hmmm, you got me at smoked yogurt...

Nacho - that got me too. Hi from Sea Ranch - lots of abalone harvest around here.

Mmmmmm, Soylent Green has arrived! $2,500 strawberry jam anyone?

Organovo is an interesting and promising company. Web Link As for their other ventures - I can see growing cells to avoid the waste of over utilization of leather resources. However, I will pass on the beef chips. How about this? Just stop eating so much meat -- is it really that necessary? Has anyone watched the movie Snowpiercer? It's on itunes. There's some food for thought.

It is not like I'm against reducing my meat intake, in fact I have probably by 75% over the past 5 yrs or so. The thing is, as soon as someone chimes in to tell everyone they should eat less meat, I immediately think about how delicious bacon is. Then I can't stop thinking about it, then I buy bacon, cook it and eat it.

That's how it is going down tonight: I can't stop thinking about thick sliced bacon brushed with a hint of maple syrup then sprinkled with brown sugar. Add a a tiny dash of cayenne and black pepper and bake in the oven for about 20 mins or so (No splatter!)

It's candied bacon and after tasting it, it will make you hug that neighbor you've always hated and generally rethink your place in this world. Enjoy and enjoy life's full palette of colors!

So what time is dinner Mod Eration?

I'm hungry now too! But partially for verifiable facts. Did you know that 70% of stats are made up on the spot? Just because someone said it persuasively doesn't make it true.

In particular, I'd like to see the proof behind this whopper:
"yield from 70 ? 90% of current food production areas will be dramatically reduced or eliminated"

Foodie, I know that one made me stop and question too. That's Jason Clay from World Wildlife. I HOPE he's wrong!

If people want to eat and raise animals, I have no problem, but I think it ought
to be regulated and done humanely.

The country is turning into a desert because of all we have taken from the land,
and one thing that has contributed to that is desertification. One thing that can
reverse desertification is to graze animals on the land. We could renew America's
lands and raise meat to eat humanely, reverse global warming, and eat more
healthily, and have richer soil to raise vegetables and fruits in - if we stopped
behaving as if we hated nature.

It has been shown many times now that a properly managed organic farm using
sustainable methods can be more productive than a factory monoculture farm,
and would employ more people and steward the land much better.

We have no way to recognize that in our current money-only driven society,
and to me that alone is a reason to break the primacy of the market ahead of
human and social values - people and the planet need to come first in my
opinion.

I remember realizing near 30 years ago when I used to step into a supermarket
that almost everything in there was fake, full of chemicals and basically dead.
It is scarcely any better today for most foods, and the coming reckoning with
water and population is going to push us to just let the factory farmers have
their way and destroy whatever we still have left.

Shortages will create war and strife that seems like it could all be avoidable
if we just decided to focus on the positive.

What is the point for the majority of people to exist if the world is just a
monopoly game for some top 16,000 people in the world that want to own
and control everything and don't give a damn about how it affects everything
else. Power needs to be wrested from these people. The problem is ... who
can make better decisions and how do they convince a majority that they are
right.

The visions of tends of billions of people living in a completely unnatural world
just does not appeal to me, and those people of the future will never know
there was any choice. Makes me wonder if we could go back to the ancient
hunter gatherers and let them know what their move to farming means if they
would really decide to take that step?



Maybe we are just doomed.

OR ... let's just work with the same fervor we work making money or prosecuting war at reducing the population.

9 billion people makes me want to vomit. There was just around 3 billion when I was born, and those 3 billion people could not get along so violently that they had two World Wars, burning up the resources that might have otherwise have been used to feed, clothe, house, transport, education and civilize most of the people of the planet ... instead we have 9 billion people that all want to continue the old way of life, and mostly outbreed each other.

Cultured steak chips .... smoked yogurt .... ugh, bleugchkkk!

Everything we need is in the knowledge of how to work the land sustainably with organic farming, more productive, healthier, better for the land, more sustainable, and employs more people too ... just what we need. Who decides these questions and why instead of subsidizing huge failing factory farms that pollute their areas they exist in, use tremendous amounts of water, and sink important nutrients into landfills or waste dumps, don't we subsidize something that might actually be good for everyone, and include getting rid of or at least incentivizing control over factory farms so they start to clean up their acts?

Absolutely! World population and farming are two of the greatest issues of this century, it's going to take a lot of thinking to tackle these problems. However, I think the solution is not bioengineering and chemicals, it's sustained, organic farming. The idea of incorporating farms into cities is brilliant. We need to move unto sustainable, local farming, the system of mass agriculture with herbicides and chemicals is not going to work any longer.

