Vaxxers Vs Anti-Vaxxers

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Not all of them, just the particularly hard-core, everyone should eat exclusively organic types who believe that is the only type of food that should be sold as groceries. It just isn't practical - at least not yet. The yields of organic farming are consistently lower than the non organic methods (imagine that, if you don't use pesticides bugs will eat more of your crops). The hard truth is we have about a billion more people living on the planet right now than organic only farming can support. So who gets to decide which billion people starve to death. (Not that everyone is properly fed today, but the problem is magnified with less food.)

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And don't get me started on GMOs. We've been genetically modifying both plants and animals for thousands of years. We just got pretty good at it about 60 years ago, and really good at it in the last 10. The first GMOs (although not called such at the time) was drought resistant corn. That started in the 1940s.

 

There are plenty of people who could take on that responsibility. None that would make the public happy, but that's besides the point.

And the world could probably use a little breathing room anyway. Delay the inevitable collapse of civilization and all that.

 

We're drifting a bit which I'm ok with (I've done it myself).


Wanted to mention concern about pesticides is valid-those chemicals can do bad things. Also worried about antibiotics and factory farming because this is cutting down on the number of antibiotics that will be usable (the practice breeds antibiotic resistant germs).

I'm not worried about the number of people on the planet. I've seen projections come and go. When the Population Bomb was written it included predictions that did not come true. More importantly the author was wrong 2 out of 3 times he made a bet with an economist (who I would argue study human society better and more directly than biologists). I think worries about there being a billion people too many are wrong and overstated-unlike Global Warming which I think of as a very real problem being understood even by chemists today (and the problems related to it being understood and purposefully ignored if not falsely denied by many propagandists & political figures today-at least in the USA).

Who said civilization will fail? The real problem may be making sure it doesn't get (too?) dystopian.

 

All great civilizations eventually collapsed and paved the way for new ones. It's the natural order of things.

 

Well, you won't see me worrying about a billion extra people. My dollars are in the US economy. We dont have a billion unfed mouths. I'm not interested in saving the rest of the world.

 

Correct me if i'm wrong, but don't we have a much higher population in part because of these advanced farming methods that now we can't support the population without?

And we should worry about factory farming for other reasons then pesticides. Like how it is horrifically unethical.

 

I believe the higher population has more to do with a lower mortality rate at all ages ... and the fact that people can't seem to keep their pants on. But chicken-egg if you want.

If you're referring to agri-business, I'm not sure how unethical it is. Certainly not any more so than normal business.

 

Birthrates are mostly falling these days. Obviously, they depend largely on economic cycles. When times are good, people breed like rabbits. When things get tight, having children is like throwing fuel onto the fire. With the fuel being bank notes.

Although overall, it seems that even without the economy's influence, the rate of birth is falling more or less steadily. I suppose in part because the infant mortality rate has fallen significantly with the advances of medical science and because the life expectancy of people is considerably longer now.

 

Well of course part of the reason we have a higher world population now is due to having a more productive farming system. All I'm saying is that If every farmer in the world switched over to all organic methods, we could expect crop yields to drop by 30%. (That's an average - it is more or less depending on what exactly it is you're growing.) and that's just not enough food for over 7 billion people.

As for agribusiness being unethical, I think it depends on what you mean. I do believe some of the things we do to animals are unethical, but not so much plants.

I agree that birth rates are dropping in most of the world. There's a pretty linear relationship to medical advances having fewer kids die before adulthood (and a not insignificant factor of women having access to birth control) leading to lower birth rates. But that's not everywhere. There are still nations in Africa and Southeast Asia where the average woman has a birthrate in excess of 4, and a few nations where it's nearly 6. Those nations are all poor (thus having poor health systems) and would be the most harmed by food shortages. (As an aside, I think we just answered where the 1 billion would come from.)

 

When did what I say suddenly switch from "factory-farming" to "agri-business"? There is a big difference between the morality of one aspect of agri-business, and the morality of the whole thing.

 

I think this is relevant for the discussion at hand: http://www.gapminder.org/videos/population-growth-explained-with-ikea-boxes/

 

That's why I asked damedog....

They seem the same to me. Personally I don't care about unethical treatment of something that we (as a people) are going to kill and eat. Seriously, if a chicken has been bred to have Dolly Pardon breasts why do I care? I doubt the chicken knows or cares.