On 08/08/2018 09:43, p-0''0-h the cat (coder) wrote:
On Tue, 7 Aug 2018 23:39:20 +0100, Norman Wells
wrote:
On 07/08/2018 20:25, p-0''0-h the cat (coder) wrote:
On Tue, 7 Aug 2018 18:51:19 +0100, Norman Wells
wrote:

I've always been totally open and honest about how many current
production can feed. It's 60% or about 36 million. It was *your*
contention that the UK could be self-sufficient in food if it went
totally organic. Are you now agreeing with me that it cannot possibly?

Nope. That would be incorrect. We can obviously feed 36 million. Just
going vegan would solve that.

How do you work that out?

You can feed 5 vegans on the same land required to feed one meat eater.

Really? Where's your proof?

You can feed 2.5 vegetarians on the same land required to feed one meat
eater.

Really? Where's your proof?

And why were you arguing earlier that 'going organic' could feed the
nation, whereas now you're arguing it's not that at all but 'going
vegan'? They are rather different, and it's a hell of a swerve.

You can dispute the figures

Give us their source first. Where do they come from, and how are they
derived?

but common sense tells you than meat and
dairy production is inefficient especially non grass fed

They're not inefficient if they make use of land that is of poor quality
and best suited to grass rather than crops. As the vast majority of
grazing land is.

Farmers are not stupid. Where they can grow arable crops, they will.
It makes no sense not to. But we do have a fair amount of poor,
unproductive land that is really best suited for grazing. You can't
grow crops up a mountainside, in a bog or on a moor.

and we are only talking a 50% increase here.

In what?

Not that I'm suggesting that or even going totally organic. I was just
pointing out what's possible in the face of this onslaught of nonsense
propaganda.

There's no propaghanda, just facts.

The food industry is interested in profits not facts. Do they care about
children's teeth and people's health or do they supply food filled with
sugar, salt and fat.

They are interested in selling what their customers want to buy. They're
not the moral guardians of the country. Nor do they think that everyone
wants to live off broccoli and leaves.

They are being dragged kicking and screaming to reduce levels from
insane levels post war. If you look objectively at what post war food
security has delivered health wise we have gone from rationing to
gluttony. Cheap calories come at a cost.

Cheap calories. It's a dream come true. Our ancestors would have given
their eye-teeth for such luxury and freedom from worry.

Remember this all started with Bouffy claiming we are somehow unmanly
for not scratching enough dirt to feed ourselves like all the best
people who have left the island. Yet this situation has barely changed
in 200+ years. You jumped in with a load of scare mongering and it turns
out we are no worse off than we were 200 years ago. So what's with all
this project fear mumbo jumbo bro?

We are much worse off actually. In less than 150 years, the UK
population has more than doubled. But the amount of land we have hasn't
increased at all. It makes life a little difficult if you insist on
using the same methods as we did then.

Life isn't difficult and we aren't worse off. Look in the shops.

Indeed. But that's because we produce our food in the way we do. If
you had your way, you'd have us return to a world where we don't have
surplus but shortage.

We chuck tons of food away often for cosmetic reasons,

Where is your proof? And what do you count as being 'wasted'? How do
you define that term?

and we use arable land to grow foodstuffs for animals

Not directly. Sometimes crops don't turn out as well as you hope,
usually because of the weather. And it's those that go to animal feed.
It's a sensible use of them.

and bio fuel.

Very little actually.

Worse IMO we grow way
too many cereals to produce cheap calories, refined carbohydrates, and
the evidence now is it's these not fats that are making us fat.

We *need* calories. Each of us needs 2,500 of the things a day. You'd
have us struggle to get them, when we know how to obtain them far more
easily. And that's bizarre.

Anyway, let's continue, I'd like to know why we can only feed 24 million
organically. We actually fed 23 million during the war years so quite
why we can only manage another 1 million now is beyond me.

Maybe we can. But it's still only about 24 million. It's very simple.
We can only produce enough food currently to feed 36 million using all
the tools at our disposal. Take those 'non-organic' tools away, like
chemicals and artificial fertilisers, and we can only produce about
two-thirds of what we do at the moment, from the same amount of land.
Two-thirds of the 36 million we can currently feed is 24 million. It
follows as night follows day.

For instance, the graph I posted earlier shows the impact of
mechanisation back to 1750. The impact was enormous but the tech
probably wasn't. The tractors that zoom through our village nowadays are
like juggernauts. Compare those to the one's in 1939. Hydroponics,
didn't exist, and you're expecting me to believe we can only manage
another million. Sorry, I don't buy it. We can obviously do it. Mankind
is ingenious.

Maybe he is, but organic farmers still only produce about two-thirds as
much from the same amount of land. They're hobbled, you see, by the
very silly rules they impose on themselves.

Take some time to feel and smell what well manured land is like and then
do the same on a year in year out heavily cropped chemically fed wheat
field.

Yes, it doesn't smell of manure. But then it doesn't have to. I
shouldn't think your favoured hydroponics smell of anything at all.

So, cut the old 'smell the soil, you'll see how good it is' nonsense,
please. You can't tell, and it's no indicator.

The farmers, food producers and agrochemical boys should
come up with a more credible storyline before they get called out by the
village idiot and 'is mate down the allotment.

It's just facts that perhaps you don't want to face. You certainly
can't disprove them.

We should face the facts. We are heading down the wrong road. It can't
end well.

That's not a fact. It's just your opinion. And it's a rather silly one
at that.

We need to eat better and curb population growth.

OK. So, how do you propose curbing population growth?

Restricting their food supply by deliberately cutting food production
seems to be your only approach so far.

Not load the NHS with
the cost of food related problems and create a society caught on a
spiraling out of control food production / consumption / population
growth self perpetuating route to armageddon.

Food production is hardly 'spiralling out of control' when we can only
produce enough here to feed 60% of the population.

To get the population down to the number we can sustain using all the
tools we currently have at our disposal, we'd need to cull 24 million
people. To get it down to what totally organic production can support,
we'd need to cull 36 million.

It's quite a big ask. How would you do it? And how would you decide
who should be culled?