[p2p-research] Scientific American on the coming Malthusian Crisis

Wed Oct 7 20:57:43 CEST 2009

Michel,

Things like localism and P2P do not hold good reputations for productivity.
Therefore, few of these conventional theorists are motivated to see it as a
viable contribution to conventional development problems.

It isn't clear that outputs from small farms, small manufacturing, etc. can
give the world what it needs.  On the other hand, P2P people tend to be
against strong, heavy-handed social regulations such as mandatory birth
control.  One therefore tends to see the prospect of outputs not meeting
demands if our little movement becomes increasingly meaningful.  Now you can
disagree with some of that (and I'm sure you will), but here is the question
regardless...(and as an open question anyone else is welcome to scoop it...)

Who and how should do the world forecast implications of P2P policies?  That
is, how should we assess the productivity span of a P2P commons and their
impacts?  If it only works for some, but disadvantages others, does that
play?  How should such issues be reviewed and adjudicated across large
commons?

Here's what seems lacking:  There is no concrete set of policy linkages from
P2P scale implementation strategies and larger social demands and costs.  We
talk about grass roots in P2P, but we never seem to get around to top down
analysis.  Do we simply abandon the global and national if P2P systems take
broad hold?

Ryan

On Wed, Oct 7, 2009 at 1:43 PM, Michel Bauwens <michelsub2004 at gmail.com>wrote:

