Whats for Dinner?

[Aeson]

The IPCC report is clear that a plant based diet is one of the best ways to reduce carbon emissions. If we all change our diets we could cut emissions by almost 1/4. (Includes reduced waste)

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bbc...nment-49238749

Theres more room for improvement here though. The reality is a lot of plant based agriculture is very harmful as well (including unnecessary emissions, erosion, soil compaction, waterway and ocean pollution, deforestation, etc). Food processing and transport is all a loss as well.

Moving our diets from processed annuals to whole food perennials and tree based agriculture can not only reduce our carbon footprint further, but can actually bring us to net negative carbon emissions as a species.

Enough so that we could sequester the net carbon increase (~1 trillion metric tonnes) in the atmosphere since before the Industrial Revolution in our current 5 billion hectares of agricultural land. It’s 200 metric tonnes per hectare, which is achievable even in the tropics without human intervention.

We probably dont want to go back to 270ish PPM, but can essentially pick the sweet spot and have room to spare.

These changes would over time recharge the aquifers, and stop their depletion almost immediately. We would clean up our waterways and oceans. Our air would be cleaner. People would be healthier. So would the economy.

We’d create billions of new jobs ... enough that anyone in the world, including the 2.6 billion of prime working age who are currently unemployed, or the billions of others who are woefully underpaid or underemployed ... could have a job in a healthy work environment, own their own land and house, and have access to more healthy food than they and their extended families could eat.

This is how we fix virtually every problem facing humanity.

[Berzerker]

pizza

god help me

[Kidlicious]

That kind of food is calorie expensive. You are either going to force people to pay for more expensive food or you are going to get the taxpayers to do it. I don't think that's going to help the economy. I also doubt that there will be enough food.

[Aeson]

In our food forest we can grow purple yam at 1m spacing and get 8-9 kg per plant at 8 months. It sells for $0.80/kg. The cheapest meat locally is chicken at $2.50/kg.

More to the point, the perennial and tree crops we grow are virtually free for us. Even eating our fill first we can be profitable in the endeavor.

We are talking about getting the 2.6 billion people of prime working age to grow their own food plus enough for everyone else many times over. Instead of being dependent on other producers and redistribution they will be productive.

Food will cost less for everyone, there will be virtually no welfare, healthcare costs will plumet.

[Aeson]

By decentralizing population and moving it to food and material production transport costs that factor into the price of food and durable goods (houses, furniture) made from renewable sources (wood, bamboo, earthen building) will drop as well.

[Aeson]

At just 1 kg/sq m/ year of food production we can produce 50 trillion kg of food a year on the 5 billion hectares currently used in agriculture. An American eats about 1000 kg/year. So we could feed 50 billion people an American amount of food.

It’s actually several times that. A mature food forest can produce 10 kg+/sq m/year of edible output.

[Kidlicious]

What about the distribution? I don't buy purple yams but I'm pretty sure they are expensive at Whole Foods, especially if they are grown by small farmers.

[Kidlicious]

I'm all for decentralizing population.

[Kidlicious]

At just 1 kg/sq m/ year of food production we can produce 50 trillion kg of food a year on the 5 billion hectares currently used in agriculture. An American eats about 1000 kg/year. So we could feed 50 billion people an American amount of food.

It’s actually several times that. A mature food forest can produce 10 kg+/sq m/year of edible output.

What is a "food forest?"

[Aeson]

What about the distribution? I don't buy purple yams but I'm pretty sure they are expensive at Whole Foods, especially if they are grown by small farmers.

They are expensive where you live because they are not widely grown and probably not suitable for the local climate. Each region would of course need to grow foods that are suitable for the conditions.

There are tens, if not hundreds of edible plants for each one you’d find on the supermarket display currently. Many literally grow as weeds.

If 2.6 billion people start growing and selling this type of food, prices will fall.

[Kidlicious]

We have farmers markets, where we can get locally grown. They also have locally grown at stores like Whole Foods. There's even plenty of competition to make prices competitive. But prices can't go lower without improvements in productivity. That's the thing, productivity is lower on small farms.

[Aeson]

What is a "food forest?"

A style of agriculture which mimics forests, but replaced most species with those that produce something edible or fertilize those that do. Nature doesn’t design forests to suit humans specifically, but humans can do so.

So you have the over-story trees, smaller shade tolerant trees and shrubs, climbing vines, crawling ground covers, and root crops.

As an example, Im in a hammock between 2 narra (nitrogen fixer) trees. A passion fruit vine is crawling around the tree tops producing fruits. Another flower vine (Thunbergia grandiflora) for bee fodder and beauty. Smaller fruit trees (avocado, chico, soursop, atis, tambis) grow in partial shade of the narra. Underneath a dryland variety of water spinach covers the compost pile.

A volunteer moringa springs up from the pile, as do some bitter gourd and passionfruit seedlings. We have various amaranths, wild mint, oregano, purslane, and basils that grow wherever some extra sunlight makes it through the canopy.

Dragonfruit trellised on a fence strung between moringa trees, malabar spinach also climbing, insulin plant, red katuray (edible flowers, leaves, and green beans), bignay (tangy fruit, bee fodder), camachile (nitrogen fixing, sweet spongy flesh that wraps the seeds), bananas, and various hibiscuses (edible flowers and leaves) ring the area.

Right now we have hundreds of tree and dragonfruit seedlings taking up much of the ground under the narra. In s production food forest there would be root crops instead. This is more a living/working area.

[Aeson]

We have farmers markets, where we can get locally grown. They also have locally grown at stores like Whole Foods. There's even plenty of competition to make prices competitive. But prices can't go lower without improvements in productivity. That's the thing, productivity is lower on small farms.

Right now you pay taxes to support people on welfare. If instead they were self sufficient on their own homesteads, even if you still ate the same food you do now, you would be better off.

Their productivity would definitely increase.

Land productivity (nutrition/acre and calories/acre) would definitely increase if going plant based, as animal products are never 1:1 feed ratios. Often 4:1 or worse.

[Kidlicious]

A style of agriculture which mimics forests, but replaced most species with those that produce something edible or fertilize those that do. Nature doesn’t design forests to suit humans specifically, but humans can do so.

So you have the over-story trees, smaller shade tolerant trees and shrubs, climbing vines, crawling ground covers, and root crops.

As an example, Im in a hammock between 2 narra (nitrogen fixer) trees. A passion fruit vine is crawling around the tree tops producing fruits. Another flower vine (Thunbergia grandiflora) for bee fodder and beauty. Smaller fruit trees (avocado, chico, soursop, atis, tambis) grow in partial shade of the narra. Underneath a dryland variety of water spinach covers the compost pile.

A volunteer moringa springs up from the pile, as do some bitter gourd and passionfruit seedlings. We have various amaranths, wild mint, oregano, purslane, and basils that grow wherever some extra sunlight makes it through the canopy.

Dragonfruit trellised on a fence strung between moringa trees, malabar spinach also climbing, insulin plant, red katuray (edible flowers, leaves, and green beans), bignay (tangy fruit, bee fodder), camachile (nitrogen fixing, sweet spongy flesh that wraps the seeds), bananas, and various hibiscuses (edible flowers and leaves) ring the area.

Right now we have hundreds of tree and dragonfruit seedlings taking up much of the ground under the narra. In s production food forest there would be root crops instead. This is more a living/working area.

[Kidlicious]

That's a good plan.