Now I know for sure that Lester Brown is not an ecologist.

[GliderGuider]

How on Earth Can We Feed 8 Billion People?

As we note at Earth Policy Institute, while hunger has been disappearing in China, it has been spreading throughout much of the developing world, notably sub-Saharan Africa and parts of the Indian subcontinent. As a result, the number of people in developing countries who are hungry has increased from a recent historical low of 800 million in 1996 to over 1 billion today. Part of this recent rise can be attributed to higher food prices and the global economic crisis. In the absence of strong leadership, the number of hungry people in the world will rise even further, with children suffering the most.

Dealing with this problem requires addressing the long-term trends leading to growth in demand for food outpacing growth in supply. One key to the threefold expansion in the world grain harvest since 1950 was the rapid adoption in some developing countries of high-yielding wheats and rices (originally developed in Japan) and hybrid corn (from the United States). The spread of these highly productive seeds, combined with a tripling of irrigated area and an 11-fold increase in world fertilizer use, tripled the world grain harvest. Growth in irrigation and fertilizer use essentially removed soil moisture and nutrient constraints on much of the world's cropland.

Now the outlook is changing. Farmers are faced with shrinking supplies of irrigation water, a diminishing response to additional fertilizer use, rising temperatures from global warming, the loss of cropland to non-farm uses, rising fuel costs, and a dwindling backlog of yield-raising technologies. At the same time, they also face fast-growing demand for farm products from the annual addition of 79 million people a year, the desire of some 3 billion people to consume more livestock products, and the millions of motorists turning to crop-based fuels to supplement tightening supplies of gasoline and diesel fuel. Farmers and agronomists are now being thoroughly challenged.

The shrinking backlog of unused agricultural technology and the associated loss of momentum in raising cropland productivity are found worldwide. Between 1950 and 1990, world grain yield per hectare climbed by 2.1 percent a year, ensuring rapid growth in the world grain harvest. From 1990 to 2008, however, it rose only 1.3 percent annually. This is partly because the yield response to the additional application of fertilizer is diminishing and partly because irrigation water is limited.

This calls for fresh thinking on how to raise cropland productivity. One way is to breed crops that are more tolerant of drought and cold. U.S. corn breeders have developed corn varieties that are more drought-tolerant, enabling corn production to move westward into Kansas, Nebraska, and South Dakota. Kansas, the leading U.S. wheat-producing state, has used a combination of drought-resistant varieties in some areas and irrigation in others to expand corn planting to where the state now produces more corn than wheat.

Asking ,"How will we get enough food to feed this growing population?" is a lot like asking "How will we get enough wood to feed this growing bonfire?"

[joshcryer]

1. Wow.

That's one of the strongest statements I've seen you write. I bet you'll tell me that it doesn't mean what it seems to mean, though.

The guy who wrote Mobilizing to Save Civilization doesn't want to see people suffer and die enmasse. Who would've thought.

[HamdenRice]

3. Uh, yes he does, as do all Malthusians

They seem to pine for some sort of mega-death die-off as the solution to all "our" problems.

[joshcryer]

4. HamdenRice, on the same side here...

...Lester wrote "Mobilizing to Save Civilization" and it is not surprising that he'd want to feed people while at the same time saving the environment: http://www.earthpolicy.org/Books/PB3/index.htm

I agree that the bonfire statement is extremely Malthusian. Never saw such a statement made so strongly before by him.

[HamdenRice]

5. It's sad because GG seems like a humane person otherwise who

cares about the planet. Most Malthusians seem to see those hungry poor people as an abstraction. I think they should travel to poor countries and live with poor families for a few months. It gives you an entirely different perspective -- namely that there's enough to go around and that the distribution systems are horribly unfair and inefficient -- and it immediately becomes obvious that Amartya Sen is right and the Malthusians are wrong.

Those starving hordes become your friends, neighbors and even adoptive mothers, aunties, grannies, "oupas" and uncles, and the last thing you could imagine is letting any of them go hungry.

On edit: I agree also about Lester Brown -- he wants to save the planet AND its people.

[joshcryer]

6. *nod* People who do see it as an abstraction are unfortunately guilty...

...of that which they accuse other, "less enlightened" people of being guilty of. Not seeing the world around them, being "disconnected," and such.

Being connected to your world you see the suffering, and you will want to help end it the best you can.

