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Food doesn't rot before people can eat it because of a transportation bottle neck that reducing spoilage will fix.
We have jet planes in this century and refrigeration. Even without refrigeration, there is plenty of food that can be held in storage and transported without spoiling. Just how is a non-spoiling vegetable going to solve the problem when fresh vegetables and fresh fruits can be transported from South America to a Safeway in North America already?
For goodness sake, there are restaurants in Chicago that hold and age beef for 20 days or more before serving it and somehow spoilage is a problem. Lets be realistic here. The average wage earner in the US has to save money to go to Morton's and get one of their best cuts of anything and it's be hanging in a cooler for weeks and they are selling all they have too and there is plenty more where that came from.
How many times have we heard about "pay whatever it costs" when it comes to renewable energy? Plenty of times, right on this forum.
Well, if we take that same ideology, because that is what appears to be, then we could feed everyone using that same scheme.
The logistics exist to move food to the point of consumption before it spoils, right now, today, tomorrow and every day thereafter. Spoilage isn't the problem, money is the problem.
We can get fresh fruit and vegetables to soldiers in remote locations, like clockwork. Right outside those bases are people who are eating the hides of animals and other things because they have no food. We can transport millions of pounds of war materiel around the globe, drop it and return in hours to do it again but for some reason food would spoil before it gets to where people can eat it? Please.
In no way am I even suggesting that the needs of the military aren't necessary but I am saying that spoiling food isn't the reason there are so many hungry people on this planet.
Make feeding people a high profit business and watch how fast people get food. Who is going to pay for it though?
Hungry people think about eating and not much else. It becomes central to everything they do. When they have enough to eat, they start thinking about other things.
Another thing to ponder......what other things might they be thinking about with their new found disposable income ? What would the typical person in the third world do with their time and meager income, if they did not have to spend anything on food ? I'm sure a small percentage would pursue an education, but many others might spend their food money on drugs and liquor instead, or perhaps use the money to fund islamic extremism Isis, ect, or buy weapons to wage war with their neighbors. Many others might just quit work all together, patch up the holes in the shack, then lay around all day having sex, with the highlight of the day (after the sex) being the walk to the store to get more free food, with the result being 23 kids per household on average, 12 more than normal. And with all those extra kids getting free food too, the population of that society could double every 5 or 10 years. Be careful what you wish for, the societies in question might be more healthy now with everyone working for food, then what could happen if that was disturbed. Then again I could be wrong.
Another thing to ponder......what other things might they be thinking about with their new found disposable income ? What would the typical person in the third world do with their time and meager income, if they did not have to spend anything on food ? I'm sure a small percentage would pursue an education, but many others might spend their food money on drugs and liquor instead, or perhaps use the money to fund islamic extremism Isis, ect, or buy weapons to wage war with their neighbors. Many others might just quit work all together, patch up the holes in the shack, then lay around all day having sex, with the highlight of the day (after the sex) being the walk to the store to get more free food, with the result being 23 kids per household on average, 12 more than normal. And with all those extra kids getting free food too, the population of that society could double every 5 or 10 years. Be careful what you wish for, the societies in question might be more healthy now with everyone working for food, then what could happen if that was disturbed. Then again I could be wrong.
Dealing with a food problem is only part of a larger problem. Idle minds to come up with ways to fill their time and often it isn't the most desirable things, agreed.
There is no easy answer and I do not suggest just giving food to everyone that has an open beak just because they are hungry.
Lets not forget though, that in many parts of the world where real hunger exists, people aren't working at all because there are no jobs of consequence so it isn't like they would have the means to do hat you're talking about anyway.
To your point though, just look what happens anyway. ISIS or another radical group goes in and starts putting food on tables. They know what we know, you can win hearts and minds through stomachs. Now, instead of a first world solution to a hunger problem we end up with a radical world solution and instead of that third world remaining hungry and without purpose, the radicals come along and give them food and a purpose and guess what that purpose is? We can choose the result, let someone else figure it out - and they will or we can figure it out. Either way, the result will be of our choosing.
If a group of people believe that food is being used to control them or keep them in some backwater existence and someone else comes along and says "here, eat this and have some drink too", do you think those someones will have any problem asking for help in their efforts to do whatever it is they want to do?
Tying this into the idea of reducing food spoilage; food spoilage reduction might save some energy but not very much compared to the total expended to produce the food. If you want to process food to solve a hunger problem, then we already have the necessary methods to do that, it's a proven technology and in some cases, people have been doing it for thousands of years using primitive energy sources, we really don't need yet another reduced energy consumption solution that needs to be scaled up at some fantastic cost.