Absolutely! World population and farming are two of the greatest issues of this century, it's going to take a lot of thinking to tackle these problems. However, I think the solution is not bioengineering and chemicals, it's sustained, organic farming. The idea of incorporating farms into cities is brilliant. We need to move unto sustainable, local farming, the system of mass agriculture with herbicides and chemicals is not going to work any longer.

"I think the solution is not bioengineering and chemicals, it's sustained, organic farming."

We're about six billion people past that.

Steve, When we were writing Cool Cuisine - Taking the Bite Out of Global Warming, Will Horwath, soil god from UC Davis said exactly that. "Organic is a nice idea but we simply don't have enough compost to make it work." More interesting when we remember that 40% of the food in the U.S is just throw away. reThink Food was thinking a multitude of sources for future food. Dinner will grow in soil, water and air. From the country and the city. Everything. All of it.

There is no other solution but organic, and if you look past the BS marketing numbers and don't skip over the shortages in water, fuel packaging, antibiotics, etc ... and there unsustainability of our current way to do business and the need to restore the environment - oprganic ( which is not really a good work for this ) is the answer. All problems converge on that solution.

Google "Polyphase Farms". It is not a corner that can be turned quickly, but to a well run organic farm is more productive than an equivalent factory farm. Not saying all large scale processes need to end, but most of the ones raising animals especially do.

The other thing is that the varieties of foods we eat are not what we would eat if we had a choice, or what tastes best, it is what travels the best, what is least damaged by travel, heat or atmosphere. Thinking we know the answer and have a technological solution to everything is what got us here, and also, if we continue to go large scale, the popultion will just get larger as well, and the rest of nature will be killed off.

Sustainability is almost possible, if the small farmers make a comeback.
Large agriculture is very wastefull and polluting. Small farms learn innovation, such as aerophonics, vertical gardening, drip irrigation,
using nature to fight pests (good bug/bad bug method) and many other
methods being tested now. I have done this myself on a small scale and achieved pretty good results. The only problem was marketing.
We need to think outside the box, not copy what farmer John is doing
with his huge 4,000 acre GMO poisonous methods of turning a big profit
and the hell with the environment!( Monsanto philosophy)
A wise farmer uses methods to achieve results while enhancing the environment, so futrue generations will have that environment.
A fool uses up the land and ravages it to a non fertile state.
USA is still the most wasteful nation on earth and our attitude is
just that; use products and then trash those products. Recycling
actually wastes more energy than using raw materials. Electric cars
are the most poluuting form of transportation, because the coal being
burned to create the power pollutes more than fossil fuels do.
Yet most Americans do not know that fact.
Farming can be done differently and be about 85% sustainable.

Composting is not a problem, so Steve is wrong!Earth worms are the answer!

Population perspective within my lifetime --
1960 - Three billion
1974 - Four billion
1987 - Five billion
1999 - Six billion
2011 - Seven billion
Fifty years of evidence clearly shows sustainability of linear increase.
No indication of discontinuity anytime soon.
Conservative food management could support several centuries more of this.
Local politics seem divided on whether to continue such growth.

Population growth is by nature exponential, and has not really been linear within anyone's lifetime.

1960 - Three billion
+14 years
1974 - Four billion
+ 13 years
1987 - Five billion
+ 12 years
1999 - Six billion
+ 12 years
2011 - Seven billion

It may be seeming to approach a point where we add 1 billion people every 12 years, but those people now use increasing resources as well, and that is hardly a stable steady state, at least for very long.

This was all done in a world where resources were essentially unlimited. There is no more topsoil being created, and the Amazon is mostly deforested. When there are resource conflicts even more resources are used and destroyed in war.

Most fisheries are in danger or collapsing as well. Most fish and especially larger fish are no unsafe to eat.

There is limited land. If we want to utilize the rest of the land of the planet, and then spread out over the oceans there is a price in biological diversity and the destruction of nature.

Same with water, if we use all the water there is not water for the wildlife in rivers.

If we want more energy, we have to either use more oil and run up against global warming, or use nuclear. Assuming that global warming will not happen, or shift the planet into a different weather mode is just wishing. If we want more water we must convert seawater to freshwater and transport it to where it is needed - even more energy.

Those who ignore the evidence of problems piling up and only count a major failure as a problem may think the status quo is great, but you are just getting there by ignoring the breakdown of some systems and the loss of habitats and genetic diversity.