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How to feed the world: 1/9/2017 23:48:38


berdan131
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Imagine if 95% of current amazon rainforest would be turned into farmland. Brazil has so much demographic and agricultural potential

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agriculture_in_Brazil

This country already has 206 million people

"Half of Brazil is covered by forests." so much potential....

Brazil could be much stronger and powerful nation when it fully utilizes all it's land

just like for example England which has only 10% of area as forests and utilizes the rest
http://lfccsandclimatechange.pbworks.com/f/Forest_area_percentage_2010.jpg/

http://ieet.org/index.php/IEET/more/pellissier20100922
http://en.mercopress.com/2012/10/17/is-brazil-the-reservoir-of-future-agriculture-productive-capacity

Edited 1/9/2017 23:54:03
How to feed the world: 1/10/2017 00:01:01


Cata Cauda
Level 59
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Thats a very stupid advice.
Rainforest or actually forest in general is a very important Water and CO2 reservior. So if you get rid of the entire Brazilian rainforest you gain 2 effects:
- Unforseen climate changes as much more water is in the atmosphere due to lack of forest that binds it.
- More CO2 in the atmosphere due to less forest binding it.

The result would be the destruction of an unique ecosystem as well as catastrophic climate changes.

A way better idea to deal with world hunger is to use our current production of food more effictevly.
Dumping prices and the waste of millions of tons of food everyday as well as the selfish and capitalist views of millions of people cause world hunger, not the lack of farmland.

Edited 1/10/2017 00:02:12
How to feed the world: 1/10/2017 00:03:18


Huitzilopochtli 
Level 57
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b-b-but ITZ CAPITALISM FAULT
How to feed the world: 1/10/2017 00:51:25


berdan131
Level 59
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Emm Cata Cauda these areas would still be green and produce oxygen, just crop plants instead of tree plants

More CO2 -> really? even if that may be a good thing
"more water is in the atmosphere" - that's a retarded thing to say
How to feed the world: 1/10/2017 01:10:34


Cata Cauda
Level 59
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I was never talking about production of Oxygen. Actually forests play a minor role there. Algae in the sea produce more O2 than woods on the surface.

How is more CO2 good? It increases the greenhouse effect and thus speeds up global warming.
Not very nice of you to claim my statements to be retarded. I am not gonna argue with such a person.
How to feed the world: 1/10/2017 01:22:34


Tchaikovsky Reborn
Level 41
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Eh.
I'm all for feeding more people, but there already too many stupid people. Also I like forests.
How to feed the world: 1/10/2017 01:24:47


berdan131
Level 59
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Simply, it's the stupidest thing I have read in a while. What should I say Cata Cauda?

Really we shouldn't be so sensitive and "muh feelings"

It's surpising you feel offended.

How can anyone have a discussion without adressing the real meaning? No other word would better reflect the meaning. It's nothing personal
How to feed the world: 1/10/2017 01:34:19


berdan131
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Africans are responsible for feeding africans. That's not our problem. Is it?
How to feed the world: 1/10/2017 01:43:29


berdan131
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Cata Cauda. Air humidity cannot go above 100%. It's already humid in brazil. Prove me wrong if your thesis is not rettarded
How to feed the world: 1/10/2017 01:46:46


Zephyrum
Level 60
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Stepping in as someone who actually had to study about the amazon to pass middle/high school, here's why this would fail in every possible way.

Imagine if 95% of current amazon rainforest would be turned into farmland. Brazil has so much demographic and agricultural potential


Amazon soil is highly acid and hardly fertile. Most plants in it live off simple reactions with very little nutrients and therefore is highly improductive for agriculture. The rest of the rainforests around are long gone far before you could imagine something stupid to do with them.

"Half of Brazil is covered by forests." so much potential....


Correction, half of Brazil was covered by forests. Although the forest-friendly soil is still there, now there's just about 150-200 million people standing over them.

- Unforseen climate changes as much more water is in the atmosphere due to lack of forest that binds it.


