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Sigmetnow

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Re: Climate change, the ocean, agriculture, and FOOD
« Reply #1200 on: July 04, 2018, 01:53:55 PM »

In defense of the coral.

Hawaii bans sunscreens that harm coral reefs
Quote
Hawaii Gov. David Ige on Tuesday signed the first bill in the country that will ban sunscreens containing chemicals harmful to coral reefs. The bill, which was passed by state lawmakers in May, will go into effect January 1, 2021. At that point, the sale or distribution of over-the-counter sunscreens containing oxybenzone and octinoxate, which help filter UV rays, will be prohibited.

A study by Haereticus Environmental Laboratory, a nonprofit scientific organization, found the chemicals cause bleaching, deformities, DNA damage and ultimately death in coral when they're washed off beachgoers or discharged into wastewater treatment plants and deposited into bodies of water. ...
https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2018/07/03/health/hawaii-sunscreen-ban/index.html
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Sigmetnow

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Re: Climate change, the ocean, agriculture, and FOOD
« Reply #1201 on: July 10, 2018, 02:00:07 AM »
Great Salmon Escape Threatens to Taint Chile Fish Farm Industry
Quote
A massive salmon "spill" at a fish farm in southern Chile last week is once again tainting an industry that earned the country more than $4 billion last year.

About 900,000 salmon escaped from a Marine Harvest ASA farm during a storm on July 5, according to the Bergen, Norway-based company. The fish are not fit for consumption, Marine Harvest said in a press release, and the company is trying to recapture them.

Chile’s salmon industry was already under attack for the use of hundreds of tons of antibiotics every year and allegations that the dumping of dead fish in the past has fueled algae blooms that damage the local fishing industry. The escaped salmon are a non-native species to southern Chile and could harm other fish stocks, while their decomposition adds to ammonia in the water, potentially fueling a fresh outbreak of algae bloom, Greenpeace Chile Oceans Coordinator Estefania Gonzalez said.

"The scale of the event is such that it threatens the biodiversity of the region, and we’re very worried," Gonzalez said. "The industry has expanded in a very aggressive manner in places that need to be dedicated to conservation -- it’s a chemical bomb."

Marine Harvest said it would minimize the possible environmental impact of the escape, and try to recapture as many of the fish as possible.
https://www.bloomberg.com/amp/news/articles/2018-07-09/great-salmon-escape-threatens-to-taint-chile-fish-farm-industry
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Shared Humanity

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Re: Climate change, the ocean, agriculture, and FOOD
« Reply #1202 on: July 10, 2018, 02:03:23 AM »
I love all types of fish and seafood. I have quit eating it because we are destroying fisheries across the planet and I don't want to contribute to this.

My main sources of meat protein are organic chicken and beef.

Sigmetnow

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Re: Climate change, the ocean, agriculture, and FOOD
« Reply #1203 on: July 10, 2018, 09:06:35 PM »
A&W introduces Beyond Meat vegetarian burgers across Canada
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The burger chain partnered with California-based Beyond Meat to create a plant-based burger that it is now serving at its more than 925 restaurants across Canada.

The company, whose investors include Bill Gates and Leonardo DiCaprio, makes its Beyond Meat burger with beets to mimic beef’s red colouring, and coconut oil and potato starch to give it a similar juiciness and chew.

A&W says it is the first national burger chain to bring the plant-based burger to Canadian customers and Beyond Meat’s largest restaurant partner.

Beyond Meat sells its plant-based burgers, sausages, and chicken strips at thousands of American retailers and the company says its products are served at over 11,000 restaurants and other food service outlets mostly in the U.S.
https://business.financialpost.com/pmn/business-pmn/aw-introduces-beyond-meat-vegetarian-burgers-across-canada
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Bruce Steele

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Re: Climate change, the ocean, agriculture, and FOOD
« Reply #1204 on: July 10, 2018, 09:54:16 PM »
SH, " Terrestrial agriculture is the largest driver of biodiversity loss since the last asteroid"
US fishermen are not distroying fisheries ! So you may have your beef with seafood but maybe you could show me some supporting evidence of your claims ? Don't eat imported fish ,you can even reduce your carbon footprint if you select wisely.

http://sustainablefisheries-uw.org/eating-plants-and-seafood/
 
Number of US overfished fish stocks at all time low.

http://sustainablefisheries-uw.org/number-of-overfished-us-stocks-at-an-all-time-low/

Fish management is something we do rather well .





« Last Edit: July 10, 2018, 10:10:50 PM by Bruce Steele »

Bruce Steele

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Re: Climate change, the ocean, agriculture, and FOOD
« Reply #1205 on: July 11, 2018, 11:41:02 PM »
ASI.  Shared Humanity said he had quit eatting fish do to concerns about overfishing around the world.
SH lives in the US and because all fish products in the US have country of origin labels he can choose to eat fish from well managed fish stocks if he chooses "product of USA" labels. Also and importantly he can choose to eat fish products that come with a much lower carbon footprint than beef, one of his protein choices.
 I read your links and yes there are very big corporate interests involved with international fishing fleets. So too are there huge corporate investments in soy , cattle , palm oil, and any number of terrestrially damaging agricultural practices . We as consumers can choose how we respond by what it is we choose to purchase. I have been a commercial fisherman, a vegetable farmer and pig farmer. I would prefer to totally withdraw from any purchase of corporate produced food. To live as close to the land ( and sea ) as I can and do so without using fossil fuels. Food represents about one third of most people's carbon footprint. Getting that reduced to near zero is about as fanciful as Mars missions to harvest mana. I am trying to get to zero... Probably just nuts !
 It bothers me that IPCC says we have to get CO2 emissions to near zero within a few short decades but there is no organized effort to do so for our food systems. We can't even imagine how to do so. We don't even talk about it . So it's easy to condemn corporate fishing or farming but what we should
instead be doing is measuring the carbon footprint of the various food production methods  available and striving to convert our diets to the least damaging. Then we should figure out how to reach perfection.
 

Clare

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Re: Climate change, the ocean, agriculture, and FOOD
« Reply #1206 on: July 15, 2018, 03:58:59 AM »

This international trade in food is staggering, I'm never ceased to be amazed. Like these sweet peppers in our local supermarket, sometimes we have beef from USA & it is much cheaper than our local grass fed beef (which is exported to USA for burgers!).
On Friday we were in the neighbouring town & called in to a favourite Reduced the Clear shop that always has something that we buy regulalrly anyway but at a lower price here.
(NB Food here is ridicuously expensive so we need to hunt out bargains to balance our budget. Luckily we have a v productive fruit & vege garden)
We came home with flour from Latvia, edam cheese from Austria, spagetti from Turkey.... crazy! This food is close to it's 'use by date' so would otherwise be dumped, that's the only reason I can justify buying it.
Our supermarket chains are Australian owned so a lot of our groceries do come from there but why do we need all this stuff being imported from the other side of the globe. And how do you stop it?
Clare in New Zealand

jacksmith4tx

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Re: Climate change, the ocean, agriculture, and FOOD
« Reply #1207 on: July 15, 2018, 04:57:01 AM »

This international trade in food is staggering, I'm never ceased to be amazed.

From a review of a book I read some years ago:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/316767.The_Box
The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger
by Marc Levinson

Nine ways in which shipping has changed the world.

1. All ships, trains, trailers and cranes for freight are built to the exact same standards. On a ship the tolerance on the rails that lock the containers in place is 1/4". It doesn't matter if it is a refrigerated container, a double-doors one or any of the 16 types of container, all are built to the same external and weight bearing parameters. It doesn't matter if it is in Egypt, Sydney or Cape Town, all the ports are built the same way. All cargo is tracked in the same way on computers.

2. The heavily-protective and Marxist trade unions that fought so hard for their workers in places such as New York and London and Liverpool in the UK lost out to ports built specifically for containers that had no prior agreements with dockers (longshoremen). Rotterdam in Holland and Tilbury in England got the business.

