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[NJW2000]

Antibiotic resistance is going to be a BIG problem for poverty-line Africans, believe me.

[overseer05-15]

We could eliminate carbon-based life to reduce food demand. Just an idea.

[Loud Whispers]

Antibiotic resistance is going to be a BIG problem for poverty-line Africans, believe me.

I know you're being sarcastic but yeah, them and poverty-line Indians are going to be the first hard hit, especially since antibiotic resistance drastically increases the cost of treatment for disease

[Reelya]

SO basically what you're saying is, to diminish world hunger, we need to depopulate Africa, because there's no way in hell they are going to be able to sustain their food needs, especially when their population quadruples over the next decades (and the rest of the world can't physically produce enough excess grain to export to them)?

Well maybe not that far. But they're not going to feed the population based on locally-growable crops. For example, in Democratic Republic of Congo, 66% of the population is employed as farmers.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agriculture_in_the_Democratic_Republic_of_the_Congo

The agricultural sector supports two-thirds of the population. ... Land under annual or perennial crops constitutes only 3.5 percent of the total land area. ... . Agriculture is divided into two basic sectors: subsistence, which employs the vast majority of the work force, and commercial, which is export-oriented and conducted on plantations. ... Domestic food production is insufficient to meet the country's needs, and many basic food products have to be imported.

Just put those things together and think about the big picture. Almost 2/3rds of the people in the entire country are involved in trying to produce enough to eat, yet even with that, they have to import more than is produced. Sure, only 3.5% of the country is farmed so we might suggest they increase that, but the problem there is labor. Tropic crops are basically 100% subsistence. The surpluses that Congo makes to import other foods actually come from mining and export-oriented crops such as commercial coffee plantations. If you send more people to farm for food, you'd actually shrink the economy.

So what the problem Africa had historically wasn't caused by lack of trying. It's that until recently there was no such thing as globalized trade. Exporting coffee and minerals is what's making any production surpluses there, not farming tips from clever Europeans.

[EnigmaticHat]

Er, maybe not as much. The US produces far, far more food than even our fat asses can eat. The average American throws away a full quarter of what they buy without eating it. That doesn't count what gets left on the shelves, what goes bad in warehouses, what gets destroyed in shipping, what gets trashed in handling, what gets stripped out and pitched in processing, and what gets left behind in the fields. All told, we throw away 40%+ of the food we create. The problem isn't one of production, it's transportation, distribution, and economics. We see food as a commodity, not a right, and that's part of the problem.

At this moment in time, I agree. WHen world population hit 11 billion in 2100, as predicted by very optimistic studies, of which 5 billion will live in Africa, instead of the about 1.5 billion they have now, I don't think we will be able to produce enough food for everyone, even if it was regarded as a basic right, and transport issues were all solved.

Well, yeah, except if we cut down all the rainforests and replace the natives with genetically engineered superfarmers

That seems extremely unlikely to me.   You're saying that the world's non-African population will drop by ~half a billion while the African population will more than quadruple despite the fact that you are also forecasting food shortages in that same place.  All of this will happen in the space of ~84 years.

Spoiler: food independence is a topic that interests me, so have a wall of text (click to show/hide)

The netherlands food export situation seems largely biased by the EU.  According to this source from 2014, you guys exported about ~20$ billion more than you made, however most of your big exports were stuff that isn't cost efficient food (like cheese, beer, and pig meat) or isn't edible at all (like cut flowers, animal food, and seeds).

On top of that, you seem to import and export an disproportionally large amount of your food.  You seem to rate about second place exporter but 6th place importer.  For most products listed there, about a quarter of the amount exported was also imported.  So you exported ~4$ billion in cheese, but you also imported 1$ billion in cheese.  In some cases, like chocolate, your imports and exports had a very similar value.  I think what we're seeing here is that because you're a small country next to several large countries with very open borders, it costs almost literally nothing for you to truck food to and from Germany and France.  Also notable, you imported ~2 billion more than you exported in grains like rice, wheat, and corn that feed large numbers of people.  That is a LARGE amount of food considering the extreme low cost of those products.  Also notice that you guys import 2$ billion more than you export in soybeans, soymeal, and other animal feed.  So it looks like if the rest of the world vanished overnight, both your people and animals would starve while you'd have an excess in what are essentially cash crops and luxury food.

So in short what the netherlands is doing is very impressive for it size, you're hardly feeding the world.  You can basically have a farmer's market the next country over because of the EU; you might as well include interstate/interprovince commerce in other country's exports.

