The same is happening with pig and egg production. And they call it progress!

Trevor.

1 billion might be accurate if we wanted to eat like people do in the USA, with food processed to rip the nutrition out, resultant overeating, too much meat, and large amounts of pointless stuff like milk, coffee, alcohol, and chocolate. Their diet makes ours look like the garden of eden.

Call it 15 billion if you want to eat cushy food with large excess margins. 40 billion is more for what is possible, rather than nice.

Sam Buchanan, hey.

The issue with such traditional designs is that they aren’t ideal any more, not compared to a modern mixed and rotated layout with controlled composting of excess biomass. We can be more productive with that “waste” than 95% of human history ever imagined, at the very least turning some of it into tractor fuel. We also have tractors, which are handy.

Besides, people in properly dense cities can’t keep pigs and chickens, and dense regional cities are a good energy saver overall. Hopefully algal processing of city bio-waste will work out in the near future as another energy recovery method.

Much more difficult than food at higher population levels is energy and potable water. But again, that’s largely down to eliminating waste and improving efficiencies to solve the problem, you can shift ten workers on scooters for every one in an SUV, or 100 in a light electric train; and people don’t really need to refill their swimming pool with drinkable water every night. The waste levels in the modern world are huge: look at me awake in the middle of the night for instance, total waste of energy. 8]

With a poof! the wish was granted. All of a sudden, one of the men got really angry.

“Dammit! Now we have to piss in the boat!”

Solid Energy, the Greens best friend, (not), are committed to growing only natural (non GMO) rapeseed in New Zealand, which is a rotational crop that does not interfere with food grains, but actually enhances the soil during the rotation so that less fertilisers are required for the grain crops. It is also a low water crop so does not make extra demands on irrigation or water supplies. The waste from the biofuel crop is used for animal feed cakes, rather than importing cakes made from the palm oil plantations that are cutting down all our neighbour’s rainforests.

So after the waste is used, there’s a bit of rapeseed, and we’re still a bit better off. There are logical limits, which the Greens recognise and have asked for, but within the goals of the BSO Bill, it’s win-win for the environment and the economy. Wouldn’t it be great if the rest of the country could look at things within their natural limits and not be so obsessed with growth at any cost. (That may be a fight we have with Solid Energy in about 20 years, about wanting unsustainable amounts of rapeseed!)

The Third World is rapidly following that trend, because of the world’s elites unquestioning devotion to following the precepts of “free” trade ideologues, which was first developed to legitamise and justify the expropriation of the land and resources of foreign peoples and the commen people in the Western world during the Colonial/Edwardian/Victorian era under the rubric of private property “rights”..
http://www.forestcouncil.org/tims_picks/view.php?id=772

This isn’t really the case, unless you are talking about the ‘financially efficient’ monocultures so beloved of modern capitalism. The most efficient forms of farming in terms of calories per acre are small mixed farms, i.e. the type of farming that was practised for about 95% of human history. Traditionally, animals are fed on waste products and surpluses, hence the popularity of pigs, goats and chickens in peasant economies. In these circumstances, meat is pretty much a ‘free gift’ on top of fruit and veggie production.

The greens are long term supporters of biofuels and that support is pushing through the biofuels bill. They have some caveats in their support but unfortunately they are supporting a biofuel mandate target that is beyond NZ’s ability to meet domestically without the conversion of specially grown crops.

Are you sure about the 40 billion figure? The figures I have read (sorry, I can’t remember the book I read it in … I think it was a book by Tim Flannery) mentioned a number more like one billion.

In any case, you are correct about red meat eating not being as efficient use of land as growing vegetables. However, if the world population was a lot less than it is, we could also sustainably eat a moderate amount of red meat, if we choose to.