3. The merchant navy employed many men on cargo ships. 1,000 yard container ships carry a crew of between 6 and 20 from cheap, non-unionised countries such as the Philippines.

4. Smuggling of illegal items and people became much easier. Searching the boxes and barrels of a cargo ship is one thing. Searching through thousands of containers locked at point of loading and not unlocked until they reach their final destination is quite another.

5. What was once a week long sojourn in port as cargo was unloaded, trucked away and new trucks and trains arrived with more cargo for loading is accomplished in 24 hours. As soon as one set of cranes has cleared an area, another crane is placing on new containers.

6. Because of economies of scale, the reduction in labour costs and the greater efficiency of shipping, freight costs have gone down enormously, so people previously unable to afford certain first-world luxuries now consider them as everyday items.

7. What is designed in one country may be made with fabric from a second, manufactured in a third and distributed in a fourth. The owner of the business might live in a fifth. Goods are manufactured where labour is cheapest.

8. It costs 70% extra to ship an empty container back to its home port. But only 10% to dump it. This has resulted in parks of rusting containers inelegant in their uselessness. There are small industries reusing these containers as homes, bars, even swimming pools and small industrial etc units.

9. And it all started in April 1956 with Mr. Malcom McLean, a trucker turned genius entrepreneur with a vision for globalisation and a refitted oil tanker that carried fifty-eight shipping containers from Newark to Houston.

Economics was crucial. “In 1961, before the container was in international use, ocean freight costs alone accounted for 12 percent of the value of U.S. exports and 10 percent of the value of U.S. imports.”

Science is a thought process, technology will change reality.

jacksmith4tx

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Re: Climate change, the ocean, agriculture, and FOOD
« Reply #1208 on: July 15, 2018, 04:26:01 PM »
Here is a Big Data project that generates data visualizations on ocean fishing. Even if it only tracks ships that broadcasts certain types of operational data it can use AI to identify suspicious or illegal fishing. It should also be possible to attach machine readable tags on all imported and exported seafood at some point in the future so consumers can make better food choices. I noticed Wall Mart was a sponsor.

http://globalfishingwatch.org/

Definitely check out their research publications.
http://globalfishingwatch.org/publications/
Science is a thought process, technology will change reality.

Bruce Steele

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Re: Climate change, the ocean, agriculture, and FOOD
« Reply #1209 on: July 18, 2018, 02:37:43 AM »
Pig farmers are losing herds of pigs all across Russia, Poland and many other countries as African Swine Fever spreads now westward. Wild pig populations harbor the disease and moves it across borders.
 Here is a list of cases of virulent animal disease cases worldwide. African Swine Flu is attributed to place , date etc.
 https://www.oie.int/wahis_2/public/wahid.php/Diseaseinformation/WI

This isn't a problem that disease control can eradicate anytime soon, think decades . This is a disease that can survive meat curing processes and infect wild or domestic pigs that might be fed food scraps .
This is how African Swine Fever moved from Africa to Europe and Russia.

Sigmetnow

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Re: Climate change, the ocean, agriculture, and FOOD
« Reply #1210 on: July 18, 2018, 02:08:13 PM »
The Flash Drought Brought Misery, but Did It Change Minds on Climate Change?
Ranchers in Divide County, North Dakota, rely on the rain. Last year the rains failed, and the temperature shot up. ‘The crops just didn’t come out of the ground.’
Quote
Drought is an especially wily adversary. As an officer of the North Dakota Department of Emergency Services told me recently, "You can't put up a sandbag wall to stop a drought."

In Divide County, agricultural producers are especially vulnerable to the effects of drought, since they depend on dryland methods. Dryland farmers use no irrigation. Instead, they rely wholly on rain: to initiate the lush growth of little bluestem and other pastureland grasses that will sustain their herds through the summer, and to secure the hay harvest that will get the herd through the winter. Not to mention the rain they need for their wheat, barley and pea cash crops.

In 2017, ranchers were optimistic when they put their cattle out to graze in late spring. There'd been record snowfall over the winter, and regional forecasts weren't calling for any drought conditions in their northwest region of the Great Plains. By May, though, concerns were rising. Rain failed to come, and the good winter moisture evaporated into a cloudless sky. By July, two-thirds of the pastureland in the Dakotas was in poor condition, and across the High Plains, from Kansas up to Canada, temperatures were above normal while precipitation was low—perfect conditions for what's known as a "flash drought," sudden and severe.

By the first of August, the USDA reported that nearly three-quarters of North Dakota's topsoil was desperately bereft of moisture. Part of Divide County was at the most severe drought level, and 60 percent of the state was facing some level of drought. It was the state's fourth-driest summer since record-keeping started in 1895. Ranchers hauled water to their herds and vied for hay donations that flowed in from other regions after the state opened a hay lottery. Anything to supplement the feed of the hungry cattle.

What happened? How had it happened so fast? And would it happen again? ...
https://insideclimatenews.org/news/17072018/flash-drought-north-dakota-cattle-ranchers-auction-hay-shortage-climate-change
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gerontocrat

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Re: Climate change, the ocean, agriculture, and FOOD
« Reply #1211 on: July 21, 2018, 12:19:28 PM »
Sleepy, the price of bread and potatoes may be going up in Sweden?
All the climate models say that events such as this (or its equally ugly sister, excess rainfall) are and will become more frequent.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/jul/20/crop-failure-and-bankruptcy-threaten-farmers-as-drought-grips-europe

Crop failure and bankruptcy threaten farmers as drought grips Europe
Abnormally hot temperatures continue to wreak devastation across northern and central parts of the continent


Quote
Farmers across northern and central Europe are facing crop failure and bankruptcy as one of the most intense regional droughts in recent memory strengthens its grip.

States of emergency have been declared in Latvia and Lithuania, while the sun continues to bake Swedish fields that have received only 12% of their normal rainfall.

The abnormally hot temperatures – which have topped 30C in the Arctic Circle – are in line with climate change trends, according to the World Meteorological Organization. And as about 50 wildfires rage across Sweden, no respite from the heatwave is yet in sight.

Lennart Nilsson, a 55-year-old cattle farmer from Falkenberg near Malmo and co-chair of the Swedish Farmers Association, said it was the worst drought he had experienced.

“This is really serious,” he said. “Most of south-west Sweden hasn’t had rain since the first days of May. A very early harvest has started but yields seem to be the lowest for 25 years – 50% lower, or more in some cases – and it is causing severe losses.”

If no rain comes soon, Nilsson’s association estimates agricultural losses of up to 8bn Swedish kronor (£700m) this year and widespread bankruptcies. The drought would personally cost him around 500,000 kronor (£43,000), Nilsson said, adding that, like most farmers, he is now operating at a loss.

The picture is little different in the Netherlands, where Iris Bouwers, a 25-year-old farmer, said the parched summer had been a “catastrophe” for her farm.

“Older families around me are comparing this to 1976,” she said. “My dad can’t remember any drought like this.” The Bouwerses expect to lose €100,000 this year after a 30% drop in their potato crop. After investing in a pig stable over the winter, the family have no savings to cover the loss.

Asked what she would do, Bouwers just laughed. “Hope and pray,” she said. “There is not much more I can do. I wouldn’t talk about bankruptcy yet, but our deficit will be substantial. It probably means we need to have a very good talk with the bank.”

If anything, the situation is even worse in Poland, Belarus and the Czech Republic, where vegetation stress has taken hold. In parts of Germany, some farmers are reportedly destroying arid crops.

After June was declared the second warmest on record, the European commission pledged to help farmers with a raft of measures, including the temporary suspension of “greening” obligations partly intended to prevent climate change.
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gerontocrat

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Re: Climate change, the ocean, agriculture, and FOOD
« Reply #1212 on: July 21, 2018, 12:28:06 PM »
And from "Business Insider" http://uk.businessinsider.com/r-as-wheat-harvest-heads-to-parched-north-europe-braces-for-more-losses-2018-7

As wheat harvest heads to parched north, Europe braces for more losses
Quote
PARIS (Reuters) - Europe's grain market is bracing for more downgrades to the size of this year's wheat crop as harvesting reaches the northern regions that have been worst hit by exceptional drought and heat since spring.

