[ExI] Food Production (was Re: Really? and EP)

[Keith Henson]

2009/4/19 Lee Corbin <lcorbin at rawbw.com>:
> spike wrote:
>
> ...On Behalf Of Keith Henson
> ...
>
>
> Food shortages are much more likely to occur first in poor countries...
> Keith
>
> Certainly.  We currently use farm land in a lotta wasteful ways, such as
> growing grain to feed to cattle for beef, as a good example, or my own farm
> which is currently employed growing lawn grass seed.  One of the things I
> hope modern humanity has going in its favor is that we have options for
> producing food far more efficiently than we do currently.
>
> What ways?  If we ancticipated widespread food shortages, what could be
> done?  One of the things I had in mind was using the grain currently used to
>
>
> I believe that you and Keith were talking about highly
> unrealistic scenarios. Have a look at this curve for
> corn production
>
> http://www.agry.purdue.edu/Ext/corn/news/articles.03/CornYldTrend2003.html
>
> A friend who's recently returned from a month on an Indiana or
> Ohio farm tells me that they're *still* making large improvements,
> and actually look forward to another factor of 2.

And how big a hit would corn production take if the cost of energy
when up to the point farmers had to make do with 10% of the energy
they now use?

Keith