This too. Destroying the brazilian rainforest completely is basically calling for hurricanes. The plan does work, since if we genocide a good 50% of the world's population in floods, I'm pretty sure we will have a lot less mouths to feed, but I'm pretty sure that wasn't your original goal.

Emm Cata Cauda these areas would still be green and produce oxygen, just crop plants instead of tree plants

More CO2 -> really? even if that may be a good thing
"more water is in the atmosphere" - that's a retarded thing to say


LOL, do you even read what you write?

Crop plants produce little to no oxygen for the world, as they tend to use about as much as they make if not more, and most of the highly used crops in Brazil are in the latter group.

More CO2 also means more lung diseases. I don't plan on living on Beijing 2.0, fam. Even if you are skeptic about climate change, there's no denying the short and long term quality of the air.
How to feed the world: 1/10/2017 01:50:28


Zephyrum
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From the article:

“This growth is premised on three conditions: [...] 3) improvement in the transportation infrastructure in Brazil that will lower the cost of getting agricultural crops to the port.”


Good luck with that. If you can actually pull off some trick to have our internal transportation work, then you'll be regarded as either a god or the biggest lobby spender in the history of the world.
How to feed the world: 1/10/2017 01:56:04


berdan131
Level 59
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the higher the CO2, the faster the rate at which plants converts CO2 into oxygen.
If brazil soils are so bad why is brazil a major agriculture exporter in the world market.
is basically calling for hurricanes -> I don't refute this. Neither do I confirm. Can you explain? Or is it part of climate change and result of temperatures. Either way, how do you know what magnitude it's gonna have. It's hard to predict magnitude

higher co2, higher temperature, better conditions in cold countries such as canada scandinavia russia
How to feed the world: 1/10/2017 01:58:57


berdan131
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"If you can actually"
bigger production requires bigger transportation infrastructure. Corruption can make it harder but it's eventually going to happen
How to feed the world: 1/10/2017 02:46:49


Semicedevine 
Level 60
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zeph is portuguese so your point is invalid

never question the supreme nationality
How to feed the world: 1/10/2017 02:53:06


Zephyrum
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the higher the CO2, the faster the rate at which plants converts CO2 into oxygen.


And the higher the rate we all die of respiratory problems. Air's already fucked up enough in most of the country for that.

If brazil soils are so bad why is brazil a major agriculture exporter in the world market.


Amazon soil is infertile. Which, by the way, is the one you suggest we use. The fertile soil we got is all being used now, save from a couple indigenous tribes we somehow didn't get rid of yet.

is basically calling for hurricanes -> I don't refute this. Neither do I confirm. Can you explain? Or is it part of climate change and result of temperatures. Either way, how do you know what magnitude it's gonna have. It's hard to predict magnitude


There's a huge ass water depository under the amazon, and the amazon itself is one. It's not in a particularly wet place aside from the river. The common rains happen due to the plants sweating what they absorb very quickly due to heat. Kill the plants, and the water depository underneath it will be freed, and the plants' sweat will produce massive atmospheric water increases. This translates to hurricanes, tornados, typhoons, floods, mass rain and much more. Can't know the magnitude, but we do know it's pretty darn big.

higher co2, higher temperature, better conditions in cold countries such as canada scandinavia russia


Alright, Team Magma. But this means the ice on these countries will melt, causing the loss of lowlands including but not limited to a large chunk of Poland (and a lot of Russia/Norway), not to mention that countries/regions that are already hot will become hotter and unbearable, making a very large chunk of Australia, South America, Africa, the USA, the Middle East, central Asia and China completely desertic and unusable, meaning loss of land in general.

Speaking of Russia, the permafrost is gonna go to shit with this plan, causing massive methane emissions to the atmosphere. A single molecule of Methane generates as much heat as about 25 molecules of carbon dioxide. If it starts large-scale melting, it definetely will heat up the world, causing more and more to melt, heating up more and more, in a large scale chain reaction.

