Can the UK afford to house and feed the world,

[melthebell]

If you want to give everyone a house and feed the world it will require some sacrifice, or are you proposing someone else makes the sacrifice.

ok ill give you a tenner thats a start

[melthebell]

And yet billions are starving and don't have access to clean water, if the UK had to be self sufficient and used all its available land for food it can only feed 15 million people to the standard we have now.

On a planetary scale using all available land to grow cereal crops we can only feed 16 billion with the minimum amount of food, water would be a bigger problem.

far more people CAN be fed from a vegetarian diet instead of growing it to feed cattle etc for meat

[MrSmith]

ok ill give you a tenner thats a start

 

Why give me the money I don't want to feed them or give them a house, I have already said there are too many people.

[Halibut]

I didn't say it does.

 

Then why ask the question since the answer is so obviously no?

 

Why are you asking if the UK can afford to house and feed the world when you know full well it can't? Can't quite see what you're getting at really.

 

The second part of your OP is a reasonable point for discussion, but I can't see why the first bit's there at all.

[melthebell]

Why give me the money I don't want to feed them or give them a house, I have already said there are too many people.

oh dont be a misery guts, i thought you was organising the whipround

[andyofborg]

Why give me the money I don't want to feed them or give them a house, I have already said there are too many people.

 

so how would you make less people?

[MrSmith]

far more people CAN be fed from a vegetarian diet instead of growing it to feed cattle etc for meat

 

I did say using all the land to grow cereal crops in the post you responded to. 16 billion is the latest scientific evidence based on current farming methods and everyone eating the minimum; some scientists think it more likely to be 12 billion.

[melthebell]

I did say using all the land to grow cereal crops in the post you responded to. 16 billion is the latest scientific evidence based on current farming methods and everyone eating the minimum; some scientists think it more likely to be 12 billion.

if we remove your house we can squeeze in a few more crops

[nubile]

Can the UK afford to house and feed the world,

 

I sincerely hope so, we should at least try.

[Forumosaurus]

1) Population will level off. They mention that world population will grow the 9 billion by 2050, but they don't mention that it is expected to level off at 9 billion and then start declining for demographic reasons (assuming that we don't have a more drastic population decline for ecological reasons). Throughout human history, population has tended to grow to to the limits of the food supply and then to be limited by hunger, but after 2050, world population is expect to start declining for the first time, so it may be possible to create a world without hunger.

 

2) Yield per acre is still increasing enough to accommodate population growth. They mention that "the growth of yields from the world's grain fields has declined from 2.1 percent a year between 1950 and 1990 during the height of the green revolution to 1.2 percent a year since then." but they don't mention that even this 1.2 percent increase means that yield per acre will increase more than 60 percent by 2050 - more than enough to accommodate increased world population.

 

Source

 

So don't panic, anyway, most of us here on Sheffield Forum will be either dead or nearly dead by 2050 so it's all good.

 

Hey if GCSE and A level results keep improving at the rate they have been in the last decade, I'm sure the kids of today will be smart enough to think of a solution to any crisis that is brought before the world.