are incredibly damaging to the environment, that is true yes. It is even worse in the Netherlands than in the UK. The Netherlands is a pretty small country, and one of the most densely populated in the entire world, yet it still manages to have some of the world's largest agricultural yields, especially when it comes to dairy products. The downside is that this is accomplished by having turned over virtually all land in the country to incredibly destructive farming, which has really degraded the landscape to a point that many areas of the country have become almost lifeless wastelands with nothing but high-protein grass and herds of cows that produce way more milk than cows were ever meant to produce. There is almost no nature left here, outside of a few reserves, and even those are doing badly because the effects of all the manure (causing an overload of nutrients in the soil and water) and agricultural chemicals do not stop at the edge of a reserve, and because ground water levels are kept artificially low because that is beneficial to farmers (but not so much to nature). The Netherlands produces way more agricultural products than it would ever need, the vast majority is produced for export (to Great Britain, for example). And despite all of this farmers aren't actually making a lot of money. The prices they get for their products are just really low. Farming methods have simply become so intensive and successful that there is now too much production.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2018/08/06 21:03:47


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The shocking the to me is the comparison of the percentage land we use for agriculture and the percentage of people employed in agriculture.

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 Easy E wrote:
The shocking the to me is the comparison of the percentage land we use for agriculture and the percentage of people employed in agriculture.


Which is a testament of how far we've come in specialty chemicals and mechanisation.

Subsistence farming is still a thing in some places (in Africa and elsewhere). Anyone railing against the perils of modern agriculture should spend a season with a family living off subsistence farming on the developing country of their choice.

It's organic, GMO-free and all the fancy labels you want to put there. And people die on bad years, often because they can't buy those evil chemicals that would have saved their crops if they had the money.

   
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Decrepit Dakkanaut




UK

jouso wrote:
 Easy E wrote:
The shocking the to me is the comparison of the percentage land we use for agriculture and the percentage of people employed in agriculture.


Which is a testament of how far we've come in specialty chemicals and mechanisation.

Subsistence farming is still a thing in some places (in Africa and elsewhere). Anyone railing against the perils of modern agriculture should spend a season with a family living off subsistence farming on the developing country of their choice.

It's organic, GMO-free and all the fancy labels you want to put there. And people die on bad years, often because they can't buy those evil chemicals that would have saved their crops if they had the money.



It's even worse - many tropical soils just can't take intensive western temperate style farming practices. Their traditional semi-nomadic lifestyles worked on the basis of slashing and burning areas of forest or wilderness, which gives a fast injection of nutrients into the soils and they'd then farm that for a few years. Then they'd up and abandon it as production lowered and move to slash and burn a new area; leaving the old site for decades to recover.

Modern living and influences say that they should say in one place and buy expensive chemical fertilizers to extend the production beyond normal limits; plus use these high yield gm crops that will provide even more food for them. All sounds good, but eventually it becomes impossible to produce without the fertilizers; and the soil soon degrades. Top soil gets washed out with run-off; iron pans develop giving an impenetrable solid layer; top layers harden to a crust; sinkholes (big ones) whip out the ground and suddenly huge chunks of the farmland are gone etc... The soil structure just isn't made to cope with the temperate evolved farming practice nor the continual intensive farming concepts.



They had a similar disaster with the "Green revolution" where the west shipped out loads of farming machinery to these types of country. Tractors and other machines to aid them in farming and it worked - until the funding scheme ended and until the machines started to break and they found that the average population didn't have any mechanics to repair the damage. Having not had the natural build up and development toward machinery within the society and instead having the machines dumped upon them there was basically little to no support structure to keep things going, esp once the funding for the scheme dried up. So machines got dumped.

Granted its a little reversed now - at least in urban areas - many western machines and electronics are shipped overseas where the cost to repair is viable. All those deadly nasty CFC freezes and fridges; all those old mobile phones; microwaves and all get boxed up and shipped out. It's kind of a crazy display of the modern world and excess.

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 Overread wrote:
jouso wrote:
 Easy E wrote:
The shocking the to me is the comparison of the percentage land we use for agriculture and the percentage of people employed in agriculture.


Which is a testament of how far we've come in specialty chemicals and mechanisation.

Subsistence farming is still a thing in some places (in Africa and elsewhere). Anyone railing against the perils of modern agriculture should spend a season with a family living off subsistence farming on the developing country of their choice.

It's organic, GMO-free and all the fancy labels you want to put there. And people die on bad years, often because they can't buy those evil chemicals that would have saved their crops if they had the money.



It's even worse - many tropical soils just can't take intensive western temperate style farming practices. Their traditional semi-nomadic lifestyles worked on the basis of slashing and burning areas of forest or wilderness, which gives a fast injection of nutrients into the soils and they'd then farm that for a few years. Then they'd up and abandon it as production lowered and move to slash and burn a new area; leaving the old site for decades to recover.

Modern living and influences say that they should say in one place and buy expensive chemical fertilizers to extend the production beyond normal limits; plus use these high yield gm crops that will provide even more food for them. All sounds good, but eventually it becomes impossible to produce without the fertilizers; and the soil soon degrades. Top soil gets washed out with run-off; iron pans develop giving an impenetrable solid layer; top layers harden to a crust; sinkholes (big ones) whip out the ground and suddenly huge chunks of the farmland are gone etc... The soil structure just isn't made to cope with the temperate evolved farming practice nor the continual intensive farming concepts.

They had a similar disaster with the "Green revolution" where the west shipped out loads of farming machinery to these types of country. Tractors and other machines to aid them in farming and it worked - until the funding scheme ended and until the machines started to break and they found that the average population didn't have any mechanics to repair the damage. Having not had the natural build up and development toward machinery within the society and instead having the machines dumped upon them there was basically little to no support structure to keep things going, esp once the funding for the scheme dried up. So machines got dumped.
.


I work in agrochemicals, a customer of mine has a pretty sizeable operation in Senegal (mostly melons).

When they leased the land they brought a few tractors, and seeders and everything, very much like the ones they used over here. The following season they sold off the tractors somewhere else (IIRC Brazil) and brought a container load of portable machinery instead, with the simplest engines they could find.

Tropical environment is very harsh on machinery, and the logistics of spares just aren't in place.

Latin America and Asia tells us that is very much possible to translate modern farming to tropical climates. Problem is funding and shortsightedness (read: corporate greed), not natural limits.

   
 
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