[GliderGuider]

7. The deepest longing in the human heart is for connection

It gives me great happiness to see you and Hamden establishing a connection over this issue. In fact, the connection I feel with each of you through this gives me great joy. Using such joyful connections we can heal our own wounds and the wounds of the planet we share. Don't be afraid of any discomfort you may feel over the difference in our views, it's evidence that we are all alive. The more we open to that discomfort, accept it and use it, the more we grow as human beings. The more we grow the more of a difference we can make in the world around us.

Congratulations to both of you.

[HamdenRice]

8. You forgot your sarcasm smilie. You substantive throughts, though, would be appreciated. nt

[joshcryer]

9. I would also be interested in a clarification of the comment.

[GliderGuider]

11. Ask, and the universe provides. See right below.

[GliderGuider]

10. There was no sarcasm intended. Those were my honest thoughts.

I find I'm no longer reacting to the digs, jibes and calumnies on the internet. You have your views, I have mine, and that's just fine. I no longer have any interest in proving mine right and yours wrong. I do think you completely misunderstand my position, but that's not a problem for me to solve.

The way I see it working is like this. Someone puts an opinion out here. Someone else responds with an opposing opinion. A conversation may or may not ensue. Others reading the exchange may find that one side resonates with them. They may learn something from that, whether from the facts presented, the way they were expressed, or from the increased self-awareness that comes from clarifying a belief that was previously subliminal. If they consider their reaction a little more deeply they may discover why the other side failed to move them, and may discover something about themselves that had previously been obscure. This process is an important part of learning.

Of course none of this inner dialogue may occur. That might be because the reader is not interested in the topic, so neither opinion matters to them. Another reason it might not happen is that rather than simply resonating with one side of the debate they react emotionally to the opposing view, and immediately reject it. They might reject the opposing view because it is is factually incorrect, but if that is the only reason there is usually little emotional charge associated with the rejection. IMO a strong emotional reaction usually comes up because the reader is psychologically stuck -- so heavily invested in a particular point of view that they are incapable of validating any opposition. This happens most often because we are using those particular ideas as a support for our sense of self. We may have an unconscious protector who warns us that allowing that belief to be breached risks dissolving our personal identity.

If we come to realize that we are not simply the aggregate of our thoughts, ideas and beliefs, that sense of threat can be diminished. That relaxation of our defenses immediately makes us much more mentally flexible. We become able to see other points of view more clearly because our internal defensive filters have been relaxed. That in turn makes the actual content of the opposing idea we're considering (rather than the distorted impression of it that filtered through our inner defenses) more accessible. We may the learn from whatever value it does contain, rather than throwing out the intellectual baby with the emotional bathwater.

The reason I'm bringing up such abstract ideas here is that I've watched this unsticking process play out in myself over the last year. I have seen the enormous value it has brought me both in terms of what I have allowed myself to learn from opposing opinions and the pleasure I now get from reading opposing views with joy rather than anger.

I really do think that you, joshcryer, Nederland, kristopher, NNadir and others with whom I disagree on a regular basis are valuable to me from that point of view. Hence the joy I now feel as I interact with you and watch you interact with each other. We don't have to agree in order to be valuable to each other.

[joshcryer]

12. I love abstraction, I hate abstraction.

I absolutely adore abstraction as it relates to reductionism, I don't when it is obfuscation. Note that I don't think reductionism necessarily means clarity, but it can be.

I find I'm no longer reacting to the digs, jibes and calumnies on the internet.

But you do realize that the bonfire statement could itself be seen as a dig, jibe, and calumny? Indeed, if you do value this introspection as much as you do, I think that you had to.

We aren't necessarily engaged in vis-à-vis debate in all forms. I find that I disagree with NNadir, for instance, on many regards, yet I can still show him respect and discover common ground or interests (even when, and this is not calling him out, he is being less than savory, as is common with his personality).

The reason I responded like I did was because you do speak in vague abstractions, and indeed, I personally still don't get what you're trying to express. It is difficult for me to know what someone is saying unless they say it in a plain jane manner. If something is too abstract, then I wind up having to make assumptions about what someone is saying (especially if what they are saying is in the very jibe form we should all attempt to avoid; which I am not immune from, mind you).

That said, do you really believe that Lester isn't an ecologist because he believes in preserving life in a humane manner? If so, why?

