Long term food supply

Sidehill Gouger said:
Like you say, when times get tough, modern folks think the government should step in and feed them.
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Some day folks will realize how truly ineffective government is when it comes to saving them from disaster. We need not look any further than Katrina to see that doing the "public good" is a joke in most cases, and actually serves to further socialize a populace (Remember government doing the house to house gun search and confiscation in New Orleans for the public good). People need to start hammering home the concept of self-sufficiency in as many ways as possible.
 
While I am a big advocate of being "well rounded", the age of true self-suffciency died the moment we took up professions. The blacksmith spends most of his time blacksmithing and has to rely on the tailor, the baker and the candlestick maker.

I am also a big fan of doing what makes you happy :D But try knowingly hurt people (or the environment). The people who first started using asbestos didn't know they would cause the deaths of many unfortunate souls, an example of unknowing harm. The people who knowingly allow citizens to inhabit toxic land at Love Canal, and example of knowing harm. The difference is knowledge, and what one does after one becomes aware of the consequences of their actions.


ps. it's nice to have a interesting discussion :D
 
I like discussions like this. I have a ton of respect for people who believe in what they believe in and don't mind saying it, whether or not anyone else agrees with them. That's what makes this country so great.
 
I just appreciate everyone who got on this thread and voiced an opinion. The one thing that I will "give" on is regardless of how self-sufficient we try to be, there is no doubt an interdependence that has developed in our culture so we're all in this thing together in some way. I think we're in for some hard times ahead, guys. I hope I'm wrong but I just don't see any real answers coming out of Washington DC or the candidates running for office. Maybe we have gone too far down the path of socialism to ever bring it back to honest government and citizens with integrity, who knows. But it is good to see these types of discussions from people who realize there are problems and personally doing something to makes sure they survive whatever comes.
 
Ha - usually I'm the doom'in and a gloom'in guy in these conversations. Personally I think we still have another 5-10 years before we really realize the pickle we are in. That will be when energy costs what it costs and the hopes that there is another big oil field sitting around untapped somewhere is seen for the false hope that it is...
 
I sort of agree with that timeline, KGD. I recently heard something on a news show while flipping through the radio channels that analysts are predicting we will see 10 dollar a gallon gas. What's pissing me off is the price of corn. Even though we grow our own corn, all the farmers started growing corn because of this methanol production deal (that was suppose to bring gas prices down since we're not using as much gas with methanol in it), anyway, due to them not growing other crops, those crops have gone up in price, gas is still going up in price and corn is going up in price and the mega-farmer is getting subsidized by our tax dollars to grow corn, and in many cased getting paid to not grow other crops.
 
The corn supplementing fuel idea is a losing battle. First, to maintain the high yields of corn we need fertilizers that are derived from fuel. So the cost of growing corn will increase with oil costs.

It isn't too difficult to understand as to why one technology is renewable and old fashion oil isn't. In biofuels, you are taking that <10% efficiency of chlorophyll a in converting sun + CO2 to biomass (plus nitrogen, phosphorus and other trace elements) and then subject to the whims of inefficiency of yeasts to convert (<10% again) biomass to ethanol. In oil reserves you are using up 100 000 + years of photosynthetic activity and simply sticking a pipe in ground allows you to gain access to it.

Here is a sobering but pretty easy calculation. I looked up these stats myself and made some assumptions but for the sake of argument here they are in their simplicity.

U.S. demand for oil is 20 million barrels/day according to a news article
1 barell = 42 gallons
U.S. demand = 20 x 42 = 840 million gallons/day x 365 days = 306 billion gallons/year

Most biofuel crops produce 100 gallons per acre of biofuel (wiki). Lets be kind and say we get 10 x the efficiency of current production. That means 1000 gallons biofuel per acre. We need to devote 306 million acres of crop land to feed our current demand for fuel.

The total surface area of the U.S. is about 2,263 million acres. We would have to make available 13% of the total surface area of the U.S. towards biofuel production. I don't know what fraction of the surface area is considered agricutlural quality land, but it strikes me that it may not bet 15%. This doesn't give any leeway for food production.

So - we can't replace oil with biofuel and keep current demand.
 
Well hopefully more people will realize that we need to use our resources more carefully. Increased price will lower demand for fossil fuel and make alternatives more attractive. Once it becomes economically viable to start switching to other fuel sources (which would come a lot sooner if we didn't subsidize the gas industry) we'll start seeing change.

I have faith in human tenacity and ingenuity. However, i would like to avoid as much unnecessary suffering as possible. That is to say, stop damaging the earth before it really starts to damage us (we'll die long before she does).
 
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