Germany, the European Union's second-largest wheat grower, has been a focus of concern, and comments this week by the country's farming association saying it could not forecast the crop because of uncertainty about weather damage have added to market jitters.

Harvesting is under way in south and central Germany and is spreading north to the regions most badly damaged by dryness.

"I think it pretty likely that the association will cut its forecast of the wheat crop in coming weeks as the harvest results arrive," one German analyst said. "The association cut its forecast of the winter barley sharply after the final northern and eastern areas were gathered where the damage was severest."

The DBV farming association already forecast on July 5 that Germany's winter wheat harvest will fall 15 percent from 2017 to 20.5 million tonnes. It declined to update the number this week but sharply lowered its winter barley crop estimate.

Neighboring Poland is also expected to see a significant drought impact, while harvest rain was now slowing field work.

Poland's wheat output may fall 10 percent from 2017 to about 10 million tonnes, Sparks Polska forecasts.

"The winter wheat harvest started 2-3 weeks earlier than normal, but now it has been hampered by wet weather," Wojtek Sabaranski of the analyst firm said.

As well as slowing field work, rain around harvest time can damage wheat quality, and downpours in southeastern Europe have raised concern that exporting EU members Romania and Bulgaria may have less milling-grade wheat than usual.
"Para a Causa do Povo a Luta Continua!"
"And that's all I'm going to say about that". Forrest Gump
"Damn, I wanted to see what happened next" (Epitaph)

Sigmetnow

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Re: Climate change, the ocean, agriculture, and FOOD
« Reply #1213 on: July 28, 2018, 12:31:15 AM »
"To be honest, who cares who's the biggest?  I want to know who's the most efficient and who's producing the (widest) diversity of plants that people actually eat, rather than just leafy green vegetables -- which is what seems to be the gold standard right now for actually jumping off from non-profitability to profitability."

The Biggest Vertical Farm In The World Is Breaking Ground In November
Quote
Agri-tech firm Crop One Holding and Emirates Flight Catering are breaking ground in November on what will be the world's largest vertical farm in Dubai, CNN reports.

The United Arab Emirates is second only to Kuwait for water scarcity. The country imports 85 percent of its food, and has very little arable land.

Emirates Flight catering provides 225,000 meals to the Dubai International Airport every single day. They believe that indoor farming is a practical solution to the demand and the water shortage.

Crop One claims that the 130,000 square foot space, which will cost $40 million to construct, can produce the same quantity of greens as an open field with 99 percent less water. They estimate their facility will be able to provide 6,000 pounds of greens for harvest every day once it's up and running.

Vertical farming leaves a lot of the variables that conventional farming are subject to behind. Things like soil health, temperature, and humidity are highly controlled. The process is sometimes called "seasonless," because growth is not dependent on what time of year it is and can continue all year long.

It's also an appealing option because of how a vertical farm can be built inside an urban environment, reducing  transportation costs and environmental impact.

The CEO of Emirates Flight Catering, Saeed Mohammed, says the company believes that the farm will allow them to "secure our own supply chain of high quality and locally-sourced fresh vegetables, while significantly reducing our environmental footprint."
https://www.greenmatters.com/news/2018/07/16/Ze39BY/vertical-farm-biggest-september
Article and video.
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El Cid

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Re: Climate change, the ocean, agriculture, and FOOD
« Reply #1214 on: July 29, 2018, 09:49:46 AM »
And from "Business Insider" http://uk.businessinsider.com/r-as-wheat-harvest-heads-to-parched-north-europe-braces-for-more-losses-2018-7

As wheat harvest heads to parched north, Europe braces for more losses
Quote
PARIS (Reuters) - Europe's grain market is bracing for more downgrades to the size of this year's wheat crop as harvesting reaches the northern regions that have been worst hit by exceptional drought and heat since spring..

There will always be droughts but we know that during the Holocene Climate Optimum (probably as warm or possibly quite warmer (and maybe without Arctic Ice)) we had Green Sahara, we had 1000mm rain per year in Jerusalem, etc. Warmer weather by and large gives you more rain, not less. Certainly there will be regional variations, but some regions will be big winners and some will be losers. (Let's not forget that Egypt was the grain basket of the Roman Empire). Ukraine and Russia are ramping up production of grains like crazy and it shows on the price charts. We do have enough food. The problem is much more in the loss of Soil organic matter but not too many people care about that. If you have soils with high SOM you can hold more water in your soil and withstand warmer/dryer temps...Governments should focus on regenerative agriculture not their current stupid subsidy programs...

Charts from here:

https://www.macrotrends.net/2531/soybean-prices-historical-chart-data

Attached 10 year price charts of wheat, soybeans and corn which are at levels clows to the lows of the economic crisis of 2008-2009. This shows that there is more than enough food for all.

bluesky

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Re: Climate change, the ocean, agriculture, and FOOD
« Reply #1215 on: July 30, 2018, 04:07:16 PM »
n
And from "Business Insider" http://uk.businessinsider.com/r-as-wheat-harvest-heads-to-parched-north-europe-braces-for-more-losses-2018-7

As wheat harvest heads to parched north, Europe braces for more losses
Quote
PARIS (Reuters) - Europe's grain market is bracing for more downgrades to the size of this year's wheat crop as harvesting reaches the northern regions that have been worst hit by exceptional drought and heat since spring..

There will always be droughts but we know that during the Holocene Climate Optimum (probably as warm or possibly quite warmer (and maybe without Arctic Ice)) we had Green Sahara, we had 1000mm rain per year in Jerusalem, etc. Warmer weather by and large gives you more rain, not less. Certainly there will be regional variations, but some regions will be big winners and some will be losers. (Let's not forget that Egypt was the grain basket of the Roman Empire). Ukraine and Russia are ramping up production of grains like crazy and it shows on the price charts. We do have enough food. The problem is much more in the loss of Soil organic matter but not too many people care about that. If you have soils with high SOM you can hold more water in your soil and withstand warmer/dryer temps...Governments should focus on regenerative agriculture not their current stupid subsidy programs...

Charts from here:

https://www.macrotrends.net/2531/soybean-prices-historical-chart-data

Attached 10 year price charts of wheat, soybeans and corn which are at levels clows to the lows of the economic crisis of 2008-2009. This shows that there is more than enough food for all.


This is not exactly what the latest research papers are showing, warming and especially increase of CO2 in the atmosphere and in the ocean will have a serious impact on the quantity and nutrient quality of major staple food crop, thus leading to highly significant price hikes :

Interview of Michelle Tigchelaar, a research associate at the University of Washington the lead author of the research paper "Future warming increases probability of globally synchronised maize production shocks".
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Michelle_Tigchelaar/publication/325704284_Future_warming_increases_probability_of_globally_synchronized_maize_production_shocks/links/5b3bbfbb0f7e9b0df5ec4ebf/Future-warming-increases-probability-of-globally-synchronized-maize-production-shocks.pdf
Abstract :
« Meeting the global food demand of roughly 10 billion people by the middle of the 21st century will become increasingly challenging as the Earth’s climate continues to warm. Earlier studies suggest that once the optimum growing temperature is exceeded, mean crop yields decline and the variability of yield increases even if interannual climate variability remains unchanged. Here, we use global datasets of maize production and climate variability combined with future temperature projections to quantify how yield variability will change in the world’s major maize-producing and -exporting countries under 2 °C and 4 °C of global warming. We find that as the global mean temperature increases, absent changes in temperature variability or breeding gains in heat tolerance, the coefficient of variation (CV) of maize yields increases almost everywhere to values much larger than present-day values. This higher CV is due both to an increase in the SD of yields and a decrease in mean yields. For the top four maize-exporting countries, which account for 87% of global maize exports, the probability that they have simultaneous production losses greater than 10% in any given year is presently virtually zero, but it increases to 7% under 2 °C warming and 86% under 4 °C warming. Our results portend rising instability in global grain trade and international grain prices, affecting especially the ∼800 million people living in extreme poverty who are most vulnerable to food price spikes. They also underscore the urgency of investments in breeding for heat tolerance. «

