The existing world food crisis is deepening while dangers of famine in the short-term are escalating due to fractures in agricultural supply chains caused by conflict in West Asia.
Every civilization is characterized by the ability to grow and store grains. This is what distinguishes civilizations from hunter-gatherer societies. Growing and storing grains allows a society to survive the difficult stretches of time that would otherwise lead to starvation. Land suitable for agriculture is often referred to as arable land.
A few additional observations I will make to this analysis is that as the level of CO2 in the atmosphere relentlessly climbs, the nutritional values of the crop's declines, when CO2 is pumped into industrial greenhouses, it stimulates plant growth, at the expense of nutritional value, it's perverse that nutritional value is traded for physical bulk but that's, 'business'.
Now that the axis of Zionism has set fire to the cradle of humanity in West Asia, global supplies of fertilizer are about to plummet, whatever food is grown will be starved of fertilizer and overdosed on CO2. Many farmers are considering not planting at all because industrial farms presell their crops at agreed prices, those contracts won't cover the exponential increase of fertilizer costs, assuming they can even be bought.
Professor Steve Keen, a self-described "Rebel Economist" from Australia is predicting famines later this year, it appears inevitable.
In 2023 Guy did an analysis of work by the chief executive of Gro Intelligence, quote “By 2027 the world could be facing a 214 trillion calorie deficit, says Sara Menker, founder and chief executive of Gro Intelligence, an agricultural data technology company.”
That analysis predates the chaos in West Asia, so the prognosis is more likely to be worse than previously thought, a recurring theme.
I'll drop the corroborating links below for further reference
Terrifying trajectory - and here we are stuffing around with war and bigger and better AI that is unlikely to be seriously used for the purpose of managing food, water and soil shortfalls. The old idea of infinite growth on a finite planet… powerful article from the UK Institute of Actuaries, that humans are making the planet insolvent. I well remember your first book. Thanks for not giving up!
If AI is used to manage food, water, soil or other resources it will invariably result in more deaths.
I've seen it unable to quote data from a table in a paper and just make it up instead.
I've seen PhD level academics use generative AI to respond to technical questions resulting in answers that are wrong by a factor of 100 such that it should have been obvious it was incorrect. Or using it to write descriptions of species resulting in it simply making up names.
I've seen prominent youtubers rely completely on the Google AI overview without checking the source even when it is quoting data about food import figures which are decades out of date and completely inaccurate in the present.
I expect someone will try to use AI to manage food and water resources without double checking the data and inevitably that will lead to catastrophe.
I trust your assessment knowing what a meticulous and scrupulous researcher you are. This kind of misguided reliance on looking authoritative rather than being correct may well lead us to catastrophe.
A question I have for you Julian about this very fine article would be: the fact that we’ve not been able to recognize our need to change and reverse things that clearly we can see are destructive for our well-being, is it not due to the lack of mental, moral, intellectual and spiritual development of a certain portion of our collective human consciousness? It is well recognized that the way we perceive reality can profoundly alter it. However, there has always been the temptation to the lust to dominate, to grasp after power that is so seductive and dangerous for all sentient beings. Can we come to a place of evolution in our consciousness where this destructive energy can be mitigated to a large extent?
As I recounted in 'How to Fix a Broken Planet' it took hominins around 7 million years to discover they could use fire to stop leopards consuming the children. So finding the correct solution can be a long, bloody and weary process, but humans tend to get there in the end "after exhausting every other possibility", as Winston Churchill remarked (about America). Our survival instinct is strong - but our collective wisdom is weak, as you assert.
My personal expectation is that our destructive instincts will not be mitigated until we have almost destroyed ourselves. At that point, wisdom will become more universal among the (few) survivors.
Plenty of work in psychology, philosophy, behavioral- and neuroscience contemplates our suicidally maladaptive strategies, but at the end of the day one can also just give up explaining it and simply conclude, based on our entire history: No.
Deep down in every heart is a longing for the Spirit, that ultimate reality, Cosmic Birther, that Jesus, Buddha … all enlightened ones, have borne witness to. And they reveal simply that we are all called to awaken for the good of all our fellow beings. We must all listen to what we long for in the depths of our own hearts.
Good thing I just bought my five pounds of seed potatoes for $3.50 that will yield me about 2oo pounds of organic red potatoes for about two cents per pound. The cubic yard of mushroom compost I spent fifty bucks on should be more fertilizer than I need for the year. Until then, thank God for Aldi's 99-cent hot dogs, which I I am getting ready to enjoy while I still can.