Also not cool saying Africans need to be genetically engineered to do stuff

[Reelya]

Also not cool saying Africans need to be genetically engineered to do stuff

Yeah, that's beyond ridiculous (and really problematic that a Dutch person would be saying that due to the history of colonization and racism in Africa by Dutch and Belgians). What are these superfarmers going to do, robotically plant more taro and yams? The core problem is that the physical effort to farm the crops that are viable in the example I gave of Congo doesn't produce energy surpluses to do anything or support anyone who's not a farmer. If it did, then the problem would resolve itself. 3.5% of Congo is cultivated because only 3.5% of the land is viable to be cultivated. They've had 1000 years of that type of farming to exploit all the land that's capable of being cultivated. If you made "superfarmers" who could work harder they'd also need to eat more to maintain that level of work, and you'd be pushing out into lands which the locals already know are below the subsistence level given the types of crop you can grow.

The problem is that almost everyone in African nations are going full-bore farming already. Yet they still have shortages of enough to eat. And it's not like European colonists haven't tried to bring in modern agriculture and crops, it just doesn't work. Those subsistence farmers are all basically competing with each other, it's survival of the fittest, and the best that's achievable is "barely hanging on". If any one farmer could get an edge through different techniques, well they'd out-populate the farmers with poorer techniques very quickly and the other farmers would borrow their ideas very quickly.

[Loud Whispers]

Also not cool saying Africans need to be genetically engineered to do stuff

Yeah, that's beyond ridiculous. What are these superfarmers going to do, robotically plant more taro and yams? The problem is that almost everyone in African nations are going full-bore farming already. Yet it barely feeds more than 1 person. And it's not like European colonists haven't tried to bring in modern agriculture and crops, it just doesn't work. Those subsistence farmers are all basically competing with each other, it's survival of the fittest, and the best that's achievable is "barely hanging on".

Yo European agriculture did work

Just look at the case of Zimbabwe. European colonists colonized Zimbabwe calling it Rhodesia, and it was the breadbasket of Africa, producing everything from cereals to maize and even cash crops like tobacco. Mugabe comes along and fucks all their shit up; some people talk about how his persecution of white farmers fucked up Rhodesia but he could've (or rather, someone competent) could've done land reform successfully. The goal was to take away economic dominance of Zimbabwe's industry from the white minority and give it back to the black majority, however this was not what completely fucked up Zimbabwe's agriculture. Sure agriculture would've taken a dive with the loss of wealthy and skilled supervisors but in the long term Zimbabwe had good options. Zimbabwe had a whole class of educated black citizens who were the ones who worked on the very self-same farms that the whites profited from under colonial rule; obviously these citizens weren't in need of European education or high-tech equipment, they had all they needed to take over agriculture successfully. Problem is Mugabe was a paranoid git more concerned with his own power than his nation, and like Stalin did to Kulaks, for the imagined treason of supporting this guy democratically, got fucked over. Kidnappings, expulsions, torture by the green bombers under the banner that they were supporting whites, loads of educated black farmers got wrecked, whilst their farms were given over to loyal soldiers, officials, friends and family members who saw the farms as prestige items but otherwise had no idea how to run a farm. Starving to death his opponents is as much a deliberate strategy as a result of incompetence and corruption.

Compare the failures of Zimbabwe with the success of Nigeria. Whilst Nigeria has problems with corruption (and princes), it is not nearly the same level as with Zimbabwe, and its government is relatively stable with rule of law at the very least not impeding farmers, and instead, the state helping them. So you see stuff where Nigeria reduced their tariff rate on agricultural machinery to 0% to increase foreign imports of commercial farming machines, government subsidized rice mills, government subsidized fertilizer for poor farmers, road, rail and port development so farmers have better access to markets and the national bank reserving capital for agricultural loans with interest rates at half the commercial rate so even poor Nigerian farmers have access to capital needed to run a large farm. I'm not saying Nigeria's at the point where it's a proper garden of eden without criticisms to mention, but it's certainly the case that in the near-future it could become a net exporter of food and set an example of how to put the sheer mass of arable land it has at its disposal to efficient and sustainable use:

Consider, for example, Africa’s agricultural land. According to an influential recent analysis, Africa has around 600 million hectares of uncultivated arable land, roughly 60 percent of the global total.

It may not be the case that Africa is overpopulated, rather, that its land is underutilized

Highly amusing and relevant:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

For several millennia it has been a fundamental precept in Africa that the more children you have the richer you are. In the films of the Hamar people of Ethiopia currently being reshown on BBC2, one woman explains the obvious: if you have boys, they bring you goats and look after the cattle and make beehives and you eat; if you have girls, when they marry, their husbands must bring you cows and goats and beehives, so you eat. Many children equals wealth.

