Fred Kirschenmann: The Future of Agriculture-Part 1

[LT0WnWaRi0]

kirschenman -thats one hell of german name :DD

cool that his family kept their german and dont renamed to smith and all the other ones :D

[charkee1]

The energy Elephant, talk about thinking in the box. 4th generation nuclear energy is safe, efficient and clean. Fusion is feasable and fuel is virtually limitless. India, China and even South Africa are ahead of us in nuclear technology.

The silly whining about water shortages, still thinking in the box. NAWAPA, let bring milliions of acre feet down from Alaska and Canada. Put millions back to work with this modern TVA. Thinking in the box is not "sustainable".

[tasha122277]

Somebody told me how frightening it was how much topsoil we lose every year, but I told that story around the campfire and nobody got scared.

[LoveLoveSining]

It is because people are not seeing it. It is up to people like us to show them videos books and educate them.

[ubuibiok]

*****

[cookingupastory]

@WhiteTiger333

I agree with you. It's similar to the 30 years we wasted after the energy crisis in 1973, and after Carter tried to warn the American people about our over-dependence on oil (fossil fuels). Of course, he failed to win re-election, and Ronald Reagan helped propel us forward (proudly) as a nation unconcerned with our energy future.

[theproducegarden]

great upload, thanks!

[WhiteTiger333]

Excellent lecture. I look forward to the remainder of it. I took ecology and ag courses at the U. of Illinois in the early '70s. This was already being discussed. The alarm was already out. It's so interesting, if not a tad disgusting, to see the worse case scenarios starting to fit into place. I guess that's how we humans learn...the hard way.

I like his pointing out that "organic" is not necessarily the same as sustainable.

[CMLovejoy]

I think the real reason for all this is because the world is over populated.

We have 6.7 billion people on a planet that can only sustain about 3 billion people.

[Beardedyoungman]

It's funny though, north America's population is on a down ward trend but we support systems of over consumption in other parts of the word, and rely on them moving here to maintain the type of over consumption growth that the status quo likes.. I'm sure that those kinds of statistics of how many people the world can support are also biased on status quo..

[architorture04]

Can you provide evidence of how Earth can only support 3 billion humans?

[CMLovejoy]

No not really.

I used time frames vs population to say that.

During the 1900's the population was about 3 billion and that seemed fine.

I'm not sure on my facts, that's really based on opinion.

[architorture04]

Well one could argue that everything was fine until roughly the 1900's because of the Industrial Revolution, which is a different discussion ;)

The Earth is not necessarily overpopulated, we have just been relying on the wrong resources to expand our population. It has been argued that the consumption of stored resources led to our exponential growth, however our growth does not have to completely stop to be sustainable.

[impalapez]

OVERproduction, and waste of food supply is the reason...along w/ dependence on oil for everything...fertiliser, fuel, etc...

Nature is incredibly abundant...

[charkee1]

@impalapez If there is overproduction then why is there hunger in the USA? Why is malnutrition the #1 cause of death of children in Latin America? Africa? Asia? The world? The Food Cartel is lying to the farmers, lying about overproduction to loot the American family farm. No ag magazine or university has the guts to take them on, they all pretend the Food Cartel does not exist, while our farmers are getting screwed.

[Fantageous]

@CMLovejoy basically our fish tank is overstocked