And, for culinary variety, add some sweet potatoes, yacon, jerusalem artichokes and assorted Asian veg, spinach, kale, broccolini and broad beans. These are some of what my little garden yields for the table.
"This means that every time a farmer starts a tractor today, he is cutting into a future farmer’s harvest, due to the prolonged climate impacts."
Astute comment and a very good article. I grow plenty of food for ourselves and to give away. I used to be a market gardener and grew a lot more. I have never owned a tractor. I have written three books on the sustainable agriculture solution. The third one emphasizes how to shift your paradigms so that you can implement specific solutions for your unique situation. It is called Paradigms for Adaptation (2024). In our increasingly fractured world, off-the-shelf solutions won't be enough. You are going to have to analyze, theorize, hypothesize, gather data and work out a solution. Then you are going to have to implement it. The starting point is to shift your paradigms.
In the mid-80's I was honoured to be part of CSIRO look-forward-50-years seminar. At that time I said that Australia fed 7 people overseas and clothed 11 (from memory), whereas with population growth in Australia this figure will now be considerably lower, and less people are fed and clothed overseas. In the same year I was also flown down from the NT to address a Senate committee on a sustainable population for Australia. Based on CSIRO and other research at that time, I submitted that 14 million was all the land would tolerate. Australia's population is now double that, at 28 million, and the signs of deterioration are everywhere in land and water. The Senate members could not have been less interested. It is not clear to me where action will come from in this slow frog-boiling.
For the same reason people ignore climate information, they also ignore warnings related to food. They haven't largely been personally effected so therefore everything is fine. They're fine, you're fine, everyone's fine, everything's fine.
"Renewable food" is what happens when we stop trying. It's what hunter gatherers, you know, hunted and gathered. Turns out, it works vastly better than humans trying to control everything that we clearly don't understand.
Indeed. But for that you would need to subtract about 8 billion human beings. As may actually happen, if we don't look out.
Early agrarian societies were also fairly sustainable too - for example they recycled their nutrients (as domestic waste). You can read this in the Odyssey, which is 3000 years old.
The thing that made humans unsustainable was overpopulation. That is what pushes all natural systems beyond their ability to renew.
Yeah, "fairly" sustainable isn't actually sustainable though. Agriculture, as we have practiced it since the namesake "revolution," has never been sustainable. I'll grant you that the industrial methods we use today are exponentially worse for the world than what we did before, and we'd have probably chugged along longer before turning the world into a desert, but it would have happened eventually anyway. Fossil fuels and industry just accelerated things.
Remember, the Fertile Crescent wasn't named ironically. It started out pretty doggone fertile. We made that a desert in a geological eye blink. And, remember that folks in heartland America knew about crop rotation, and they still ended up with the Dust Bowl. Totalitarian agriculture, as Daniel Quinn labeled it, isn't sustainable, no matter what speed or intensity we do it.
We've only ever operated in one sustainable way. Maybe there are other ways, but we haven't found them. We certainly know that agriculture ain't it.
Excellent research and a stark warning. Climate really is the force multiplier...
“El Niño is developing at a quicker pace than initially anticipated in the Pacific Ocean, with increasing probabilities that it could evolve into an exceptionally powerful event — a rare ‘Super’ El Niño — by fall or winter.” —CNN
Summarizing expert warnings, Futura notes ECMWF’s May update now sees a 100% probability of a super El Niño forming by November, with central Pacific temperatures projected to exceed 3°C above average, “a level of oceanic heat not seen since the historic 1877 event.” Huffington Post UK
“Researchers are worried about the implications this could have on worldwide weather systems, particularly the possibility that 2027 might emerge as the hottest year on record.” —BBC
Desal is fine for coastal cities, preferably powered by renewables. It cannot supply sufficient water for large scale crop irrigation inland. A promising new technology extracts water from the atmosphere, and can be used anywhere, even in deserts/
Sounds like awgs you are talking about. Atmospheric water generators that generally use a hydrophilic gel. There are also modified "dew nets". Problem is there are vast areas without ample humidity. Am still for piping/Catalina in desalled sea water to fill reservoirs and depleted aquifers because that water is not coming back as Earth burns.
Every civilization is characterized by the ability to grow and store grains. This is what distinguishes civilizations from hunter-gatherer societies. Growing and storing grains allows a society to survive the difficult stretches of time that would otherwise lead to starvation. Land suitable for agriculture is often referred to as arable land.
Science Snippets: We Passed Peak Arable Land
https://guymcpherson.substack.com/p/science-snippets-we-passed-peak-arable
Kevin Hester
Kevin’s Substack
10 a.m.
