Mass Starvation In The Uk

[ken_ichikawa]

Farm up!

Aeroonics and hydroponics, you can vaslty reduce fertilisr and water use etc.

Nope, weed growers are caught because they use enormous amounts of electricity for JUST the lighting alone. This is for a few weed plants. Scale that up to feed 60 million people and you couldn't build nucler power stations fast enough.

[ken_ichikawa]

Theres loads of land if push comes to shove, I read somewhere about Havana now growing one fifth of its food in urban areas in response to a percieved food shortage.

As and when food becomes scarce for us ( if ever ) I imagine Scotland has enough rural space to keep us in potatoes for ever for instance, I would imagine expanding global populations will reshape our dietary habits though as beef is very inefficient as a food source compared to other protein sources.

Potatoes are extremely vulnerable to lack of rain. Lincolnshire potatoes normally right now are pretty good, but they are absolutely pants. We're not quite become Asia YET, in China and Korea you see little bits of land where normally we'd leave grass cultivated.

[ken_ichikawa]

If the next spot is happy enough to let them in. Which means most of us are probably stuck here when the country has to admit that it's bust.

Everywhere outside Europe has quite steep barriers to entry tbh, minimum is a degree. Oh look the price of a degree just went up to £30K, what was that about commies always preventing people from leaving?

[bricor mortis]

Potatoes are extremely vulnerable to lack of rain.

lol and have you been to Scotland?

[Rare Bear]

Aeroonics and hydroponics are extremely energy expensive if you want to industrially scale them up to the level required for feeding a nation.

The only way to mitigate the above is if it is massively labour intensive. Don't get me wrong, this kind of farming will be forced on us.

But it still wont be enough.

Me being serious for once. Might there be a problem with massively labour intensive farming in that those doing the intensive labour will burn a helluva lot more calories than if they were not? I seem to recall figures like 2000 calories a day or so to feed someone who is not workink hard physically but figures of up to 6000 calories per day for someone who is really grafting.

[RufflesTheGuineaPig]

Me being serious for once. Might there be a problem with massively labour intensive farming in that those doing the intensive labour will burn a helluva lot more calories than if they were not? I seem to recall figures like 2000 calories a day or so to feed someone who is not workink hard physically but figures of up to 6000 calories per day for someone who is really grafting.

6000 is for combat soldiers in harsh conditions (think 60km tab to Port Stanley), or arctic warfare/explorer walking to the north pole.

[Rare Bear]

6000 is for combat soldiers in harsh conditions (think 60km tab to Port Stanley), or arctic warfare/explorer walking to the north pole.

I wonder what a hod carrier would burn, that is if there still are hod carriers?

[ralphmalph]

Nope, weed growers are caught because they use enormous amounts of electricity for JUST the lighting alone. This is for a few weed plants. Scale that up to feed 60 million people and you couldn't build nucler power stations fast enough.

http://www.thanetearth.com/

You need to understand market dynamics have changed. When Oil was 10 bucks a barrel it was cost effective to load tomatoes onto lorries in Spain and Italy and drive them to the Northern European markets. Using energy to light the greenhouses is now less cost than using diesel to ship tomatoes from Spain. Also they build integrated plants and the one at Thanet uses the waste heat from the local power station, that would normally just be left to heat the atmosphere to keep the greenhouse warm. Then they use CHP to improve effciency again.

Add in the fact that Spain is suffering droughts and in future, may well need to use desalination plants, not only will Northern Europe become self sufficient in Salad veggies we will export them to Southern Europe. There was a very interesting report done by Unilever, they buy 30% of Europe's production of Tomatoes mainly from Spain and Italy and at a worst case scenario they predicted that Tomato production in these two countries will be commercially not viable in 20 to 30 years.

[ken_ichikawa]

http://www.thanetearth.com/

You need to understand market dynamics have changed. When Oil was 10 bucks a barrel it was cost effective to load tomatoes onto lorries in Spain and Italy and drive them to the Northern European markets. Using energy to light the greenhouses is now less cost than using diesel to ship tomatoes from Spain. Also they build integrated plants and the one at Thanet uses the waste heat from the local power station, that would normally just be left to heat the atmosphere to keep the greenhouse warm. Then they use CHP to improve effciency again.

Add in the fact that Spain is suffering droughts and in future, may well need to use desalination plants, not only will Northern Europe become self sufficient in Salad veggies we will export them to Southern Europe. There was a very interesting report done by Unilever, they buy 30% of Europe's production of Tomatoes mainly from Spain and Italy and at a worst case scenario they predicted that Tomato production in these two countries will be commercially not viable in 20 to 30 years.