> yes, more oil-based poisons in the soil will do the trick <g>
>
> more markets ...
>
> as if it was not the marketization of food which led to the crisis in the
> first place, along with the speculation of food prices and the planned
> destruction of any reserves of regulation ...
>
> will they never learn ...
>
> reminds me of the plans to destroy free range chickens in thailand because
> 'of course' they are dangerous for the bird flu ..
>
> Michel
>
>   On Thu, Oct 8, 2009 at 1:36 AM, Ryan Lanham <rlanham1963 at gmail.com>wrote:
>
>>   Features<http://www.scientificamerican.com/department.cfm?id=feature-articles> -
>> October 2, 2009
>> Another Inconvenient Truth: The World's Growing Population Poses a
>> Malthusian Dilemma Solving climate change, the Sixth Great Extinction and
>> population growth... at the same time
>>
>> By David Biello
>>
>> By 2050, the world will host nine billion people<http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?id=is-birth-control-the-answer-to-envi-2009-09-23>—and
>> that's if population growth slows in much of the developing world. Today, at
>> least one billion people are chronically malnourished or starving. Simply to
>> maintain that sad state of affairs would require the clearing (read:
>> deforestation) of 900 million additional hectares of land, according to
>> Pedro Sanchez, director of the Tropical Agriculture and Rural Environment
>> Program at The Earth Institute at Columbia University.
>>
>> The bad news beyond the impacts on people, plants and animals of that kind
>> of deforestation<http://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode.cfm?id=can-trees-save-us-from-climate-chan-09-04-24>:
>> There isn't that much land available. At most, we might be able to add 100
>> million hectares to the 4.3 billion already under cultivation worldwide.
>>
>> "Agriculture is the main driver of most ecological problems<http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=scientists-identify-safe-limits-for-human-impacts>on the planet," said economist Jeffrey Sachs,
>> *Scientific American* columnist<http://www.scientificamerican.com/author.cfm?id=978>and Earth Institute director. "We are literally eating away the other
>> species on the planet."
>>
>> Sachs made his remarks yesterday at a symposium hosted by the institute on
>> how to improve agriculture to address the mounting challenge of feeding the
>> world while combating climate change and stopping the wholesale loss of
>> biodiversity<http://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode.cfm?id=sixth-extinction-wipes-out-animals-08-10-09>,
>> among other interrelated issues.
>>
>> Agriculture—thanks to deforestation, nitrous oxide from fields, methane
>> from cattle and rice paddies—is responsible for one third of global
>> greenhouse gas emissions from human activity, making emissions from
>> transporting food, known as "food miles," a "rounding error," said ecologist
>> Jonathan Foley, director of the Institute on the Environment (IonE) at the
>> University of Minnesota. Pasture has become the dominant ecosystem on the
>> planet, he added, and humans directly employ some 40 percent of the surface
>> of the planet. "Very little of that is urban."
>>
>> In addition, agriculture accounts for at least 85 percent of human water
>> consumption—a growing concern as aquifers diminish and hydrology changes<http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=is-india-running-out-of-water>in the face of climate change. And, by Sanchez's rough calculation, humans
>> now use some 171 million tons of nitrogen as fertilizer every year, much of
>> which ends up polluting lakes, rivers, streams and even the ocean.
>> "Fifty-four percent of that is fertilizer—the Haber-Bosch process; 11
>> percent is atmospheric deposition—the plus side of pollution; 18 percent is
>> in situ fixation," or nitrogen-fixing cover crops, like legumes, Sanchez
>> said.
>>
>> And it's not like so-called organic agriculture is helping with that:
>> Nitrate leaching into waterways can come from manure, as in the Netherlands
>> or overuse of fertilizer, as in Iowa. The result is the same: dead zones<http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=oceanic-dead-zones-spread>
>> .
>>
>> So how can agriculture be intensified to feed a growing population while
>> addressing environmental concerns? Simply put, yields on existing lands
>> must increase<http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=agricultures-sustainable-future>
>> .
>>
>> That's what Norman Borlaug<http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?id=norman-borlaug-wheat-breeder-who-av-2009-09-14>and his colleagues achieved in the 1960s and 1970s with the Green Revolution
>> that staved off famine for millions. Yet, "there can be no permanent
>> progress in the battle against hunger until the agencies that fight for
>> increased food production and those that fight for population control unite
>> in a common effort," Borlaug said in his acceptance speech for the Nobel
>> Peace Prize in 1970<http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/1970/borlaug-acceptance.html>.
>> "[Man] is using his powers for increasing the rate and amount of food
>> production. But he is not yet using adequately his potential for decreasing
>> the rate of human reproduction. The result is that the rate of population
>> increase exceeds the rate of increase in food production in some areas."
>>
>> That demographic contradiction is nowhere more true than in many countries
>> of sub-Saharan Africa, where a population of 800 million must subsist on
>> local yields of one ton per hectare—one third of yields in the rest of the
>> developing world and one ninth those of the U.S., Europe, Australia and
>> other parts of the developed world. Yet, "we already grow enough food to
>> feed the world, we've been doing that for decades," noted ecologist
>> Catherine Badgley of the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor (U.M.), who led
>> a study assessing whether organic agriculture practices alone might
>> adequately meet global nutritional requirements<http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayFulltext?type=6&fid=1195048&jid=RAF&volumeId=22&issueId=02&aid=1091304&fulltextType=RA&fileId=S1742170507001640>.
>> "We need to address accessibility."
>>
>> Global markets for food, however, spectacularly failed in 2008 as
>> countries shut down exports in the face of rising grain prices.
>> "International food markets are deeply wounded and faith in them has
>> collapsed. Global institutions failed to keep food moving," Sachs said. Add
>> to that the looming specter of growing crops for biofuel<http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=biofuels-bad-for-people-and-climate>,
>> which reduce available land for food, feed and fiber production, he said:
>> "Biofuel is going to be an unmitigated disaster, that's as true in an
>> African village as it is in Iowa." Norman Borlaug<http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?id=norman-borlaug-wheat-breeder-who-av-2009-09-14>agreed in a warning he had issued in the 1980s to agricultural economist
>> Mark E. Downing of Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
>>
>> Genetically modified varieties—currently illegal in most of Africa,
>> according to political scientist Robert Paarlberg of Wellesley College—might
>> boost yields. Such biotechnology is "critical for achieving the ecological
>> intensification required to meet human food demand on a global scale,"
>> argues agronomist Ken Cassman<http://www.agronomy.unl.edu/welcome/directory/cassman.html>of the University of Nebraska–Lincoln. At the same time, genetic
>> modification is not a panacea, despite claims for drought tolerance and the
>> like from companies such as Monsanto. "Anything you do to reduce the water
>> that plants transpire will reduce yield," he added.
>>
>> Perhaps, fortunately, there is still a lot of room for improvement by more
>> conventional means: the targeted application of fertilizer and the like. The
>> Earth Institute's Millennium Village of Sauri in Kenya has tripled yields
>> even in the face of a crippling drought gripping the region, and Malawi
>> doubled yields<http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=is-green-revolution-finally-blooming-in-africa>through fertilizer subsidies in just four years. "If we want to increase
>> production, it's better to have small to medium-size farms," argued U.M.
>> ecologist Ivette Perfecto. "Precision agriculture is already done by [such]
>> farmers."
>>
>> At the same time, the collapse of agriculture in the "bread basket" of
>> eastern Europe, such as Ukraine, leaves room to "triple food production in
>> that region pretty easily," IonE's Foley said.
>>
>> And, ultimately, a little change in diet might do a world of good. Global
>> demand for beef is an inefficient way to get protein, possibly unhealthy<http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=that-burger-youre-eating-is-mostly-corn>,
>> and a major driver of deforestation and greenhouse gas emissions<http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=the-greenhouse-hamburger>.
>> "Beef is costly per kilogram ingested of both mass and protein but also
>> probably unhealthy," Sachs said. "We should not take dietary choices as a
>> given but rather as something that needs to be evaluated," at least if we
>> want a fighting chance to avoid the grim fate Thomas Malthus predicted.
>>
>> "Sustainability is still an unsolved problem, it is the same problem
>> Malthus identified about 200 years ago," Sachs added. "How we feed the
>> planet, slow population growth<http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?id=is-birth-control-the-answer-to-envi-2009-09-23>,
>> and thereby raise living standards is still an open question."
>>
>> *Editor's Note: We used Twitter to cover the conference live. Follow me @
>> dbiello <http://twitter.com/dbiello> or us @ sciam<http://twitter.com/sciam>.
>> And thanks to Jon Foley, whose presentation headline, "Another Inconvenient
>> Truth," I have borrowed.*
>>
>>
>> --
>> Ryan
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Ryan Lanham
rlanham1963 at gmail.com
Facebook: Ryan_Lanham
P.O. Box 633
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