A few additional observations I will make to this analysis is that as the level of CO2 in the atmosphere relentlessly climbs, the nutritional values of the crop's declines, when CO2 is pumped into industrial greenhouses, it stimulates plant growth, at the expense of nutritional value, it's perverse that nutritional value is traded for physical bulk but that's, 'business'.
Now that the axis of Zionism has set fire to the cradle of humanity in West Asia, global supplies of fertilizer are about to plummet, whatever food is grown will be starved of fertilizer and overdosed on CO2. Many farmers are considering not planting at all because industrial farms presell their crops at agreed prices, those contracts won't cover the exponential increase of fertilizer costs, assuming they can even be bought.
Professor Steve Keen, a self-described "Rebel Economist" from Australia is predicting famines later this year, it appears inevitable.
In 2023 Guy did an analysis of work by the chief executive of Gro Intelligence, quote “By 2027 the world could be facing a 214 trillion calorie deficit, says Sara Menker, founder and chief executive of Gro Intelligence, an agricultural data technology company.”
That analysis predates the chaos in West Asia, so the prognosis is more likely to be worse than previously thought, a recurring theme.
I'll drop the corroborating links below for further reference
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQYbNk2BmsI
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2095809924007355
https://kevinhester.live/2023/03/23/on-the-verge-of-starvation/
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Terrifying trajectory - and here we are stuffing around with war and bigger and better AI that is unlikely to be seriously used for the purpose of managing food, water and soil shortfalls. The old idea of infinite growth on a finite planet… powerful article from the UK Institute of Actuaries, that humans are making the planet insolvent. I well remember your first book. Thanks for not giving up!
If AI is used to manage food, water, soil or other resources it will invariably result in more deaths.
I've seen it unable to quote data from a table in a paper and just make it up instead.
I've seen PhD level academics use generative AI to respond to technical questions resulting in answers that are wrong by a factor of 100 such that it should have been obvious it was incorrect. Or using it to write descriptions of species resulting in it simply making up names.
I've seen prominent youtubers rely completely on the Google AI overview without checking the source even when it is quoting data about food import figures which are decades out of date and completely inaccurate in the present.
I expect someone will try to use AI to manage food and water resources without double checking the data and inevitably that will lead to catastrophe.
AI relies on an ancient cybernetics principle: garbage in, garbage out. Like democracy, it is only as good as the bullshit it is fed.
I trust your assessment knowing what a meticulous and scrupulous researcher you are. This kind of misguided reliance on looking authoritative rather than being correct may well lead us to catastrophe.
A question I have for you Julian about this very fine article would be: the fact that we’ve not been able to recognize our need to change and reverse things that clearly we can see are destructive for our well-being, is it not due to the lack of mental, moral, intellectual and spiritual development of a certain portion of our collective human consciousness? It is well recognized that the way we perceive reality can profoundly alter it. However, there has always been the temptation to the lust to dominate, to grasp after power that is so seductive and dangerous for all sentient beings. Can we come to a place of evolution in our consciousness where this destructive energy can be mitigated to a large extent?
As I recounted in 'How to Fix a Broken Planet' it took hominins around 7 million years to discover they could use fire to stop leopards consuming the children. So finding the correct solution can be a long, bloody and weary process, but humans tend to get there in the end "after exhausting every other possibility", as Winston Churchill remarked (about America). Our survival instinct is strong - but our collective wisdom is weak, as you assert.
My personal expectation is that our destructive instincts will not be mitigated until we have almost destroyed ourselves. At that point, wisdom will become more universal among the (few) survivors.
Plenty of work in psychology, philosophy, behavioral- and neuroscience contemplates our suicidally maladaptive strategies, but at the end of the day one can also just give up explaining it and simply conclude, based on our entire history: No.
Deep down in every heart is a longing for the Spirit, that ultimate reality, Cosmic Birther, that Jesus, Buddha … all enlightened ones, have borne witness to. And they reveal simply that we are all called to awaken for the good of all our fellow beings. We must all listen to what we long for in the depths of our own hearts.
Good thing I just bought my five pounds of seed potatoes for $3.50 that will yield me about 2oo pounds of organic red potatoes for about two cents per pound. The cubic yard of mushroom compost I spent fifty bucks on should be more fertilizer than I need for the year. Until then, thank God for Aldi's 99-cent hot dogs, which I I am getting ready to enjoy while I still can.
If you really knew what was in hot dogs, you would confine your gourmandising to spuds.