With oil at $112 it appears still to be cost effective to stick them on a cargo plane and fly them over.

[ralphmalph]

With oil at $112 it appears still to be cost effective to stick them on a cargo plane and fly them over.

Only because we have not built enough Thanet Earths to satisfy current demand.

[ken_ichikawa]

Me being serious for once. Might there be a problem with massively labour intensive farming in that those doing the intensive labour will burn a helluva lot more calories than if they were not? I seem to recall figures like 2000 calories a day or so to feed someone who is not workink hard physically but figures of up to 6000 calories per day for someone who is really grafting.

Yup, 2000cals is for our sedentary sitting on ass type life styles. Ever seen those things in mens health, it is always the agricultural things which burn cals like crazy. Chopping wood for half an hour burns 800 cals.

Hell one hour on the cross trainer at the gym at maximum setting at 140-160 strides per minute burns close to 2000cals an hour.

[@contradevian]

6000 is for combat soldiers in harsh conditions (think 60km tab to Port Stanley), or arctic warfare/explorer walking to the north pole.

Amazingly the WWII ration was designed for 3000 kcal. People where more active then., walked/cycled to work did more lifting and carrying at work. People always underestimate calorie consumption and reckon many are stoking away twice this.

Also isn't 3000 kcal, 30,000 chemical or "real" calories? Its a serious amount of energy, then again the human brain is similar to a 100 watt light bulb that is on all the time (now get on the cross trainer or the rowing machine and generate an extra 100 watts for an hour!)

I know they did an experiment on "Bang" a few weeks ago, where they released all the energy in a breakfast cereal at once, in an explosion.

[ken_ichikawa]

Amazingly the WWII ration was designed for 3000 kcal. People where more active then., walked/cycled to work did more lifting and carrying at work.

I reckon it was probably more tbh, as foods have changed. Offal was considered to be meat (and still is I don't eat offal because I don't eat meat can't afford it) and x number of grams of offal contains a lot more than lean meats. Lard was eaten commonly etc.

Edit

I'd note I've spoken to some people who were around during the war time, they say they were often hungry. Though how representitive this is, is unknown!

Edited May 20, 2011 by ken_ichikawa

[ralphmalph]

Amazingly the WWII ration was designed for 3000 kcal. People where more active then., walked/cycled to work did more lifting and carrying at work. People always underestimate calorie consumption and reckon many are stoking away twice this.

Also isn't 3000 kcal, 30,000 chemical or "real" calories? Its a serious amount of energy, then again the human brain is similar to a 100 watt light bulb that is on all the time (now get on the cross trainer or the rowing machine and generate an extra 100 watts for an hour!)

I know they did an experiment on "Bang" a few weeks ago, where they released all the energy in a breakfast cereal at once, in an explosion.

I have a cross trainer and it reports watts burned so I did some googling about watts burned. I found out that a manual labourer can basically work at 80watts for 8 hours, or so google said. Whereas I do 40mins on the cross trainer at 250 watts to get a good sweat on.

Edited May 20, 2011 by ralphmalph

[ralphmalph]

Also the same site said that Tour de France cyclists consistantly average 300 watts.

[@contradevian]

I have a cross trainer and it reports watts burned so I did some googling about watts burned. I found out that a manual labourer can basically work at 80watts for 8 hours, or so google said. Whereas I do 40mins on the cross trainer at 250 watts to get a good sweat on.

The 80 watts an hour (68 kcal's per hour) are on top of the calories required to sustain the basal metabolism.

[Kurt Barlow]

Previously it was mentioned that Oxen could be used to plough fields but then how much feed does the Ox need? In pre oil age times approx 1/3rd of acreage was typically devoted to growing fodder, much of which went to draft aninals.

I think a more efficient post oil age method would be to generate ammonia which can be used in a diesel engine with only simple modification. The ammonia feedstocks of hydrogen and nitrogen could easily be produced from wind power (or surplus night time nuclear should it ever exist ). I remember doing a back of fag packet calculation and seem to recall 1MW of wind power was enough to produce 300,000 litres equivalent of ammonia fuel and basically from taking up a patch of land (10m2) that might yield 1.5 litres of biofuel.

More expensive than fossil fuels no doubt but far more efficient than using draft animals which in any case would take centuries to breed up to the desired numbers (if anyone thinks you can hitch up a modern Holstein Fresian Cow to a plough think again - they are just a walking udder )

Edited May 20, 2011 by Kurt Barlow

[noodle doodle]

I know they did an experiment on "Bang" a few weeks ago, where they released all the energy in a breakfast cereal at once, in an explosion.

Antimatter rice krispies? cool!