Ultimately, temperature increases are expected to be around the 10ºC which makes most of the world impossible to live in as the atmospherical temperature would be far above the body temperature - then comes heat strokes, skin cancer and dehydratation for pretty much every single species. If we survive that, animals/plants won't, and we won't have what to eat. At the end, your plan failed.

"If you can actually"
bigger production requires bigger transportation infrastructure. Corruption can make it harder but it's eventually going to happen


Very optimistic, but it won't happen any soon. The current government and probably the next few don't care about the rural population (we literally had a slave owner as a congressman). For this kind of large-scale production, we need trains and waterways, trucks won't do it, and our government is balls deep on lobbyist money from car companies, so you can guess where this is going.
How to feed the world: 1/10/2017 03:04:38


berdan131
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I think the impact will be much lower and you're overestimating it. At this point we can talk whatever we want, but now some data to back up our statements would be cool. Otherwise it's a word vs word bouncing back and forth.

I think the impact will be insignificant. And if don't agree, let's leave 15% of amazon intact, perhaps this would convince you
How to feed the world: 1/10/2017 03:17:10


Cata Cauda
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Wow Berdan, you should do some research. Zeph told you the entire story and as far as I see everything is correct.

Here to start with: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tropical_rainforest#Conservation

Edited 1/10/2017 03:19:29
How to feed the world: 1/10/2017 03:43:14


Жұқтыру
Level 56
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better conditions in cold countries such as canada scandinavia russia


world is way too hot already, I really hate global warming.

Anyhow, there's enough food to feed all the world's population and then some, hardship is in the spread of food.
How to feed the world: 1/10/2017 05:23:13


berdan131
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We won't know what the consequences are for sure until rainforests are cut. Also farmland can always be turned back into rainforest, so everything can be reversed at any time.

"A simulation was performed in which all rainforest in Africa were removed." - this is unreal simulation. The rainforest will not turn into a desert. Some plants will always grow there. For example fruit trees could be planted on huge areas
How to feed the world: 1/10/2017 05:51:45


Zephyrum
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I think the impact will be much lower and you're overestimating it. At this point we can talk whatever we want, but now some data to back up our statements would be cool. Otherwise it's a word vs word bouncing back and forth.


Most of what I said can be googled and found in less than 2 minutes for confirmation, but I guess the killer point here is lack of soil fertility. Ignore all the damage and problems this would cause, it still wouldn't work because the amazon soil is terribly poor in nutrients.

http://wwf.panda.org/what_we_do/where_we_work/amazon/about_the_amazon/ecosystems_amazon/rainforests/

"Tropical soils are notoriously thin and poor in nutrients. In some parts of the Amazon River Basin, white, sandy soils are found, which have evolved through erosion over hundreds of millions of years. And yet, although these soils have lost their mineral content and fertility, rich rainforests grow on them."

I think the impact will be insignificant. And if don't agree, let's leave 15% of amazon intact, perhaps this would convince you


It's not far from becoming 15% even without your 'plan'. The first pic is the original forest, the third one is just about how it is nowadays.



It's also worth noting this isn't the first forest we fuck around with - nowadays most of the state of São Paulo i ridden with air pollution and large chunks of smog as well as bigger temperature variation, despite in the past being one of the biggest concetrations of rainforest:



For the record, it isn't just rainforests we do that to. Meet what's left of the Cerrado, a savannah-like region in central Brazil where soil is a lot more fertile and where most of the soy agricultural expansion is happening in (the second pic is from 2002 - not even up to date, probably considerably smaller after the soy boom and chinese partnerships):



We won't know what the consequences are for sure until rainforests are cut.


So we just try and hope for the best? Won't work.

Also farmland can always be turned back into rainforest, so everything can be reversed at any time.


No, it can't. A rainforest takes many many years to grow back, since larger trees have longer lives than crops. Also, crops lower the already acid soil of the amazon's fertility.




Anyhow, there's enough food to feed all the world's population and then some, hardship is in the spread of food.


Juq's got it nailed. Save from Africa and East Asia, population growth is too limited to ever threaten the agricultural growth of the world and our ever-increasing capacity to generate food. The issue is always spread.
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