The solution being talked about isn't one. It is just another way to create a problem where one doesn't exist in any significant form. Does food spoil? Of course it does. Does spoiled food cause widespread hunger? No it doesn't nor would keeping the food that does spoil solve hunger problems.
There is no shortage of food or the ability to provide it, right now. Reducing hunger requires more than just food deliveries to places where food is scarce. That problem is complex but since food is an essential requirement to sustain life and people will eventually do anything to get it, it must be one of the first things addressed before many other problems.
One more thing, spoiled food is biodegradable and returns its energy in one way or another.
It's really interesting to me to read all this negativity and naysaying, from the usual suspects, for what is clearly a development with great potential to do good in the world. This scientist has figure out a way to neutralize the fungus growth that normally occurs in fresh produce, the fungus growth that causes food to rot, and do it inexpensively and with safe ingredients. Yet none of the responses so far have talked about what is right about this discovery, or what it might make possible in the world.
I think this is an unfortunate demonstration of what prominent author and master thinker Edward DeBono calls Black Hat thinking. It's all focused on what's wrong, on why something might not work, on why something might be bad. This kind of criticism has its use, but it is easily overdone. How many useful ideas get crushed before they even chance to be fully explored when people can only talk about what they see that is wrong... which inherently is a past-based conversation. You cannot access the future through talking about what's been wrong in the past, a point that is lost on some of the posters here.
One of the things that made Japanese Technology so powerful in the marketplace since WWII is that they learned as part of their management style to focus on other modes of thinking and talking about things, other ways of looking at things, such as White Hat thinking, in which the critical mind is suspended and you seek only the facts about something, without judgment. Some of this is a reflection of their culture, in which unbuffered Black Hat talk is considered rude, and harmful to reaching a team consensus.
Or Yellow Hat thinking, in which you turn a bright, optimistic eye to something, and explore the possible values and benefits. Or Red Hat thinking in which people's emotional reaction to something connects to the kinds of reactions that consumers might have in the marketplace, or employees might have to a change of company direction.
Quote:
"The Green Hat focuses on creativity; the possibilities, alternatives, and new ideas. It's an opportunity to express new concepts and new perceptions." ~ The de Bono Group - Six Thinking Hats
I'd like to see a lot more Green Hat type thinking here on the Green Living forum. AND more White Hat thinking. AND more Yellow Hat thinking. The discussions here don't have to be ALL BLACK all the time.
So I challenge everyone who has posted here so far to return and post something from a different part of your brain... some interesting possibility you see, some way this research can benefit life on the planet in some way.
I'll start... in every part of the world there are people now who don't get enough to eat, for a variety of reasons. Surplus processed foods are collected and distributed to the poor by various charitable groups, but the distribution of fresh produce is very limited because of a lack of refrigerated transportation or storage. Use of this new technology would allow market surpluses to be distributed to the needy in much the same way canned and dry boxed foods are now.
Who's next? Who would like to set aside the negative view for a moment and think another way?
A complete lack of understanding of the hunger problem. Not even a clue.
There is no food shortage or storage problem of any significance. There are no logistics problems that prevent food distribution either.
If there was a huge spoilage problem explain how anyone in the USA can walk into a grocery store and buy fresh fruits vegetables that come from another continent?
This is another one of those losing propositions and probably one of the most negative posted here. Instead of admitting that hunger is more than a technological problem, technology is offered as a solution to everything. it is not and won't ever be.
A positive perspective would be to acknowledge that money is the problem, not some technology issue. The world's hungry aren't going without because food spoils.
Notice how the only solution offered is some technology solution that fails to even grasp the social issues that cause hunger?
Such negativity is astounding. Failing to admit the real causes of hunger is about as negative as you can get.
Increasing the available food supply is only useful if it goes hand in hand with access to family planning services and education for women. Otherwise, any increase in available food will simply be consumed by an expanded population, with no improvement in quality of life for the vast majority of those whose survival was made possible by the new technology.
Increasing the available food supply is only useful if it goes hand in hand with access to family planning services and education for women. Otherwise, any increase in available food will simply be consumed by an expanded population, with no improvement in quality of life for the vast majority of those whose survival was made possible by the new technology.
YES! Even in the USA, there is no shortage of food IF you have enough money to buy it.
Notice how AID workers returning from impoverished areas are starved? How do reporters that stay in some countries for months on end manage to stay alive? Simple, they are provided with the means to do so, including food.
Food spoilage could be eliminated and it wouldn't help feed more people.
Hunger is a symptom, not a cause. Like many causes though, it is convenient to see them as the easiest way to create some half baked solution and call herald it as some miracle of technology that will solve the problem.