The research indicates that the probability of a synchronous decline in yield of respectively >10% or >20% for the world’s three largest maize exporters is virtually zero today but jumps to 86% (yield drop >10%) and 46% (yield drop >20%) under 4°C warming (7% for >10% and 0%>20% for a 2°C warming). Simultaneous production shocks among these large trading countries will have a direct impact on urban consumers, agribusiness, grain producers, and 800 million in extreme poverty that spend a large share of their income on staple foods. The top 3 exporters produce 46% of world maize and export 72% (US, Brazil, Argentina). "Indeed, breeders are well aware of the importance of heat stress for yield. Unfortunately, the mechanisms for heat tolerance in maize (and other major grains) are extremely complex and poorly understood, and progress in this area has been modest despite the innovation of techniques to accelerate breeding.  Breeding for heat tolerance is  an as-of-yet unattained goal in maize development"



A paper issued in May 2018 shows that increase in CO2 will lead to lower protein and vitamin content of rice, food staple for 2billion people (Sciences Advance, Chunwu Zhu et al May 2018)  :
Abstract :
« Declines of protein and minerals essential for humans, including iron and zinc, have been reported for crops in response to rising atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration, [CO2]. For the current century, estimates of the potential human health impact of these declines range from 138 million to 1.4 billion, depending on the nutrient. However, changes in plant-based vitamin content in response to [CO2] have not been elucidated. Inclusion of vitamin information would substantially improve estimates of health risks. Among crop species, rice is the primary food source for more than 2 billion people. We used multiyear, multilocation in situ FACE (free-air CO2 enrichment) experiments for 18 genetically diverse rice lines, including Japonica, Indica, and hybrids currently grown throughout Asia. We report for the first time the integrated nutritional impact of those changes (protein, micronutrients, and vitamins) for the 10 countries that consume the most rice as part of their daily caloric supply. Whereas our results confirm the declines in protein, iron, and zinc, we also find consistent declines in vitamins B1, B2, B5, and B9 and, conversely, an increase in vitamin E. A strong correlation between the impacts of elevated [CO2] on vitamin content based on the molecular fraction of nitrogen within the vitamin was observed. Finally, potential health risks associated with anticipated CO2-induced deficits of protein, minerals, and vitamins in rice were correlated to the lowest overall gross domestic product per capita for the highest rice-consuming countries, suggesting potential consequences for a global population of approximately 600 million. »
http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/4/5/eaaq1012

A paper issued earlier in the year by Rutgers University  shows that :
« Climate change is forcing fish species to shift their habitats faster than the world’s system for allocating fish stocks, exacerbating international fisheries conflicts, according to a study led by a Rutgers University–New Brunswick researcher.
The study, published online in the journal Science, showed for the first time that new fisheries are likely to appear in more than 70 countries all over the world as a result of climate change. History has shown that newly shared fisheries often spark conflict among nations.
Conflict leads to overfishing, which reduces the food, profit and employment fisheries can provide, and can also fracture international relations in other areas beyond fisheries. A future with lower greenhouse gas emissions, like the targets under the 2015 Paris climate agreement, would reduce the potential for conflict, the study says. »
for example « Under rules agreed to by EU member nations, fishers harvest a certain number of mackerel each year. But by 2007, those mackerel had begun to move to colder waters near Iceland, which is not an EU member. Iceland began fishing the sudden abundance of mackerel, but could not agree with the EU on sustainable fishing limits. The dispute became a trade war and is still ongoing »
https://news.rutgers.edu/climate-change-means-fish-are-moving-faster-fishing-rules-rutgers-led-study-says/20180612#.W18EnvZuJjo

...there is of course also the impact of ocean acidification (from CO2 absorption by the ocean), leading to the demise of calcium carbonate, the main component for shelves and especially shelves of some very important phytoplancton,  that will almost certainly disrupt the food chain and lead to significant fish stock reduction, even to complete disappearance of staple fish in most part of the ocean by the end of the century, fishes provide protein for more than 1billion people on earth.
There are many other papers on google scholar regarding the impact of CO2/ warming on crop yield.

All these above will certainly have an impact on food price, leading to social and political unrest, let alone the depleting of soil due to intensive agriculture and over use of pesticide and insecticide, and the increase number of people in Asia looking to eat more meat and diary product resulting in more use of agricultural land deforestation, reduce forest and decrease of CO2 sink potential of the rain forest, pressure on staple price and so on..
« Last Edit: July 30, 2018, 08:12:02 PM by bluesky »

El Cid

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Re: Climate change, the ocean, agriculture, and FOOD
« Reply #1216 on: July 31, 2018, 03:31:57 PM »
There's another issue that's a problem already and in the short term future. THat's the increase in unpredictable short term weather variability.

I understand your concerns but the reality 8as shown on the above charts) currently is (despite serious climate change already) that new areas have come under the plow (party due to warming, eg Poland is producing corn and they were not able to do so 40 yrs ago), and food prices are at rock bottom due to overproduction. So worries about food shortage are not substantiated and are currently just fantasies. It may yet come to that but we seem to be very far from that point.

Sigmetnow

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Re: Climate change, the ocean, agriculture, and FOOD
« Reply #1217 on: August 03, 2018, 02:28:50 AM »
California

San Diego's Scripps Pier records highest ocean temperature in its 102-year history
Quote
The sea surface temperature at the Scripps Pier in La Jolla hit 78.6 degrees on Wednesday, the highest reading in the pier’s 102-year history, according to UC San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography.  The reading broke the previous record of 78.4 degrees, which was set in 1931.
...
Ocean temperatures also have been above average along the entire San Diego County coastline for much of the summer, and the reason isn’t clear. The region is not experiencing an El Nino, which tends to produce very warm ocean temperatures in the summer and fall.

Daniel Rudnick, a Scripps oceanographer, said Thursday, “Southern California coastal waters have been anomalously warm since the beginning of 2014, when we experienced a marine heatwave.

“This event was popularly known as ‘the blob’. The following year, during 2015-2016, we had one of the strongest El Nino’s of the the last few decades and the local ocean continued warming.  “Since then SoCal waters are still anomalously warm — that is the water has not returned to temperatures that were normal in the previous seven years.’’
http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/science/sd-me-scripps-pier-20180802-story,amp.html
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Sigmetnow

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Re: Climate change, the ocean, agriculture, and FOOD
« Reply #1218 on: August 05, 2018, 03:57:15 PM »
Small step in trying to rein in concentrated animal operation waste. (If the decision is upheld.)

Jury tells Smithfield Foods to pay $473.5M in hog farm lawsuit
https://www.wavy.com/news/local-news/jury-tells-smithfield-foods-to-pay-4735m-in-hog-farm-lawsuit/1344210839
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Shared Humanity

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Re: Climate change, the ocean, agriculture, and FOOD
« Reply #1219 on: August 05, 2018, 06:33:20 PM »
Anyone who knows me here is aware that I have a fascination for data. This springs from my 30 year career in manufacturing where everything is measured and these data are then used to identify the source of a problem and implement practical solutions. The more effective you are at drilling down into the data, the closer you can get to identifying root cause and when you eliminate a root cause, you discover that you can improve multiple problems simultaneously.

This approach can be remarkably simple and clear as the data reveals itself. Fortunately, there is no lack of data that can be used to identify problems and root causes and fashion solutions. Here are some data that serves to reveal a solution.