[GliderGuider]

14. Making provocative statements is one thing, our response to them is another.

I didn't respond to Hamden's "Malthusian" epithet or his comparisons to Nazism and the Khmer Rouge because those were red herrings, insinuations intended to discredit my position by association. As a debating tactic they are transparent, and since most here are familiar with that tactic from other situations I just ignored them. They were not substantive, and since I didn't bite on the emotional loading they didn't end up contributing anything to the discussion. They may have achieved their underlying intended effect, though, which was to discourage participation in this thread and warn others away from this line of thought.

My bonfire quote (which was not even original with me) was in another vein entirely. In itself it contains no judgment at all about the value of humanity. It's merely a colorful analogy intended to illustrate a fundamental ecological point -- that population levels tend to follow food supply, not vice versa. This is a common understanding in the science of ecology, but one that rarely makes it out into public debate precisely because it triggers reactions like we've seen here.

Let's be clear about something up front. Ecology is a science. The Wiki definition is: "Ecology is the interdisciplinary scientific study of life processes explaining adaptations, external relations and interaction among organisms, the flux of materials and energy through living communities, the successional development of ecosystems, and the abundance and distribution of biodiversity in context of the environment. Ecologists are scientists that study ecosystems." There is no requirement that an ecologist be humane, though I imagine most of them (like most people in general) are. Likewise there's no requirement to want to save the planet, though I expect that ecologists are more conscious than most of the damage we've inflicted on Mother Nature. So when I said, "Lester Brown is not an ecologist," I made no statement whatsoever about his compassion, his humanity, his caring or his desire to help the poor and underfed of the world. I was simply stating that in my opinion a person who does not address one of the central principles of ecology in a discussion about food and population is not a ecologist in that scientific sense. He may be many other things (for sure Brown is a caring and compassionate man) but he's not being an ecologist. In the same way, I'd feel that a person who talked about falling bodies and planets but didn't put them into the context of the law of gravity, was not a physicist.

So, given that my statement had no direct value content (it was provocatively phrased, but didn't say anything inhumane), why did it prompt such an intense response? I suggest that it's because it implicitly violated a couple of major cultural taboos. One is the taboo against suggesting that there might be human-created problems that humans can't fix. But the main one is against suggesting that humans are not in every way the special, singular species -- the evolutionary apotheosis -- we have told ourselves we are. Putting those two iconoclasms together in a way that further suggests we have failed to even understand the problem we have created, causes a reaction that is so powerful that it keeps people from seeing the statement for what it actually was.

I said nothing to indicate that I might be inhumane. In fact Hamden recognizes that I'm not, though that recognition seems to cause some cognitive dissonance, as when he says, in "It's sad because GG seems like a humane person otherwise who cares about the planet." The fact that I have never advocated inhumane solutions, and have in the past gone out of my way to demonstrate that I see the poor of the world as real people in need of help (for example I contribute 0.7% of my annual income to the Stephen Lewis Foundation as a personal commitment to the Millennium Goal that specifies the same for nations) didn't mitigate the intensity of the ad-hominem attacks. When someone violates one of our most deeply held taboos, the reaction is intolerable and no rhetorical technique will be judged too extreme if it helps to drive the offending person or idea away.

The intensity of the projection and misrepresentation that has happened in this thread is a clear indication that I have violated taboos. In our culture we say we believe that ideas are sacrosanct: anyone may play around with any idea. This is all well and good until the idea crosses the line of some taboo. That's what happened here, and your reaction and Hamden's both support that conclusion.

On edit: That's not intended as a criticism of either you or Hamden. You are who you are, and I'm not trying to call either of you or your responses "wrong". I'm just trying to clarify why you may have reacted as you did. I'm not even saying my speculations are correct, just that they're one explanation that's consistent with what I know about the way that some aspects of culture and the human mind work.

[joshcryer]

15. It is difficult to respond to provocation reasonably.

Especially when that provocation is not supported by factual information.

By placing humans in the same category of other species (or wood in a bonfire), you overlook the role intelligence plays in its growth patterns. When we look at other species, yes, when their food supply is good their population grows, and when their food supply is bad their population falters. However, it is irrefutable that humans, with a good standard of living, will not continue growing their population to the extent that they would if those luxuries were non-existent. It also remains that technological advancement and human ingenuity allows humans to outpace the ecology of their environment, and create their own ecologies.

www.gapminder.com

I know, I post the link a lot, but it seems to be overlooked quite a lot here. And I mean, a lot. Half of these discussions are simply resolved by the fact that preconceptions simply are not true.

