Mathematics of Starvation

It all boils down to basic ecology and the ecological pyramid where it shows that only about 10% of the energy contained in a primary producer (1st lvl) is transfered into new mass of the primary consumer (2nd lvl).

"When energy is transferred to the next trophic level, typically only 10% of it is used to build new biomass, becoming stored energy (the rest going to metabolic processes). As such, in a Pyramid of Productivity each step will be 10% the size of the previous step (100, 10, 1, 0.1, 0.01, 0.001 etc.)."

Then there is also the environmental and disease factors involved with beef and pork production....

 

You preacher. Me choir.

I've been vegetarian since the age of 15. I'm the only one in my immediate family, but one or two of the others are coming around. I don't try to hassle them about it too much, but it's probably the single biggest thing you can do to reduce your impact. If you say you're doing things to "go green," my unforgiving attitude is that it's lip-service until you go veg.

 

The arithmetic seems about right. But I'd like to make two comments.

I'm not sure the economics would work out that way -- that the grain not fed to cattle would go to the starving in impoverished countries. We'd have to give up grain-fed beef and give away the grain. Which would require a change of diet and a change of heart.

The second comment is little darker and Malthusian. If we feed them today, they'll have babies and there'll be that many more starving people in the next generation. So, free grain combined with birth control would work, free grain by itself will only work temporarily. Easy for me to say as my kids are not starving.

I didn't used to think like that. I held traditional Christian beliefs on charity. Even occasionally acted on them. But now I wonder whether global limits to growth don't make a mockery of traditional attitudes toward charity. Or maybe I'm just turning into Scrooge as I get older (" If they would rather die they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population").

 

The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollen is a book that you must read.

for 2 years now, we have purchased grass-fed beef from a local farmer. its meat that is grain, pesticide, and hormone free.

another thing that is not touched on is the amount of carbon that is NOT sequestered by feeding cattle grain not to mention how much CO2 is produced by raising beef in the first place.

 

Providing more grain by giving up meat isn't the answer.

Because we didn't use to grow this much grain. There were starving people. So we developed high yield grain and grew a lot more grain. And there are still starving people.

Birth control.

That man in Africa who has 19 children and his wife is pregnant again. (True. Heard the interview.)

Birth control is only one of the answers.

But if we all became vegetarians and shipped all of the grain the (now dead) cows aren't eating any more....there will still be starving people. And pretty soon.....we'll all starve.

That's harsh, I know. But I don't feel the solution should be all on MY shoulders (becoming vegetarian.) Not until the recipients are doing THEIR part too.

 

In general those 19 kids will use up less resources during their lifetimes than 1 "avg" child growing up in California.

In most cases people have many children because it is their only form of social security and/or because of high death rates among children. From studies, documentaries, and conference "talks", most women in developing countries would be happy to have fewer children if:

A: The social or religious constructs they must adhere to did not require them to.

B: They believed their 2 or 3 children would grow to adulthood and take care of them when old.

C: Women were empowered to work and follow their own dreams should they want to do so.

So it's not as easy as saying they just need to stop having so many children. A lot of women and men in developing countries have very good reasons for having many children. I concede that some just don't know how to do simple math and find themselves broke trying to feed so many kids. We see this in the U.S. as well.

My suggestion? If we are taking ANY resource from these countries and not paying a fair market value that includes a living wage for those invloved with it's production, transportation, extraction, or any losses due to land ownership and/or habitation then we should be making some sacrifice for their sake. A better alternative would be to include these countries in new technological advances, profit sharing, family planning, etc. To do anything less is simple exploitation and very unethical IMO.

There is no simple solution here but there are ethical ones that can be implemented but they require sacrifice and political will.

 

Birth control. It's as simple as that, otherwise disease, starvation, and war will do it for us. Meat verses grain and all of the other factors vanish into the noise in comparison.

Tom

 

See I'm not sure it is that simple Tom. If you force a couple in Africa to limit themselves to 1 or 2 children and those children die early or worse, they die in their early adult stages then who will take care of the couple when they are old? They do not have the benefit of social security checks that come in the mail each month. Those children were their social security checks.

I definately don't have all the answers but I don't think birth control is the best and/or only answer. One has to take socioeconomics and culture into consideration.

 

Birth control largely comes on its own with urbanization and education. When you are a farmer doing all or most of the work by hand, having children is a valuable resource (as well as they take care of you in your old age, as F8L mentioned). But when you have to pay for education (even just for school supplies) and the children aren't herding cattle or planting rice, then children become more of a luxury, even a liability to some extent, not a necessity.

But in addition, for decades all we've concentrated on is reducing diseases in developing countries, particularly among children. Politicians always agree to appropriate money to reduce early deaths. But we don't do anything for controlling the resulting rise in population, or for providing any kind of employment or increase in food supply. That part is left to them.

 

Another part of the food equation is that many farmers are going broke. The costs of fertiliser, fuel, and seed have all risen, but the income has not. Most farmers used to grow their own seed, but due to the 'wonders' of genetic modification, they have to buy new seed every year. From the same company that sells the pesticide. Hmm.

 

This is true, and in this situation people can have as many kids as they want, since they are self-sufficient. As soon as external resources are required, the equation changes dramatically, and then you need population control, or nature will do the controlling for us. You don't want nature to take care of population control.

It's really not that complex. What you see as complexity is complexity for the individual: making a good living, having kids for social backup and old age care, and that sort of thing. What's best for the world is not necessarily best for every individual. From a global standpoint we simply have too many people. It doesn't get much simpler than that.

Tom

 

Rainforests are being slashed and burned for farms too. With soil so poor that they get one crop and then move on. And the remaining soil isn't even good enough for the rainforest to return. It's basically sterile.

Unless you address the birth control problem you're basically asking everyone to starve.

Teach them to fish. Don't ask me to give away my pole.

 

I don't normally look in this forum. I'm surprised the "but-I-like-meat" crowd has not posted on this thread yet. Americans feel that they have a right to use all the resources they can pay for, and they feel that the government owes it to them to hold the prices of resources down. Last time I noticed a thread on the environmental side-effects of meat, there was a great swell of righteous indignation on the part of the meat eaters, who insisted that it was their right to eat meat because they like the taste of it.

I think that both the birth-control advocates and the advocates of vegetarianism are right. Meat is criminally wasteful of scarce resources, but nothing will be able to feel an exponentially-growing population indefinitely.

 

WRONG!!!

Pass the Land Shrimp

 

ah grasshopper...a bit of butter and salt, maybe a few spices, gently sauteed....