  • 50% of the world's habitable land has been converted to agriculture.
  • 33% of agricultural land worldwide is used solely for livestock feed production.
  • Agriculture is responsible for a staggering 80 percent of deforestation.
  • Worldwide, forests serve as the habitat for over 80 percent of the world’s animals.

http://www.onegreenplanet.org/environment/livestock-feed-and-habitat-destruction/

  • 60% of land dedicated to agriculture is used for grazing.
  • In total, 93% of agricultural land or 47% of all habitable land is dedicated to raising livestock.


http://www.fao.org/docrep/x5304e/x5304e03.htm

  • 31% or 9.9 billion acres of the earth's's land surface are covered by forest.
  • 4.7 billion acres have been lost since the advent of industrialization.
  • 18 million acres of forest are lost worldwide each year.

http://www.earth-policy.org/indicators/C56/forests_2012

  • Our current industrial agricultural model is heavily dependent on fossil fuels.

https://www.resilience.org/stories/2005-04-01/why-our-food-so-dependent-oil/

  • People in the developing world eat 32 kilograms of meat a year on average.
  • People in the industrial world eat 80 kilograms.
  • Livestock account for an estimated 18 percent of human-caused greenhouse gas emissions, producing 40 percent of the world’s methane and 65 percent of the world’s nitrous oxide.
  • An estimated 11 percent of deaths in men and 16 percent of deaths in women could be prevented if people decreased their red meat consumption to the level of the group that ate the least.

This data, easily accessible on the internet, highlights the health crisis that is meat production and consumption. It also vividly drives home the concept of root cause as meat consumption affects the health of our forests, most species, the overall health of the planet and, finally, human health.

If someone were to approach you today and tell you that you could dramatically impact the existential crisis that is climate change by adopting a few simple practices in your kitchen, what would you say or do?
« Last Edit: August 06, 2018, 03:30:41 PM by Shared Humanity »

Shared Humanity

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Re: Climate change, the ocean, agriculture, and FOOD
« Reply #1220 on: August 06, 2018, 04:35:17 PM »
When we look at the lack of progress with regards to emissions of greenhouse gases, it is understandable that we get a little depressed. Despite this lack of progress, I am actually quite optimistic that we can quickly and drastically reduce emissions of all manner of greenhouse gases, reductions so large as to avoid the worst effects.

While technology and political progress are necessary avenues to achieve the reductions we need, progress here is far too slow and reliance on these methods will doom us. Why am I optimistic? The simple fact is that we have it within our power as individuals to collectively cut emissions almost instantly by perhaps 50%.

What I posted above is one method. Stop eating meat. Collectively we could reduce global emissions tomorrow by 18%.

There are other methods just as powerful which could reduce emissions immediately.
« Last Edit: August 06, 2018, 08:05:57 PM by Shared Humanity »

wili

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Re: Climate change, the ocean, agriculture, and FOOD
« Reply #1221 on: August 06, 2018, 06:50:02 PM »
Good points.

For many of the wealthiest 10% of the global population (almost surely including everyone posting here), giving up (or drastically reducing) flying would also likely halve your total carbon footprint.

Unfortunately, I can't completely share SH's sweet optimism, since both meat eating and flying continue to be on the rise, last I checked (though I would adore to be proven wrong with recent stats on either of these claims!).
"A force de chercher de bonnes raisons, on en trouve; on les dit; et après on y tient, non pas tant parce qu'elles sont bonnes que pour ne pas se démentir." Choderlos de Laclos "You struggle to come up with some valid reasons, then cling to them, not because they're good, but just to not back down."

Sigmetnow

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Re: Climate change, the ocean, agriculture, and FOOD
« Reply #1222 on: August 06, 2018, 07:11:47 PM »
SH,
Thanks for pulling that data together!  I firmly believe that over the next decade or two, meat will fall out of favor in the developed world, as alternatives that are healthier for people and the planet are improved and made more available.  As with the tide turning against fossil fuels, I think it will be individuals and small businesses making better and more informed choices who will lead the way.

Episodes like the blue-green tide in South Florida, tied to agricultural runoff...
https://forum.arctic-sea-ice.net/index.php/topic,428.msg166019.html#msg166019

...or the lawsuits against North Carolina pig farms I posted just above... make the public more aware of the problem of Big Ag, and help to sway public opinion and encourage examination of one’s own habits and adoption of alternatives.
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Bruce Steele

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Re: Climate change, the ocean, agriculture, and FOOD
« Reply #1223 on: August 06, 2018, 08:41:02 PM »
My list might look a little different,
 Don't eat beef, goats , buffalo , or sheep
 Don't fly
 Don't eat food that used air transport
 Install solar panels
 Grow as much of your own food as possible
 Eat foods that are in season and local or bulk dried and transported ideally by rail or ship
 Every 100 gallons of gas is another ton of CO2 - remember that as you fill up the tank
 Very small family ... Or family plans
 Get your children on board with the above list
 
We in the 10% could change our destructive habits and our lives wouldn't be much different than they are currently until the effects of the last fifty years of accumulated extravagance finally catches up with us.

Sigmetnow

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Re: Climate change, the ocean, agriculture, and FOOD
« Reply #1224 on: August 07, 2018, 12:01:37 AM »
Surprising number of food recalls currently due to biological contamination.  Need to watch to see if there is a trend; and what food preparation, storage, or long-distance transport expectations might need to be changed.

Avoid these foods due to outbreaks and recalls - CNN
https://www.cnn.com/2018/08/04/health/outbreaks-and-recalls-foods-not-to-eat/index.html
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Shared Humanity

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Re: Climate change, the ocean, agriculture, and FOOD
« Reply #1225 on: August 07, 2018, 12:08:57 AM »
My list might look a little different,
 Don't eat beef, goats , buffalo , or sheep
 Don't fly
 Don't eat food that used air transport
 Install solar panels
 Grow as much of your own food as possible
 Eat foods that are in season and local or bulk dried and transported ideally by rail or ship
 Every 100 gallons of gas is another ton of CO2 - remember that as you fill up the tank
 Very small family ... Or family plans
 Get your children on board with the above list
 
We in the 10% could change our destructive habits and our lives wouldn't be much different than they are currently until the effects of the last fifty years of accumulated extravagance finally catches up with us.

A good list.

gerontocrat

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Re: Climate change, the ocean, agriculture, and FOOD
« Reply #1226 on: August 07, 2018, 12:29:43 PM »
A sobering read, especially for those who think that just fixing CO2 emissions will lead us to the sunlit uplands.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/aug/05/last-chance-save-oceans-fishing-un-biodiversity-conference

The oceans’ last chance: ‘It has taken years of negotiations to set this up’

Wildlife in most of the lawless high seas faces an existential threat from fishing, shipping and the military. Next month, a landmark UN conference could finally bring hope


Remember, many hundreds of millions of human depend on the sea for much of their food supply, especially protein. 
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El Cid

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Re: Climate change, the ocean, agriculture, and FOOD
« Reply #1227 on: August 08, 2018, 03:36:44 PM »
My list might look a little different,
 Don't eat beef, goats , buffalo , or sheep
 Don't fly
 Don't eat food that used air transport
 Install solar panels
 Grow as much of your own food as possible
 Eat foods that are in season and local or bulk dried and transported ideally by rail or ship
 Every 100 gallons of gas is another ton of CO2 - remember that as you fill up the tank
 Very small family ... Or family plans
 Get your children on board with the above list
 
We in the 10% could change our destructive habits and our lives wouldn't be much different than they are currently until the effects of the last fifty years of accumulated extravagance finally catches up with us.

Nice list.

As for growing your own food: those of you who have not ried it yet, you would be amazed how much can be grown on just one hundred sqm (one thousand sq feet, for our metrically challanged firends overseas :)

carrots, potatoes, sweet potatoes, parsnips, salad greends , radishes, tomatoes: you can easily grow 200-300 kilogramms (4-600 pounds) on just 100 sqm when planted intensively into quality soil (preferably compost/lasagna garden, etc) with just about 1-2 hrs/week work required...

gerontocrat

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Re: Climate change, the ocean, agriculture, and FOOD
« Reply #1228 on: August 08, 2018, 05:47:27 PM »

Attached 10 year price charts of wheat, soybeans and corn which are at levels clows to the lows of the economic crisis of 2008-2009. This shows that there is more than enough food for all.

