oday we have the simultaneous events of income deflation and food inflation; two high-speed express trains coming down that tracks at each other, a financial crisis colliding with staggering crop losses, which are cutting deeply into available planetary food reserves.
Fertile soil is being lost faster than it can be replenished and will eventually lead to the “topsoil bank” becoming empty, an Australian conference heard. Chronic soil mismanagement and over farming causing erosion, climate change and increasing populations were to blame for the dramatic global decline in suitable farming soil, scientists said. An estimated 75 billion tonnes of soil is lost annually with more than 80 per cent of the world's farming land "moderately or severely eroded", the Carbon Farming conference heard.
Scientists in England are warning that a “perfect storm” of food shortages and water scarcity now threatens to unleash public unrest and conflict, the government’s chief scientist, Professor John Beddington, has warned.[i] “People do not quite realise the scale of the issue,” said Professor Mike Bevan. “This is one of the most serious problems that science has ever faced.” In Britain the lives of hundreds of thousands of people will be threatened by food shortages. The repercussions of food shortages for any society are devastating.
Please - DO read it all:
Then start doing what I've been doing for several years - stash enough food to keep you alive for at least a year.
It's the "increasing populations" bit that is the source of this and all other problems. So we import yet more millions of people into the country? We are governed by cretins!
Why is it that a scrote like me has been able to see this for years (and be considered mad for doing so) yet our supposed 'elders and "betters" ' can't?
Want to get, and keep, our numbers down to a sustainable level that we can feed from our own farming and fishing resources as an independent nation?
Then vote BNP.
I'd rather have food than "Diversity". Wouldn't you?
Morg
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17 comments:
Cannibalism will solve the coming food crisis /(sic)banter
War, famines and plagues kept the population down in the past but us getting smarter seem to outwit nature 7 times out 10.
Technology will save us. It has to, it did help us into this mess of overpopulating the planet afterall.
Agree with you Sir up until:
"Want to get, and keep, our numbers down to a sustainable level that we can feed from our own farming and fishing resources as an independent nation?"
Steady on chap, leave the Eugenics to Bill Gates & Co. I'm all for sustainability but I don't want to step into sterilisation programmes. That is just wrong.
Build smarter I say. Upwards, underground, even the oceans are possibilities that could be looked into (and provide billion of hours of worth-while work too).
Would say my 50p - more like a few quids' say ;p
Eugenics doesn't come into it Jack. It's just a matter of sending home the people who don't belong here, and then instituting a Chinese-style "one child" policy.
It may take two or three generations before it started taking effect, but then numbers would start reducing rapidly. No eugenics ... I don't like that myself. EVERYONE shares the pain, my way.
Morg, is there a BNP policy encouraging the creation of smallholdings? I for one would rather pack in my pointless job and till the soil and raise a few hens and subsidise my subsistence existence with a bit of part-time work on the side. My personal aim in life (other than of course securing a nationalist government for this country) is to have sufficient land to feed me and my family. Alas, with property and land being as expensive as it is owing to overpopulation and the speculative property bubble, I fear I'll not be able to realise my dream before the food shortages hit. One day in my lifetime they will, of that I have no doubt.
No Trigan, I don't think there is (though I'm not entirely sure). However, it is policy that farmers should be encouraged to own the land they work, instead of having to pay rent to large landowners who do nothing other than rake the rents in.
The landowners wont be required to give the land away, but would be required to sell it if the farmer wanted. I'm not aware that there is any lower limit to the land-holding the farmer must have.
Personally, what you just described would be perfect as far as I'm concerned.
Jack - doesn't matter how much we build up, or down, or how much technology changes: we would still be losing the soil we need to feed ourselves. The issue here is prely and simply one of numbers (of human beings)both in this country and on the planet. We couldn't feed ourselves - even with only basic foodstuffs - during WW2 and nearly lost because of it. Luckily, we won the Battle of the Atalantic.
Our population at the time was only some 45 million, so we definitely need to get down below that if we are to have a sustainable level of population (from our own resources).
It's reckoned by those who know more than me on this topic that we need to be down below 30 million.
NEED.
All this talk of small farms with a few hens etc is just the subsistence farming which has caused famine in Zimbabwe.
The land I farm has been farmed for 300 years and is still there. Farmers here treasure their land and realise it is their greatest asset.
Of course office boys like Defra come to advise us how to manage our land but they know nothing.
Most farmland in Britain is farmed for the long term and medium sized mixed farms are the future for the preservation of our soil.
I think all soil from building sites and new roads should be preserved and put on otherwise infertile land.