And if you are engaged in long, difficult manual labour for survival, that makes sense. The more people there are in your household the lighter the tasks. In traditional African households, children are mini-adults contributing small jobs to the family effort or looking after babies to free the mothers to cook and wash. It is only when that manual labour is replaced by an income, received by one person, that the system, and the mentality, change. When, for example, a man or woman moves to a town where there is no room for a plot to grow food on, their offspring are completely dependent on them. Only when the family members are consumers not contributors does it make sense to limit the size of the family.

The theory that education would put an end to large families has not worked. Education in itself has not taught people to have fewer children, though school fees, the largest single item in most family budgets in Africa, are a fierce deterrent to having many children. Levels of literacy and numeracy rise impressively but where there is no employment at the end of that education, social customs and the instinct born of tradition to have many children, remain unchanged.

At least the UN has dropped the Seventies idea of bombing the Third World with condoms to cut population. That was just another attempt to impose an idea while failing to change economic and social circumstances, and it foundered on the plain common sense of people concerned solely with survival. If your clothes are rags, your home is a crowded shack, your main concern is food and the only escape is a beer and a girl in a local bar, you are unlikely to be too concerned about population growth. Or as a Ugandan doctor, exasperated by the condom campaign, put it: 'If a man's shirt is torn, you can be sure his condom is torn, too.'
Old article

I think more than ever, Europeans must learn African values, despite the expectation of it being the reverse

[Flying Dice]

That ought to be common sense. Large families are a necessity in a pre-industrial agricultural society, you can't industrialize without strong and efficient ag to create a food surplus, and you can't transition to a small-family structure as the norm until you have a predominantly urban civilization with decent labor rights. What has been done re: population control in Africa totally ignores the necessary generations of buildup and development that make small families more advantageous.

[Teneb]

So to sum up this latest topic: people try to treat Africa like Europe and are surprised when it doesn't work.

[Loud Whispers]

That ought to be common sense. Large families are a necessity in a pre-industrial agricultural society, you can't industrialize without strong and efficient ag to create a food surplus, and you can't transition to a small-family structure as the norm until you have a predominantly urban civilization with decent labor rights. What has been done re: population control in Africa totally ignores the necessary generations of buildup and development that make small families more advantageous.

Exactly. Except Rwanda. Rwanda is actually overpopulated

[hops]

BFEL is the one that made the big all-caps sarcasm post right? Cos I reckon that's what got him done in, that and a past history I'm unaware of

Now if only Toady would ban all the no-caps posters, they're the real problem here. Urgh.

I Know Right?

[martinuzz]

I never said Africans need to be genetically engineered. I made an absurdistic remark about natives of rainforests being genetically engineered to become superfarmers. When I say rainforest I tend to think of South America, not Africa, and it was just in response to the comment about 'can't do that, preserve the rainforest'. Please don't twist my words.

[ChairmanPoo]

When I say rainforest I tend to think of South America, not Africa

Too bad the Hovitos don’t know you like I do, Martinuzz.

[inteuniso]

Neuroscience is so poor at explaining systems, it can't even explain an atari 2600 processor.

absurdist quote

The only way to fix desertification & create more rainforests is to start condensing water on a large scale, supplementing plants. This is going to take a few years, but we should survive uninterrupted for at least two years, barring an asteroid strike.

[muldrake]

I never said Africans need to be genetically engineered. I made an absurdistic remark about natives of rainforests being genetically engineered to become superfarmers. When I say rainforest I tend to think of South America, not Africa, and it was just in response to the comment about 'can't do that, preserve the rainforest'. Please don't twist my words.

I almost think it's the opposite, though, and the reason for humans ever becoming civilized was living in biomes where agriculture became necessary.  Once that became necessary, then you had to invent all kinds of other technology to do things like keep that grown food from spoiling (like letting cats move in to control vermin since they also were entirely uninterested in your vegetable food), brewing alcohol, etc. 

Many of the "primitive" cultures that still exist do so in biomes where food is abundant and hunting and gathering entirely sufficient to preserve life. 

It's hard to talk about these specific issues without inadvertently coming across as racist somehow, and to be really clear, I don't think you did that.  I do think, though, that it's kind of the opposite, and people living in very food-rich biomes tend not to be farmers and so long as their culture succeeds doing this, it just isn't going to change.  This is why you have these really old cultures that never became "civilized" in the strictly modern sense.

(Nothing racist intended here, this isn't "better" or "worse," it's just something that is.)