This shows that there is more than enough food for all

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-08-08/germany-faces-worst-harvest-in-24-years-after-extreme-drought

Germany is likely to harvest its smallest crop in 24 years, meaning that local supply will fall short of demand.

Quote
The European Union’s second-largest grower will produce 36.3 million metric tons of grains this year, 20 percent less than a year ago and the least since 1994, according to German farm cooperative association DRV. Production of wheat, Germany’s main crop, will drop 19 percent to below 20 million tons.

"The German grain harvest will be below its domestic consumption for the first time in a long while this year," the organization said in an emailed statement Wednesday.

One might say, "so what, there is plenty of food for all", and one might be being a bit complacent.

The UN's Food & Agricultural Organisation's (FAO) July report (before the full effects of drought accounted for) - http://www.fao.org/worldfoodsituation/csdb/en/

World cereal production prospects trimmed and stocks heading sharply lower in 2018/19

Quote
Latest indications continue to point to a reduction in cereal output in 2018 and negative prospects for the cereal supply outlook for the forthcoming 2018/19 marketing season. Based on the condition of crops already in the ground and assuming normal weather for the remainder of the 2018 cropping seasons, FAO's forecast for world cereal output this year is pegged at 2 586 million tonnes (including rice in milled terms), 64.5 million tonnes (2.4 percent) less than the record output in 2017. The year-on-year decrease mostly reflects anticipated reduced maize output. A predicted decline in the 2018 wheat production also weighs on global prospects, while rice output is seen expanding to fresh peaks in 2018. The latest forecast for cereals is down nearly 24 million tonnes from June, mainly on lower than previously anticipated projections for wheat production in the EU as well as wheat, maize and barley production in the Russian Federation and Ukraine.

If current production forecasts materialize, cereal output would not be sufficient to meet the expected total utilization requirements in 2018/19 and, as a result, global cereal stocks accumulated over the past five seasons would have to be drawn down to 749 million tonnes, over 7 percent down from their opening levels. At the current levels of utilization and stock forecasts, the stock-to-use ratio would drop from 30.6 percent in 2017/18 to 27.7 percent in 2018/19, its first decline in four years, while still well above the record low of 20.4 percent registered in 2007/08.

Some people in some local markets are going to be squeezed this year (inelastic demand curve of basic necessities).

In the longer term it is the stock-to-use ratio that is a concern. A Ratio of 33% means reserves are equal to 4 months consumption, which if it was a country's Central Bank FOREX reserves would cause a continuing financial crisis.

Just-in-Time supply chains for cereals is a really bad idea, and I think started in the 2000's (I remember writing about it) - ask Joseph and the Pharaoh. I think there was a problem one year with one major exporter and the policy has since reversed somewhat.

Note: click on the TABLE and then click again to max it to make it readable. (Blame the FAO).
« Last Edit: August 08, 2018, 05:52:29 PM by gerontocrat »
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El Cid

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Re: Climate change, the ocean, agriculture, and FOOD
« Reply #1229 on: August 09, 2018, 12:03:19 AM »
Germany? Grain production? Really? This is cherry picking at its best.

Believe me, any data you analyze, weather stats, stock-to-use ratios, stc. has been analyzed a 1000times by guys who make a living out of trading this stuff. All that you quote, all that you can think of is already in the price. And the price is low. I am not saying that there can not be problems in the future, but currently demand seems to be overwhelmed by supply.

El Cid

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Re: Climate change, the ocean, agriculture, and FOOD
« Reply #1230 on: August 09, 2018, 12:10:22 AM »
Thing is, global warming is creating amazing opportunities for northern farmers. Ukraine, Russia, Poland, Canada - they could hardly produce any corn 30 yrs ago, now growing it like crazy, see charts, this is partly why we have plenty of this stuff.

Links:
https://www.indexmundi.com/agriculture/?country=ca&commodity=wheat&graph=production

Alison

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Re: Climate change, the ocean, agriculture, and FOOD
« Reply #1231 on: August 09, 2018, 05:58:25 PM »
Forgive me - I’m no expert - but aren’t more tolerant corn varieties also having an impact?

El Cid

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Re: Climate change, the ocean, agriculture, and FOOD
« Reply #1232 on: August 10, 2018, 06:28:21 PM »
Forgive me - I’m no expert - but aren’t more tolerant corn varieties also having an impact?

Yes, they absolutely do. Nonetheless, we still end up growing more food than we used to. And that is the point: We can grow more food than needed.

Also (just a sidenote), since a big portion of grains goes towards feeding animals which is a very "ineffective" way to get calories for humans, if meat consumption was dramatically reduced/stopped we could easily feed 10 billion people and/or reforest huge areas which could sequester carbon.

Alison

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Re: Climate change, the ocean, agriculture, and FOOD
« Reply #1233 on: August 11, 2018, 12:51:47 AM »
Thank you, El Cid

Sigmetnow

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Re: Climate change, the ocean, agriculture, and FOOD
« Reply #1234 on: August 11, 2018, 01:52:46 AM »
The ocean is cooking off the Southern California coast. Here's why.
Quote
On Wednesday, the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego recorded its highest ocean temperature ever, of 79.2 degrees Fahrenheit.[26.2°C] Scientists have taken measurements off the marine institute's pier for over a century, since 1916.

This easily broke the previous record of 78.8 Scripps' measured last week. The chilled Pacific Ocean waters do warm up this time of year, but these unusual temperatures are still about 7 or 8 degrees above average.

"It's an extreme event," Clarissa Anderson, a biological oceanographer at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, said in an interview.

Some ocean temperatures, beyond Scripps, even breached 80 degrees. A National Weather Service buoy off the San Diego coast measured temperatures as high as 81.3 degrees, possibly the "highest buoy temperature ever recorded" in the state's waters, according to the weather agency. ...
https://mashable.com/2018/08/10/record-ocean-heat-southern-california/
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oren

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Re: Climate change, the ocean, agriculture, and FOOD
« Reply #1235 on: August 12, 2018, 12:46:00 AM »
Nonetheless, we still end up growing more food than we used to. And that is the point: We can grow more food than needed.

Also (just a sidenote), since a big portion of grains goes towards feeding animals which is a very "ineffective" way to get calories for humans, if meat consumption was dramatically reduced/stopped we could easily feed 10 billion people and/or reforest huge areas which could sequester carbon.
Looked at from a different point of view, I would say that yes, grain prices are a good indicator that we are growing enough food, but I would bet this growth in food production comes at the expense of pollution, topsoil degradation and lots of other unpriced externalities that are slowly but surely accumulating until they reach a painful limit at some point.
As a result, and since global meat consumption seems to be actually growing instead of shrinking, same for food waste, and of course population is growing as well, I would bet that at some point in the next few decades we WILL hit a food shortage situation resulting in sharply increased prices (or worse), and surely the planet's poor will bear the consequences.

Martin Gisser

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Re: Climate change, the ocean, agriculture, and FOOD
« Reply #1236 on: August 12, 2018, 02:05:25 AM »
Yes, the question is: How many can be fed by sustainable agriculture?

Forget about how many could be fed today. Maxing this out would actually be the beginning of a unimaginably horrific scenario. 10 billion waiting to end up like Syria or Yemen...
Current agri"culture" is self-destructive.

