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I always like watching people's heads explode when presented with the 26 acres per capita number.  It's easy to calculate about a half dozen different ways.

But, with regards to the US at least, it's also fairly easy to lower.  Even Europe has a high standard of living with much lower consumption.  And though meat does account for a large acreage, most of it is not food.  Most of it is waste:  driving inefficient cars long distances, temperature control of poorly-insulated buildings (not just houses but shops and warehouses), self-destructing consumer items shipped from the other side of the world, supply-chain waste and a lot of redundant energy consumption on things like frozen foods.  It can be cut in half fairly easily.

But to answer "where does it come from", well, good question because the US only has about 6-7 acres of land per capita.  The rest comes from trade, from oceans, and from fossil fuels.  All of these are threatened for various reasons -- trade due to our own government's incompetence, oceans due to over-utilization and pollution, and fossil fuels due to depletion and negative externalities.  These sources constitute almost 3/4 of the American standard of living.

That is a reasonable and logical stance:

My position is:

Because of Quantitative Easing (devaluing of the Dollar) by the FED, speculators in the market new of a quick way to make money. People's money won't be able to buy as much, but what must they buy if they have to buy less. (Food). So through the commodity market they speculate the demand for food will rise. There speculation causes the Food price to rise over other products. The Price of Oil surly plays a part in it as does transportation costs.

But Speculators try to predict the future: The smart money says people will have a hard time coming and the demand for food will go up. So far, they are correct. But if they are proven correct, that food out weighs other products for a length of time there is a double edge effect. It will cause great inflation in Food Prices (the absolutely worse place to have inflation) You can deal with inflation in Cars, TVs, Power, Cell Phones, etc... You can not deal well with inflation of food prices.

There is a way of telling which one of our arguments is correct.

Under my theory and model. The following will occur:

Food Inflation, followed by general product Inflation, followed by Increased Food Inflation, which is followed by Non-Necassity Product Deflation.

Basically a split will occur. Necessary products will Inflate in price while Non-necassary products will initially inflate followed by a relatively quick deflation in price.


I really hope your position is the correct one, but I must explore mine.

I tend to think the speculators got it right. If money buys less, speculate the food prices up, to increase profits, which will lead to other products becoming less desirable and decrease in price. Which will lead to more companies going out of business, more unemployment, less money to keep other businesses in the market, etc.... 

I think the world is on the edge of a very unstable cliff and unless managed properly, the fall that must come will hurt many more than it needs to do. Other countries separately in the past have had depressions, I think we are on the verge of our first "global" depression.

Food and energy both had a large jump.  The prices in consumer products are lagging as compared to oil, because they were made with last summer's oil.  We see the prices in food rise quicker, in part, because nearly everything that we eat takes a great deal of energy to transport from where it is grown, to where it is processed, to where it is sold.  We will see prices rise in consumer goods if the current oil price maintains it's present levels.

I think this is why we will be hurt less. Proximity to food resources will matter more as transportation costs increase. If you read the article, it does show some interesting facts.

This is still all related to inflation. In the U.S. Food prices had the largest jump since 1974. Granted there are many reasons for this, but why just Food that had the largest jump in price? Not cell phones, not cars, not TVs, but Food. There is an underlying cause.

I don't understand what wb3 is talking about. It seem that I have to read what ecological footprint means.

What do you base this upon?  Are you assuming surface area of geoengineerable planets?  Because I seriously doubt this is accurate.

87.3% of statistics found on Internet forums are made up on the spot.


Again, based upon what?

yes, and you export more than that to other countries, as i stated.  agriculture is one of the US economic sectors where there is a trade surplus.

Not how much it has in the U.S. but how much it takes us in the U.S. at our current life styles. Remember we do import food from other countries.

Just a sec and I will post the sources.

I don't know if you have access but the previous information comes from Scholarly research.

Rees Ecological Footprint <-- If you do a Google search and select the Scholarly Research you can get a summary, if you have access to the Research Paper you can read the whole article.

It includes Mathis Wackernagel's PhD studies.

Google lets you read some of it here: http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=N__ujKDfXq8C&oi=fnd&pg=PR9&dq=rees+ecological+footprint&ots=3AP50wlsvY&sig=2FkL4f8ezTq2SzAfVr1XyrpyYFc#v=onepage&q=rees%20ecological%20footprint&f=false

Remember this study is a snap shot in time: It has not gotten better but worse. Technically they should be updated every year. I think wikipedia covers a less scholarly but good information here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecological_footprint

where are you finding these numbers?

the US has 3.4 acres/person of agricultural land, not 25.  for the 25 to be correct, the US would need to be a net importer of food, which it is not.

Are we talking about farms creating food? You do realize that India is becoming rich?

Are you implying that we consume more food?

Funny, I am waiting for Dr. Who?

Quantify "Plenty of Space"?  Not just occupancy.

