[QUOTE="Barbariser"][QUOTE="guynamedbilly"]Gotta eat more I guess. Also, the people in third world countries should start farming. Third world agriculture is hilariously uncompetitive with agriculture in developed nations. It makes far more sense economically for third worlders to work in other sectors which give them a much higher pay and involve far less hard labour while importing food at lower prices than if they were to try making it themselves. Not to mention that third world countries are already full of farmers who are transitioning out for this exact reason. I was thinking about the starving ones. I doubt it's accurate, but that's what I picture third world to mean. A bunch of people sitting in front of a tv camera, starving.
[QUOTE="guynamedbilly"][QUOTE="Barbariser"][QUOTE="guynamedbilly"]Gotta eat more I guess. Also, the people in third world countries should start farming. Third world agriculture is hilariously uncompetitive with agriculture in developed nations. It makes far more sense economically for third worlders to work in other sectors which give them a much higher pay and involve far less hard labour while importing food at lower prices than if they were to try making it themselves. Not to mention that third world countries are already full of farmers who are transitioning out for this exact reason. I was thinking about the starving ones. I doubt it's accurate, but that's what I picture third world to mean. A bunch of people sitting in front of a tv camera, starving. How do you propose that these starving people who are often children go and do an extremely energy-intensive form of labour when they can't actually produce it very efficiently and are basically screwed if they encounter crop failures or weather problems? Even assuming that it was possible when the amount of arable land in developing nations is effectively constant and thus so are the available farming jobs, while the labour pool in these nations is generally exploding. If it was possible for "starving third worlders" to solve their food security problems by working as farmers then they would have already done so.
So you think that the most effort should be put into developing countries? What about the food that developed countries waste?
whipassmt
I was just mentioning some ideas. Developed countries probably account for more waste. The thing is I thing a lot of the waste reduction in developing countries could come through technological advances, whereas the waste reduction in wealthy nations like the U.S. will have more to do with a change in lifestyle/mindset and perhaps require a bit of sacrifice. I think there are things we can do here as well, perhaps more widescale cultivation of small home gardens for family use could help as well.
I've also heard, I don't know if this is true or not, that government subsidies to farmers and agribusiness sometimes encourage less cultivation so that prices will be higher, which maybe is something that should be eased up a bit.
If there is one thing I have learned while watching people react to things (specifically things revolving around sustainable energy) is that we are vehemently opposed to anything that will force us to make sacrifices.
[QUOTE="Barbariser"] How do you propose that these starving people who are often children go and do an extremely energy-intensive form of labour when they can't actually produce it very efficiently and are basically screwed if they encounter crop failures or weather problems? I don't know. How did any civilization start?
[QUOTE="guynamedbilly"][QUOTE="Barbariser"] How do you propose that these starving people who are often children go and do an extremely energy-intensive form of labour when they can't actually produce it very efficiently and are basically screwed if they encounter crop failures or weather problems? I don't know. How did any civilization start? Populations were literally a hundred or a thousand times smaller when humans first started practicing agriculture, and they still experienced mass famines on a regular basis. They were also not "starving" when they started farming - they were hunter-gatherers and hunter-gatherers are well-known to be much healthier and fitter than agriculturalists. Now imagine getting billions of people to farm on effectively the same amount of arable land (third world farms already employ dozens to hundreds of times more workers than first world ones), and this time there's more efficient competition all over the world so they can't even sell their produce for much.
[QUOTE="Barbariser"][QUOTE="guynamedbilly"][QUOTE="Barbariser"] How do you propose that these starving people who are often children go and do an extremely energy-intensive form of labour when they can't actually produce it very efficiently and are basically screwed if they encounter crop failures or weather problems? I don't know. How did any civilization start? Populations were literally a hundred or a thousand times smaller when humans first started practicing agriculture, and they still experienced mass famines on a regular basis. They were also not "starving" when they started farming - they were hunter-gatherers and hunter-gatherers are well-known to be much healthier and fitter than agriculturalists. Now imagine getting billions of people to farm on effectively the same amount of arable land (third world farms already employ dozens to hundreds of times more workers than first world ones), and this time there's more efficient competition all over the world so they can't even sell their produce for much. I see. I'm not talking about them being profitable though, just surviving.
There ya go. 
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