Bruce Steele

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Re: Climate change, the ocean, agriculture, and FOOD
« Reply #1237 on: August 12, 2018, 02:28:14 AM »
With US commodity crop supports at ~ 25 billion and fossil fuel  supports at ~ 15 billion we can produce lots of food . But the whole mess runs on fossil fuels, the tractors, the fertilizers, the transport.
So we are propping up production and we don't really have any other plans. For the US this works out just fine but for countries without the fossil fuels or adequate productive farmland I have my doubts.
We are fracking our way into unconventional fuel reserves to make up the gap from a downturn in conventional reserves. And again everything is fine until the tight oil pays start to get played out.
 I haven't ever seen an assessment of how organic fertilizers can supplant the current system and doing so with the increased costs of repowering our tractors and transport system demands some magical thinking. Compost and compost feedstocks are bulky and require lots of fossil fueled equipment to produce at scale. 
 So the notion that we have plenty of food production is like saying we have plenty of oil because they are the same thing. Everything is fine till it isn't but as long as everything is fine we are going to be dumping 10GT of carbon into the atmosphere. Great !
 Maybe you can get by without a car, or flying , an A/C or meat but none of those sacrifices will produce food for 7.5-10 billion people if the fossil fuel we power our farm equipment with starts into decline.
I agree that there will be lots of farmland returning into forests but it will happen at the same time we begin to starve.
 Martin knows how difficult this problem is because Martin has tried producing food outside the conventional methods.

Martin Gisser

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Re: Climate change, the ocean, agriculture, and FOOD
« Reply #1238 on: August 12, 2018, 03:22:40 AM »
Martin knows how difficult this problem is because Martin has tried producing food outside the conventional methods.
Ha! Mostly I'm producing herbs and pretty flowers in my latest artsy micro landscape garden. The food stuff is just a byproduct - or for the compost: I don't like (or don't know how to cook) zucchini. Maybe the heat wave made them less edible. But the compost loves them anyway. Of the potatos I planted to "break ground" I only ate 2 yet ...

Actually, I have some visions about post-fossil agriculture. And they have positive synergistic effects way beyond just food production.
1) We need to re-integrate humans into it.
1.1) Use human fertilizer (E.g. I am a conscientious objector to peeing into a flush toilet. My collected urine alone is more external fertilizer than my own garden currently needs.)
1.2) Put humans to work on small farms. (Once upon a time most work was farm work.)

2) Put animals into multi-purpose use. Oxen, pigs, horses, chicken etc. can all contribute to soil/farm productivity. Don't just breed and feed them for your food. Let them have a good life that contributes to the farm arganism, then you may eat them. (Except for surplus offspring like roosters - I have no qualms killing and not even eating them and instead feed them to the compost or a tree.)

3) Small diverse farms embedded in Nature's Matrix (*). They need to be networked, insured and subsidized - but that's peanuts money compared to other things like military.
(*) http://climateandcapitalism.com/2012/10/17/natures-matrix/

The only serious problem I see is long-range distribution to countries who have overshot their carrying capacity (e.g. shipping wheat from U.S.A to Yemen, Egypt, Syria, etc.). That point is conveniently overlooked by the 10-billionists. (E.g. a major cause of the Arab Spring was a spike in bread prices in Egypt, which is running out of oil to keep up food subsidies.)

Ceterum censeo:
The situation calls for a new "ascetic" movement. Rich life in voluntary simplicity (forget the obese SUV, have a horse instead). Thy house shall be compostable. Use the embers from your hearth for carbon sequestration with biochar. Etc. etc. (The classical Buddhist bhikkhu ideal is no longer compatible with the Eightfold Path: Begging alms food from a planet destroying civilization is certainly not Right Livelihood. Thus, monks, grow your own food and robes. And compost your dead, not burn them.)
« Last Edit: August 12, 2018, 04:38:42 AM by Martin Gisser »

jacksmith4tx

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Re: Climate change, the ocean, agriculture, and FOOD
« Reply #1239 on: August 12, 2018, 06:33:42 AM »
There has always been a few people who cling to the hope our technology will save us (the rest of the biosphere... not so much).

Flip the genetic food engineering debate upside down. Re-engineer humans to change their metabolism, reproduction cycle, behavior and mental capabilities.

I spotted a new research project that offers some tantalizing possibilities.

CRISPR ‘barcodes’ map mammalian development in exquisite detail
Genome-editing technique enables researchers to trace lineage of cells in developing mice. 


https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-05934-z

Quote
For the first time, scientists have wielded CRISPR to track a mammal’s development from a single egg into an embryo with millions of cells. The technological feat brings biologists a step closer to being able to trace the history of every one of the billions of cells in complex animals such as mice — offering an unprecedented window into development and disease. The work was published1 on 8 August in Science.

Now lets take the dozen or so genes we already know that directly affects human intelligence and rewind their timeline and see exactly where in the human embryo development process to target with genetic engineered enhanced intelligence.

The SyFi part is when you start breeding beyond homo sapiens.
Science is a thought process, technology will change reality.

jacksmith4tx

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Re: Climate change, the ocean, agriculture, and FOOD
« Reply #1240 on: August 12, 2018, 02:51:55 PM »
It's already happening - maybe your(and my) DNA was used in this study. The more data they collect the closer we get to isolating the key genes that control human intelligence.

https://www.technologyreview.com/s/611680/million-person-genetic-study-finds-gene-patterns-linked-to-how-long-people-stay-in-school/

Quote
“This paper will [be] a landmark in this new kind of social science,” says Eric Turkheimer, a psychologist at the University of Virginia, who was not involved in the study. “As a very successful application of new genetic technology, it is extraordinary.”

Specifically, the big haul of education-linked genes will allow scientists to “begin to ask questions about how individual genes contribute to biological pathways that eventually lead to brains and learning,”

However, later in the article it says: "According to Daniel Benjamin, a behavioral economist at the University of Southern California who is one of the study’s lead authors, the predictions are still too unreliable to apply to individuals. The genetic variants he and his colleagues measured can explain only about 11 percent of the variability between people in educational attainment.

“Until the score is better and we understand the causal factors underlying it, I am pretty uncomfortable using it to predict individual outcomes,” Benjamin said. “There is a lot more work to be done before we even have a conversation about using it that way.”


By the way, do you know what 'gene drive' is?
Science is a thought process, technology will change reality.

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Re: Climate change, the ocean, agriculture, and FOOD
« Reply #1241 on: August 12, 2018, 04:26:02 PM »
It's already happening - maybe your(and my) DNA was used in this study. The more data they collect the closer we get to isolating the key genes that control human intelligence.



They're looking for the wrong genes. They should be trying to find and enhance the ones for wisdom!

jacksmith4tx

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Re: Climate change, the ocean, agriculture, and FOOD
« Reply #1242 on: August 13, 2018, 03:59:48 AM »
Gene drive propagates modified DNA throughout an organism without have to wait for the trait to be transmitted through sexual reproduction. The modified trait is also inheritable to all descendants of the parent.

The world would be a better place if we could understand the world the way Prof. Harari does. His first book looked back to humanity origins, his second book looked to humanity's future and his current book examines the problems and choices we will have to make in the near term.

You know why nobody is trying to stop AI? Because they can't. It's what technology does.

"AI projects are on pace to take over most of the world’s computing resources around 2025
brian wang | August 11, 2018

https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2018/08/ai-projects-care-on-pace-to-taking-over-most-of-the-worlds-computing-resources-around-2025.html

Quote
OpenAI has determined that the computing used in Artificial Intelligence projects has doubled every 3 months since 2012. This has been an increase of 300,000 times since 2012 versus 12 times if it was following a Moore’s law doubling every 18 months.

The largest AI projects now use computing resources that cost in the single-digit millions. The world has a total computer hardware budget of $1 trillion per year. AI are about halfway in time from taking over a majority of the world’s hardware. Another 300,000 times increase in resources needed would put AI at needing more of the world’s computing resources. This would take AI projects from single digit millions to hundreds of billions. If dedicated artificial intelligence clouds became about 30% of the overall world hardware then this AI projects would need those resources around 2025. AI would need another 3 months to needing over 50% of the world’s hardware.
Science is a thought process, technology will change reality.

