[padre35]

Good time to be a successful farmer.

[RightWhale]

Mankind is outrunning its food supplies.

The population control crowd never gives up and never stops to make a rational assertion. Whatever they think must be happening is happening.

[mvpel]

Meanwhile the Taliban is burning food aid.

[alloysteel]

Biofuel is another of those artificial limitations placed on the productivity of agriculture. This strategy APPEARS to be an “answer” for the seemingly rising prices of fossil fuels, but in fact, is a net energy/resources negative. Because the inputs for the opening up of additional land for biofuels production will demand even MORE fossil fuels (most of which would then have to be imported), the overall demand for fossil fuels will INCREASE. Something is wrong with that equation, if the intention is reduction of dependence from foreign sources. And as the production of biofuels is now competing with the production of food, the price of both must rise to assure adequate supplies of both. It is the old question of supply and demand. High demand + low supply = high price.

It would all be so easy if only we didn’t eat.

There are other sources of relatively cheap energy. But if it were cheap, we would just waste more of it.

[stylin19a]

From US Dept Of AG.

Data updated August 30, 2007.

For Year 2002:
Total land area (million acres) 2,263.96
Total farmland (million acres) 938.28
Percent of total land area 41.4

Cropland (million acres) 434.16
Percent of total farmland 46.3
Percent in pasture 13.9
Percent irrigated 11.6
Harvested Cropland(million acres) 302.70

Seems we should be sitting in the cat bird seat re: food & fresh water...if we don't go nutsy on biofuels.

[Wuli]

“Malthus may have been right after all, though two centuries early and a crank. Mankind is outrunning its food supplies. Hunger - if not yet famine - is a looming danger for a long list of countries that are both poor and heavily reliant on farm imports, according to the Food Outlook of the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO).”

Malthus was wrong and the assumptions that he was not wrong ignore the man-made nature of all of the problems with sufficient food production, and the latest of those problems - the taking of precious land and water for bio-fuels - is, additionally a phony and needless problem, because its premise, that man-made CO2 from fossil fuels has made the climate warmer is not science, it is political science.

[nuke rocketeer]

He does not include the vast amount of farmland in the US that has been abandoned back to pasture due to low crop prices and increasing efficiency in the last 30 years. The famr population has been declining for many years.

[Brilliant]

I could stand to lose 50 pounds.

[steel_resolve]

Is food fungible? If not, let’s start by telling the Saudis that 1 bushel of corn = 1 barrel of oil.

[dr.zaeus]

Beware the “Tortilla Revolt”!

[rmlew]

In much of the world, agricultal use remains very ineffecient, in part due to government policies. We could produce a lot more food.
Biofuels are a bad a idea. Electric or hydrogen cars and increased nuclear power are the future. Unfortunately, energy policy is one place where uninformed voters, irresponsible media, and stupid lying politicians can create a nightmare.