The future of food?

Question

I recently saw Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's program about battery farmed chicken and I was quite impressed by how many people he managed to stop eating battery farmed chicken. I myself always eat organic or free range. However, the program got me thinking, with the continued pace of human population growth are organic and free range farming really viable options for feeding the future population? Or are we going to be forced to revert to battery methods of farming or Genetic modification?

Answer 1

Yes it was an impressive programme that obviously had an effect. Like you I always buy organic/free range where I can and use local farmer's markets and yes, I can see that free range demands more space for it's undoubted improvement in animal welfare and goodness of food.

However, it seems to me that we have a bigger threat from the current vogue of planting biofuel crops which will ultimately starve third world countries for the sake of our motoring addiction.

Answer 2

there are so many people on the planet that ideal food production is just not possible for everyone.

most of our modern world is based on the easy energy we have, one gallon of fuel is equivalent of about a weeks worth of work for a person.

when that fuel runs out, there will be much less people on this world, remote cities that have everything brought to them will shrink in size or vanish entirely, and there is a limited amount of farmable space when you can't use tractors and trucks.

within a thousand years from now, there will be many more of the traditional farms that just support the people that live there.

there is just no other way to do it unless huge amounts of free energy is discovered.

Answer 3

Wow I never thought of it that way but I guess you are right I should have my mom buy more organic food but she thinks if she grew up with it its good for me too.

Answer 4

Genetic modification might be the way to go, if its done responsibly.  We wouldn't have to slaughter animals if the were genetically modified to be vegetables that looked like and tasted like meat, without bones!

Obviously we aren't there yet, but we have the potential.  Look at the successes we have had already.

Answer 5

the future of food is edible i warrant

Answer 6

A little publicised fact passed us by in 2007 that, at this moment in time, the requirements of the global population in terms of food per capita outstripped supply.These figures are based on the World Health Organisations own figures and therefore I have no reason to doubt them,but it does throw open the debate on whether food should be produced at any price or is the real threat to mans existence his own procreation

Answer 7

I think your right,not sure how viable it is to produce like that en masse.

Answer 8

.In future we will be only A tablet for Break fast, A tablet for Lunch, A tablet for Dinner, an so on,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,  every food will be in capsule form..

Answer 9

There is no one answer to this problem.  Organic and free range farming can not feed the world unless everyone drastically change their eating habits. Then too, food would cost a lot more so there would be the problem of do the rich eat and the poor starve? I didn't see the film, but I didn't need to in order to know that a lot of the battery farming as it is done today is wrong. I think the answer here lies somewhere in the middle .  Instead of eliminating battery farming, it must be cleaned up to where it is more humane.  To go along with this  we all must begin to eat a  little less meat because there will be less produced and it will cost a little more.