El Cid

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Re: Climate change, the ocean, agriculture, and FOOD
« Reply #1243 on: August 13, 2018, 08:05:48 AM »

 I haven't ever seen an assessment of how organic fertilizers can supplant the current system and doing so with the increased costs of repowering our tractors and transport system demands some magical thinking. Compost and compost feedstocks are bulky and require lots of fossil fueled equipment to produce at scale. 

Please see youtube videos of Gabe Brown,David Brandt (large scale) or possibly (for smaller scale, very intensive) Paul Kaiser of singing frog farms.

They are doing a wonderful job of producing huge amounts of food (bigger yields than local averages) without chemical fertilzers and much less use of gasoline than usual and in the meantime regenerating the soil/sequestering carbon.

It can be done on large scale (Gabe Brown has 5000 acres of land - that is pretty large scale, and has increased soil organic carbon by 2-3% in his soils - a huge amount!). Much food can be grown without exploiting the soil AND sequestering carbon in the meantime.

We do have the recipe how to do that but we do not have the willingness to go down this path unfortunately. I am not a Polyanna, and yes, going the way we are going, there could be food shortages in the future, but let's not forget that we know how to avoid this ruinous path we are going down....

gerontocrat

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Re: Climate change, the ocean, agriculture, and FOOD
« Reply #1244 on: August 14, 2018, 08:57:18 PM »
Article in the Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/aug/14/extreme-temperatures-especially-likely-for-next-four-years
and..
Full paper in Nature Communications. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-018-05442-8

Extreme temperatures 'especially likely for next four years'
Cyclical natural phenomena that affect planet’s climate will amplify effect of manmade global warming, scientists warn


Quote
Jonathan Watts

Tue 14 Aug 2018 16.00 BST Last modified on Tue 14 Aug 2018 18.50 BST

The world is likely to see more extreme temperatures in the coming four years as natural warming reinforces manmade climate change, according to a new global forecasting system.

Following a summer of heatwaves and forest fires in the northern hemisphere, the study in the journal Nature Communications suggests there will be little respite for the planet until at least 2022, and possibly not even then.

“Everything seems to be adding up,” said the author of the paper, Florian Sévellec of the French National Centre for Scientific Research. “There is a high possibility that we will be at the peak of a warm phase for the next couple of years.”

The scientist built his forecasting system by statistical “hind-casting”. This crunches the data from previous climate models to measure which combination was most effective in predicting past temperature trends.

Based on this analysis, Sévellec says the statistical upward nudge from natural variation this year is twice as great of that of long-term global warming. Next year, it is likely to be three times higher.

He cautions that this should not be seen as a prediction that Europe will definitely have more heatwaves, the US more forest fires, South Africa more drought or the Arctic more ice melt. The likelihood of these events will increase, but his model is on a broad global scale. It does not predict which part of the world will experience warming or in which season.

But his data clearly suggests that water in the oceans will warm faster than air above land, which could raise the risks of floods, hurricanes, typhoons and cyclones.
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Sigmetnow

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Re: Climate change, the ocean, agriculture, and FOOD
« Reply #1245 on: August 15, 2018, 03:14:40 PM »
Severe weather taking its toll on crops large and small.

Phil Plait on Twitter: "DAGNABBIT. The one Granny Smith apples we had. It got hellacious bruised, too.”
https://twitter.com/badastronomer/status/1029523282406588416
Image below.
People who say it cannot be done should not interrupt those who are doing it.

Bruce Steele

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Re: Climate change, the ocean, agriculture, and FOOD
« Reply #1246 on: August 15, 2018, 08:47:54 PM »
"Bird species collapse in the Mojave, Driven by Climate Change"

https://www.kqed.org/science/1929188/bird-species-collapse-in-the-mojave-driven-by-climate-change

"The longer-term solution has to involve managing groundwater, Beissinger says, because when aquifers are overdraw, it's the desert that dries out first."

AbruptSLR

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Re: Climate change, the ocean, agriculture, and FOOD
« Reply #1247 on: August 15, 2018, 10:07:42 PM »
Marine heatwaves will become more frequent & extreme with continued global warming:

Thomas L. Frölicher, Erich M. Fischer & Nicolas Gruber (2018), "Marine heatwaves under global warming", Nature, volume 560, pages360–364, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-018-0383-9

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-018-0383-9

Abstract: "Marine heatwaves (MHWs) are periods of extreme warm sea surface temperature that persist for days to months and can extend up to thousands of kilometres. Some of the recently observed marine heatwaves revealed the high vulnerability of marine ecosystems and fisheries to such extreme climate events. Yet our knowledge about past occurrences and the future progression of MHWs is very limited. Here we use satellite observations and a suite of Earth system model simulations to show that MHWs have already become longer-lasting and more frequent, extensive and intense in the past few decades, and that this trend will accelerate under further global warming. Between 1982 and 2016, we detect a doubling in the number of MHW days, and this number is projected to further increase on average by a factor of 16 for global warming of 1.5 degrees Celsius relative to preindustrial levels and by a factor of 23 for global warming of 2.0 degrees Celsius. However, current national policies for the reduction of global carbon emissions are predicted to result in global warming of about 3.5 degrees Celsius by the end of the twenty-first century, for which models project an average increase in the probability of MHWs by a factor of 41. At this level of warming, MHWs have an average spatial extent that is 21 times bigger than in preindustrial times, last on average 112 days and reach maximum sea surface temperature anomaly intensities of 2.5 degrees Celsius. The largest changes are projected to occur in the western tropical Pacific and Arctic oceans. Today, 87 per cent of MHWs are attributable to human-induced warming, with this ratio increasing to nearly 100 per cent under any global warming scenario exceeding 2 degrees Celsius. Our results suggest that MHWs will become very frequent and extreme under global warming, probably pushing marine organisms and ecosystems to the limits of their resilience and even beyond, which could cause irreversible changes."
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queenie

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Re: Climate change, the ocean, agriculture, and FOOD
« Reply #1248 on: August 16, 2018, 06:11:22 AM »
"Bird species collapse in the Mojave, Driven by Climate Change"

I suspect that if insect populations are dramatically declining then, of course, the birds will follow. I can only speak to my own experience on my farm and homestead. Places where we do try to pay attention to such things. We have cherry trees, one ancient 40 ft tall one sits beside the house. It begins to fill with birds before the fruit is even fully ripe. They'd wake us up in the mornings, there were so many, they were so loud. By the time the cherries are truly ripe they have usually stripped the tree bare and the ground is littered with pits. Today, more than a month after they were ripe, the tree is still full of drying cherries. For the very first time, the birds didn't come. Not the cedar waxwings, or the jays, or the robins - not even the stupid starlings. Every day I look out at that tree, and it's weight of rotten fruit, where the late season drunken bird party used to happen and think "this is not good, this is not good at all."

I also wonder how much tracking of bird populations is really happening out there. I know there are Christmas bird counts but really, when the populations nose dive, how long will it take us to figure it out?

Sebastian Jones

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Re: Climate change, the ocean, agriculture, and FOOD
« Reply #1249 on: August 16, 2018, 08:26:45 AM »
"Bird species collapse in the Mojave, Driven by Climate Change"
 For the very first time, the birds didn't come.... Every day I look out at that tree, and it's weight of rotten fruit, where the late season drunken bird party used to happen and think "this is not good, this is not good at all."

I also wonder how much tracking of bird populations is really happening out there. I know there are Christmas bird counts but really, when the populations nose dive, how long will it take us to figure it out?

That is very spooky, and I agree, not good at all. One possible explanation might be the timing of the fruiting or of the bird migration- if, due to climate change the timing of one or both has changed, they may no longer coincide- which is not at all to say that this is a good thing. Christmas Bird counts, Breeding bird Surveys and other international efforts are definitely showing declines, catastrophic for some species. We have already seen some birds nosedive. Previously common birds such as Rusty Blackbirds are almost gone.