Now let's be clear. Lester is advocating a humane, compassionate, view of ecology (indeed, self-consistent ecological views must be; even deep ecology does not place humans below all other beings). I never said you were being "inhumane," or that you were even making a statement about Lester's humanity (indeed, you didn't say much). Merely that you were using his obvious humanity as a reason he was "not ecological." His desire to help animals in the environment makes him incapable of understanding the environment.

The reason what you said elicited the response it did was because it was purely provocative and devoid of factual content. It did not actually, genuinely, try to express an idea, it was merely meant to cause people to assume what it meant (as there is no other way to derive meaning from it), and go from there. It is unfair to blame people for their reactions when there simply is nothing to go by. However, my initial suspicion was confirmed by your belief that food supply grows populations. It would be accurate if homosapian followed the same growth trends that other animal populations do, but it doesn't. Indeed, growth rate is declining, indicating that in this century alone growth will even off (and perhaps even decrease), page 11: http://www.un.org/esa/population/publications/wpp2006/WPP2006_Highlights_rev.pdf

The statements are simply not supported by facts. Most population growth is in fact in the most impoverished parts of the world, Lester, by focusing on these impoverished parts of the world, intends to create the same effect that happens in Europe, North America, and other westernized states; population declines when populations are fed, clothed, and generally in good health. A stark contrast to the assumptions that ecologists make about the natural non-human environment. I would posit that to be a very good ecologist, you must also understand human ecology. I consider Lester a good ecologist.

Note: this *is* intended to be a criticism of you, however, I have attempted to be as civilized as possible in my response.

[GliderGuider]

16. I can't control your responses, I can only control my own.

We appear to be talking past each other here. While that's unfortunate, it's quite common. I accept your need to criticize me, as I also accept that need in Hamden. It's OK, the world won't fall apart if we disagree.

By the way, your statement "Merely that you were using his obvious humanity as a reason he was "not ecological"" is your own projection. You really need to own that in order to unravel what's going on in this thread.

[joshcryer]

17. I didn't project that at all.

That is your position.

I was simply stating that in my opinion a person who does not address one of the central principles of ecology in a discussion about food and population is not a ecologist in that scientific sense.

Yet we know that Lester's position actually advocates a slowdown in growth, indeed, if we were to implement Plan B 3.0 we may in fact wind up at the low end of UN population projections, as opposed to how things are looking now.

From his article, Despite local advances, the overall loss of momentum in expanding food production is unmistakable. It will force us to think more seriously about stabilizing population, moving down the food chain, and using the existing harvest more productively.

Lester is a better ecologist than most from what I see. He actually understands that human civilization is a problem for the environment, and the only way to realistically mitigate the problems of human civilization is to address human ecology face on.

Lester is not ecological from your point of view for whatever other reasons you want to conjure, but I think my assessment is fair.

[HamdenRice]

2. And comparing humans to a bonfire shows why Malthusians have human rights values of the Khmer Rouge

Hate to point this out, but humans are sentient fellow persons. They are not comparable to fire wood or a fire.

Just what do you suppose he should propose? A die off? Cutting off food to the hungry?

Population growth rates are falling, and we are projected to reach zero population growth this century -- in fact every few years, the revisions show the downward trajectory is accelerating. Beyond continuing what we are doing, just what do you propose to do to stop the "bonfire"? The Nazis, the Khmer Rouge and the Germans in Herero-land tried "other methods" but these have not proven popular with the rest of humanity.

So long as we know that population rates are approaching zpg, but that we will continue to add people until that happens, feeding those people is an obligation of the rest of humanity.

In fact, if you read closely what Brown is saying, those people can easily be fed through the extension of methods that have worked elsewhere to the developing countries, and more immediately our ceasing to bid the food that is available out of their mouths. For example, it's disgraceful that crop land in countries with hungry people is converted to grow cut flowers for export to the living room credenza floral arrangements of Europe and America.

[excess_3]

13. corn, $3.06 a bushel

how cheap is cheap enough?

[HamdenRice]

18. The cost of moving a bushel of corn to an area 50 miles past the end of paved road

makes the cost of a bushel of corn on national or international markets an insignificant part of the cost problem.