Monday, February 25, 2008

Population Growth & Food

Was Malthus wrong because food production has kept up with population growth or will he be right sometime in the future? If so, what will the secondary impacts of increasing food production be?

I personally believe that Malthus is wrong about Food Production vs. Population Growth. While it's obvious that Malthus was a very intelligent person, I think he may have overlooked the unlimited possibilities of mankind. He did mention that population would influence production, but then further production would create even more growth in population.

We have sent men to the moon. We operate many parts of our daily lives by little chunks of metal constantly falling around the curvature of the earth sending and receiving signals. I heard rumors of a plan for a space-plane, which would make it possible to fly with the control of an airplane outside of earth's atmosphere. In this sense, not even the sky is the limit to what humans can do.

I believe there are endless solutions to the endless answers that arise on this planet, and if forced to, people are capable of doing some pretty impossible things. Sure, as population grows, so will food production, and as production grows, so will population, creating and limitless cycle on a limited landmass, but I don't think we've seen even a glimpse of what is going to be in our future.

Maybe I'm looking at this from a too optimistic view, but I really don't see in my head what can prevent humans from overcoming what's ahead.

If population control must be implemented, I suppose measures such as one-child policies are a possible solution. The only problem I see with this is that some families (or so I've heard) see a girl as less profitable, so they will get rid of the child in order to have a boy. How true is this? I'm not certain, but if this is the case, then something else could be done. I have also heard that families in China who wish to have more than one child can simply move out of the country, have their child, and then move back, but it's definitely still a method to reduce the number of children in the country as a whole.

This may sound ridiculous, but I think another option would be to work on making people more tolerable to homosexuals. If more homosexuals were to be married and faithful to each other, then that would be one less pair of people producing offspring, which could equate to quite a difference.

Ultimately, I believe Jesus is coming back, and probably will before the World is strained beyond human consumption.

I'm usually a pretty logical person basing all of my ideas off of hard truth, but in the case of Human Population and Food Production, I don't believe I could ever learn enough to REALLY estimate what will happen and how to prevent, or promote, what may come.

Wednesday, February 20, 2008

Federal Lands Grazing

Should grazing of livestock be allowed on publicly owned lands? Why or why not? (Remember to support your claim and to cite sources of information). If so, should the fees be the same as what is charged for private land leases? Why or why not? Try to be inclusive of as many viewpoints on this issue as possible when formulating your response.

If I understand everything I've read correctly, there isn't anything wrong with farmers allowing their livestock to graze on publicly owned land. For more information on the topic, I visited WorldNetDaily.com and found an article at the following URL: http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=22039

After reading through that article (hopefully it was on the right track as this topic), I don't believe that farmers should be restricted any farther than the previous laws have restricted them regarding grazing on publicly owned lands, and they shouldn't be required to pay any additional fees. According to the article, they are entitled to a portion of the public land by law. If they're already entitled to the land by law, why should they need to add to the government's funds for its use?

Additionally, by allowing the cattle to graze farther out from only the private property, doesn't this reduce the risk of hazardously overgrazing? If they're restricted to the farmer's own property, the protection over the top soil would be worn away relatively quickly, allowing for rains to come and wash away top soil with no resistance. Should the farmer's be charged to prevent one piece of land from being over used?

Farm Subsidies

I'm embarrassed to say, but before today, I didn't really know anything about Farm Subsidies.

After reading both of the articles, I went and found another website filled with many opinions on the recent bill.

http://www.ewg.org/farmeditorials

To me, it looks as if it's something along the lines of welfare, or well, that's maybe what it should look like. Farmers who are doing very well off don't really need the extra money to be wasted on them, but farmers who maybe experienced a natural disaster would need the extra money very much.

Looking into it, I guess Welfare was reformed to be a limited deal while I was younger (in the 1990s) instead of being available for a person's lifetime. Maybe they should think about implementing the same idea with farming? If somebody goes over their limit for legit causes, maybe they just weren't destined to be in the farming business.

People may still be able to cheat the system, but I think it would still save us some money as a whole over all.

Wednesday, February 6, 2008

The Diversity of Food

The fact that wheat, rice and corn supplied half of the calories people consumed never occurred to me before, I liked to think that I ate pretty diversely, but maybe not?

There are many, many, MANY different plants possible for consumption being grown in the world, some that I'd never heard of included:

-Chickpea; Which is apparently comparable to the garbanzo bean is a source of zinc, folate, protein, dietary fiber and carbohydrates. It can also be ground up into Gram flour.

-Aronia; It looks like this is used in some juices for coloring. I'm not sure about it's nutritional content, but it's being contemplated to add it into some farmer's fields.

-Mashua; A plant grown in the Andes. A study was done which revealed a side effect of this vegetable lowers testosterone levels, but it has also been used to treat Nephropathy.

This is just a hunch, but I think that by mostly farming only the same crops over and over, our bodies have to do without some nutrients that are very beneficial to their well being. I also believe that by continually farming the same crops, the same nutrients that those crops require are being pulled out of the soil, while having multiple different ones may provide for more fertile soil in the beginning as well as later on after harvests.

After reading the homework from this week, it almost worries me that we actually depend on only a few types of crops. Such as in Ireland, with the potato famine, it wouldn't be difficult for our choices to be further limited, whereas some diseases may not affect other plants that we do