And, for culinary variety, add some sweet potatoes, yacon, jerusalem artichokes and assorted Asian veg, spinach, kale, broccolini and broad beans. These are some of what my little garden yields for the table.
"This means that every time a farmer starts a tractor today, he is cutting into a future farmer’s harvest, due to the prolonged climate impacts."
Astute comment and a very good article. I grow plenty of food for ourselves and to give away. I used to be a market gardener and grew a lot more. I have never owned a tractor. I have written three books on the sustainable agriculture solution. The third one emphasizes how to shift your paradigms so that you can implement specific solutions for your unique situation. It is called Paradigms for Adaptation (2024). In our increasingly fractured world, off-the-shelf solutions won't be enough. You are going to have to analyze, theorize, hypothesize, gather data and work out a solution. Then you are going to have to implement it. The starting point is to shift your paradigms.
In the mid-80's I was honoured to be part of CSIRO look-forward-50-years seminar. At that time I said that Australia fed 7 people overseas and clothed 11 (from memory), whereas with population growth in Australia this figure will now be considerably lower, and less people are fed and clothed overseas. In the same year I was also flown down from the NT to address a Senate committee on a sustainable population for Australia. Based on CSIRO and other research at that time, I submitted that 14 million was all the land would tolerate. Australia's population is now double that, at 28 million, and the signs of deterioration are everywhere in land and water. The Senate members could not have been less interested. It is not clear to me where action will come from in this slow frog-boiling.
For the same reason people ignore climate information, they also ignore warnings related to food. They haven't largely been personally effected so therefore everything is fine. They're fine, you're fine, everyone's fine, everything's fine.
Complacency is a singular human attribute. No other animal seems to suffer from it!
Hard to fight a government that wants this to happen
Open ur eyes hungry people are easier to control
"Renewable food" is what happens when we stop trying. It's what hunter gatherers, you know, hunted and gathered. Turns out, it works vastly better than humans trying to control everything that we clearly don't understand.
Indeed. But for that you would need to subtract about 8 billion human beings. As may actually happen, if we don't look out.
Early agrarian societies were also fairly sustainable too - for example they recycled their nutrients (as domestic waste). You can read this in the Odyssey, which is 3000 years old.
The thing that made humans unsustainable was overpopulation. That is what pushes all natural systems beyond their ability to renew.
I commend the following article: https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/ae51aa
Yeah, "fairly" sustainable isn't actually sustainable though. Agriculture, as we have practiced it since the namesake "revolution," has never been sustainable. I'll grant you that the industrial methods we use today are exponentially worse for the world than what we did before, and we'd have probably chugged along longer before turning the world into a desert, but it would have happened eventually anyway. Fossil fuels and industry just accelerated things.
Remember, the Fertile Crescent wasn't named ironically. It started out pretty doggone fertile. We made that a desert in a geological eye blink. And, remember that folks in heartland America knew about crop rotation, and they still ended up with the Dust Bowl. Totalitarian agriculture, as Daniel Quinn labeled it, isn't sustainable, no matter what speed or intensity we do it.
We've only ever operated in one sustainable way. Maybe there are other ways, but we haven't found them. We certainly know that agriculture ain't it.
Excellent research and a stark warning. Climate really is the force multiplier...
“El Niño is developing at a quicker pace than initially anticipated in the Pacific Ocean, with increasing probabilities that it could evolve into an exceptionally powerful event — a rare ‘Super’ El Niño — by fall or winter.” —CNN
Summarizing expert warnings, Futura notes ECMWF’s May update now sees a 100% probability of a super El Niño forming by November, with central Pacific temperatures projected to exceed 3°C above average, “a level of oceanic heat not seen since the historic 1877 event.” Huffington Post UK
“Researchers are worried about the implications this could have on worldwide weather systems, particularly the possibility that 2027 might emerge as the hottest year on record.” —BBC
https://resistancemediainfo.substack.com/p/a-ticking-time-bomb-war-and-climate
Desal baby desal! We gotta give the babies water.
Desal is fine for coastal cities, preferably powered by renewables. It cannot supply sufficient water for large scale crop irrigation inland. A promising new technology extracts water from the atmosphere, and can be used anywhere, even in deserts/
Sounds like awgs you are talking about. Atmospheric water generators that generally use a hydrophilic gel. There are also modified "dew nets". Problem is there are vast areas without ample humidity. Am still for piping/Catalina in desalled sea water to fill reservoirs and depleted aquifers because that water is not coming back as Earth burns.