Solving problems means understanding what the problems are, not knee jerk reactions that have a start in imagination and no end.
An uneducated population will function with little regard to the consequences of its behavior. They will over populate and create demand on resources that exceed capacity. Disease will run rampant because people are malnourished, infant mortality will increase because of disease and the simple fact that the family can't sustain itself with food.
Food spoilage as presented in the thread is just another effort to create a false direction to point out negativity that doesn't exist. What does exist is a nearly completely lack of understanding of why hunger exists and a constant drum of technology as the cure all. Disagreeing with the original post is one of the most positive things here in recent history.
A complete lack of understanding of the hunger problem. Not even a clue.
You failed to meet my challenge. Apparently you can't even shift gears on your thinking as an experiment, plus you continually and habitually fail to acknowledge that you are only stating opinion, not facts.
Quote:
Originally Posted by parentologist
Increasing the available food supply is only useful if it goes hand in hand with access to family planning services and education for women. Otherwise, any increase in available food will simply be consumed by an expanded population, with no improvement in quality of life for the vast majority of those whose survival was made possible by the new technology.
You too failed to respond to my challenge.
In fact there is a lot of evidence that when you raise people's standard of living the birth rate drops. That's why the much feared Population Bomb of 1968 never materialized as predicted.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mack Knife
YES! Even in the USA, there is no shortage of food IF you have enough money to buy it.
Another failure to meet my challenge! And factually misses the point to boot.
From my Seattle days... I volunteered for a time with Northwest Harvest, a hunger relief organization serving the poorest of the poor in their area. They currently distribute 32 million pounds of food per year from more than 320 food banks and other community aid organization. And while some of that food is purchased, using charitable donations, the genesis of the organization, and still a substantial part of what they do, was to "harvest" free surplus food from stores and restaurants and food producers for distribution to the poor and hungry. The same happens in many places, but that's one I'm most familiar with.
Here's another, also from Seattle.. I personally know a guy who was a fish broker there, who sold huge quantities of fresh fish each year from the commercial northwest fishing fleets. At some point, maybe 20 years ago or so, he found out that these fisherman literally shoveled large quantities of fish overboard every day, because their licenses only permitted them to sell one or two varieties of fish at a time. So if they were harvesting salmon, for example, they could not sell any other kind of fish that came up in their nets, so the rest was just garbage to them, and they dumped it at sea. Working with the various regulatory agencies and fishing companies he brokered a deal for all those edible but "illegal" fish to be donated free of charge to hunger relief organizations, and it amounted to over a million pounds of food annually.
That's a heckuva a lot of difference being made in just one geographic area.
And here's another Yellow Hat (benefits, values) thought of my own... when food producers can reduce the amount of food they lose to roy, they can reduce the amount of food they have to grow in order to bring the same amount to market, and that reduces the amount of land that needs to be cultivated, and the amount of fertilizer that has to be bought, and the amount of work needing to be expended, and that just naturally improves the standard of living of the farmer. This has been shown over and over around the world, that improving the marketable yield from a farmer's efforts improves their standard of living. For impoverished subsistence farmers, that can be a life-altering experience, and boost the economy of the area.
OK, your turn... what good do you see possible coming from this invention?
It is clear that you've been provided with many comments by several people on the merits of the invention, you just don't like what everyone said and instead jumped to black hat, red had and yellow hat (you brought it up) or cat in the hat...whatever. It should also be clear that no one really wants to take up your challenge because no matter what anyone says (as in the post above) you aren't interested in comments unless they agree with yours.
The proof is in all the comments to your OP, you just don't like it.
It is clear that you've been provided with many comments by several people on the merits of the invention, you just don't like what everyone said and instead jumped to black hat, red had and yellow hat (you brought it up) or cat in the hat...whatever. It should also be clear that no one really wants to take up your challenge because no matter what anyone says (as in the post above) you aren't interested in comments unless they agree with yours. The proof is in all the comments to your OP, you just don't like it.
None of the above is true. This hasn't been a random selection of people's thinking on the matter, and it isn't a selection of the people who are actually interested in Green Living... which is nominally the topic of the forum. Instead it has temporarily attracted a swarm of critics of Green Living, who just attack, attack, attack, which further discourages participation by supporters of. Green Living.
There is no question this is a valuable new discovery, because it allows more effective food productivity with less reseources. That is at the heart and soul of sustainability... learning to do more with less and wasting less.
Please stop trying to dominate the conversation with your negativity and ridicule. You create nothing, contribute nothing. I'm interested in hearing from people who actually have an interest in Green Living instead of just manufacturing conflict.
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Thinking a different way
