Death comes to us all. Life's but a walking shadow | I'm sorry but this kind of thing is just crap. Of course you need water and soil but you also need fertilizer and good seed to get decent yields. I've worked in international ag development and the simple true is (for africa at least) most of the governments and societies are not good at providing the infrastructure neccessary. We farmers here and most everybody else for that matter don't appreciate the complex infrastructure that makes our ag productivity possible. And that infrastructure is not just machines etc. It is the human capital. Look at what happened in Nigeria when the govenment there leased some land to some young South African farmers. Productivity exploded. African farmers desperately lack phosphate fertilizer even while half the world phosphate reserves are located a few hundred miles away in Morroco, easy distance by ship. And then there is nitrogen fertilizer. It takes 3/4 lb of natural gas to make 1 lb of N as ammonia, .95 lb as urea. They flare off enough natural gas in Nigeria alone to produce the nitrogen fertilizer they need.
Yes there are serious problems in the world but the fundamental limits to food production is not the most immediate right now. Take for example, "fringe" acres, one hundred years ago 3/4 of NY was farmed or grazed, today it is 25% that difference 50% of 53,000 sq miles is 17 million acres. You don't think we could scrap up a couple, three million acres of farmland if there was demand?
Give me a break.
Edited by 1234 8/25/2013 13:45
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food production & hard limits