I.E.

In India it takes 1.98 acres of land to support a person at there life style.

In the U.S. it takes 25.45 acres to support our lifestyle.

39.8% of the world has agricultural land, or 18545974.7 square miles X 640 = 11869423808 acres

So given 7 Billion people that is: 1.69 acres per person.

The simple math of the matter tells us we are in trouble.

And this is assuming that the Agricultural land can maintain its growth without letting it rest for re-netrialization.

Now, Pick who starves.

We have plenty of space on earth but our species could be wiped out from a planetary extinction event.

I intend to live toward the very end and escape the ultimate fate of the universe.

ethiopa's population situation is exactly opposite of developed countries and the world in general.

ethiopia's growth rate is 2.5% and rising.

the world population growth rate is at 1.1% and dropping.

ethiopia did not experience a slowing growth rate followed by a decline in resources, therefore it is not applicable to the world at large.


the fact that we aren't doing that is my entire point.  we are not working on increasing population.  as a side effect of society, we are moving away from population growth.

If at least one other planet in our solar system was habitable, I would have a lot of enthusiasm.  We need more space. I am all for terra forming. Lets start sending everything to mars to see if anything can take hold in that habitat. Bacteria, what ever.

I would just like our species to be around at the end. Lets reason our way that far. Of course, we will if around and not on a dead end will under go speciation. But that is just our progeny that replaces us.

I believe Efficiency is our enemy. We strive for it, we try to increase production, to maximized everything.

Some of the best dynamic systems are not the most efficient. Nature allowed us to become efficient. It also allowed us to understand efficiency. I think we mis-understood it.

Not wanting to go "Biblical" but a day of rest was a good idea. Utilizing land for 7 years and giving it a year of rest, was limiting efficiency. I think our ancestors understood it better, than us.

We had a built in moral code to not be to efficient. We ignored it.

As far as changing farming for animal feed to human food, animals are part of the system. You have just chosen to not feed them to feed us. What would the outcome of that be? You kind of made my point. We will sacrifice everything for our "perceived" benefit. When in actuality, we just passed the buck to the next generation at the cost of their pain.

As far as genetic engineering, Nature gave us the ability to do it. But it also gave us forethought. Just because something can be done, doesn't mean it should be done. We should examine all possible out comes before going down that road because we are playing chess with Nature, and Nature is a Grand Master at playing chess, compared to us just learning to play. Lets not go Arrogantly into that realm.

Monsanto and the like utilize monopoly enhancing regulations such as patents to keep a foothold on the market. Previously, people sell new plant varieties without patent and still make lot of money off of it.

Unintended consequences are the natural qualities of technologies.


What's inevitable? The heat death of the universe? Even if we can't use reason to solve The Final Problem, which is to escape the final state of the universe, life got a very long time to live.

Not run out of resources, a drastic decline in resources.


Lets say Data can be looked at in different ways, not to mention we have Macro Example already: Ethiopia. We are just waiting for it to play out on the global scale.

http://www.wilsoncenter.org/index.cfm?topic_id=1413&fuseaction=topics.event_summary&event_id=121044

Ethiopia, followed a pattern that I prescribe.

I also believe the time scale is relatively relevant.

I'm not all doom and gloom, Nature will correct itself. Always has. Just not always in ways we like.

Not forgoing, unintended consequences. Lets assume we develop all that is physically able to be developed by any means necessary. All that is done, has only delayed the inevitable.

In the past, with growth comes expansion. With that expansion, others gave way to make room. (Adaptive Space). We came to the Americas and Australia and expanded. We will need the Next Adaptive Space. Where do we go? There is no where left. Outer Space? We can't get anywhere in time.

Bison used to be in the millions, but they had to give way for Adaptive Space. As other species had to also do. We are unique, not special.

We forget we are part of a larger greater system. We "think" we can control it. We even made laws.

A thought experiment:

We have laws of ownership. A farmers produce is theirs to do with as they wish. They can sell it, they can let it rot. It is their legal right.

What would happen if all farmers decided to not sell but keep their food for their own and/or local use? Would the rest of the world follow "man's laws" or "Natures Laws"?  I think we know what would happen.

We are the first species to have been given Dominion over every other species. We mucked it up. We must now pay the price.

yes, that is what i am saying more or less.

your view is that we will only stop growth when we run out of resources to maintain that growth, a view which is not backed up by the available data.

in north america and europe, our internal population growth (strictly births-deaths, ignoring immigration/emigration) stopped decades ago.  total fertility rates have been below replacement since the mid-60s and show no signs of going back up.  the only thing maintaining total population growth is immigration, and even that is not keeping up in places.  germany, russia, and japan have been experiencing negative population growth for some time.

there's no current shortage of resources to achieve population growth in these areas, but there is no growth happening.  population decline is preceding a resource decline.