BUT the greatest threat is running out of oil.
All motive power and a lot of the fertilisers depend on energy, mostly derived from oil.
It's no good saying go back to horse power as horses eat much of what they produce and can not provide the motive power for modern machines.
Organic farming carried to its extreme is a load of rubbish and crop yields would fall drastically.
How do I know?
I worked on my uncle's farm. He did not believe in fertilisers or tractors and although a lot of what he said was right a lot was wrong.He was a member of the Soil Association in the fifties so I do know a bit about it.
It is extreme chemical farming and extreme organic methods which are the trouble.
Extremism is always in my opinion a bad thing. There are always things for and against.
That is why I am in the BNP. Against all extremism.
Loss of soil is a problem but not in Britain (apart from land lost to building)
Lack of oil is the greatest threat and a far greater threat than any so called global warming.
Ahem. Apologies Sir, have to prod again, also a prod against Durotrigan the luddite /Sarf London banter, no disrespect intended
Vertical farming and hydroponics might sound far fetched but would mean less space and no soil to grow clean food.
All it would take is investment.
Also, with expanding our infrastructure, I honestly believe that new methods need to be found.
We not only need a return to our manufacturing base, we need to reinvent it.
And a reason I say we should go underground is the fact that if, God forbid, Armageddon does occur, at least the British flag has a chance of surviving.
Plus will need materials for the following desires if mine.
On or below the ocean, tidal power could be harnessed, algae that forms could be harvested and even seaweed cultivated for high nutrient soil food.
And upwards cos I'm a fan of Arthur C Clarke's 'glass elevator' idea ;p
The world is full of dark plans and it would be foolish to think we as a Nation can ever rest on our past accomplishments. We are only as powerful as our last battle (physical, economical or ideological).
Problem is, to strive for greatness means taking risks, and in these Health and Safety Crazed-up Lands, I think it's illegal now.
Another few quid in the meter. Of course, everything must be put in perspective but Israel is only still here due to her technological prowess.
Still disagree with the limiting population thingy. How will we populate the stars with 30m souls? Or fight China for that matter?
We can't populate the stars or fight China anyway. 30 million is plenty for our needs as a nation. And it's sustainable.
What'll we do when we run out of chemicals for the hydroponics?
And where do we get sunlight from (photosynthesis works on it) if we go underground?
As for Clarke's 'elevator' - be great if it could be done (it would also supply all our electricity (conductor moving through a magnetic field)). But how do we build it?
The root problem is human numbers, in this country and worldwide.
Even at my age I might see the start of the SERIOUS problems. We seem to have gotten a certain measure of control over death (using medical advances to delay it, anyway) without having gotten serious hold on the necessary accompanying birth. It's numbers.
All wars are, one way or another, about access to resources, which again comes down to numbers of humans demanding those resources.
Supposing food was short ... do you think your African neighbours would leave you alone if they thought you had some food while their children were hungry?
Do we suppose mohammedans would just accept starvation while native British ate?
THIS is the real trouble that our governors have brought into the country. Short sighted cretins.
I bet cavemen once looked at fire formed from lightening and thought it impossible to imitate. But they went on and did it.
And with that fire, it provided warmth as well as protection from the animals. So for the first time, was able to dream.
That is what makes us different from the animals. We dream the impossible and make it possible.
I'm not saying we should not be careful, but Nationalism will only go so far, we need to spread our wings, necessity sake. And I don;t fancy slogging it out over this pixel.
Don't worry, I'm not asking for the BNP to bring out a Star Trek policy, the education policy is good enough for me. Great minds produce great innovations. It is up to the 'State' to channel those skills to be nurtured instead of teased and in less than a generation, we'll have our own Sputnik.
Plus, we can use such a program to untie the Commonwealth in a truly common goal.
BTW, the chemicals could be had from the plants themselves. I'm no chemist but am sure there are thousand of substances we can do here in Blighty.
And with photosynthesis, here in Sarf London, people have 'green' houses in their homes.
Of course, more leccy (Northern slang correct?) will be needed but again, technology will have to solve that problem.
Damn, I wish I had a Phd sometimes, would make articulating myself so much easier. Just thankful for spellcheck ;p
Think of the growth and decline pattern of a fungus in a Petri dish.
We humans are exhibiting that same pattern worldwide.
Numbers.
I had one of those 'green' houses in my house once. Cost me four months - suspended for a year.
:)
Jack, I'll have to come down to London to see you one of thes days ... I'm a sci-fi buff too. Try A.E. van Vogt. I once spent a small fortune getting an American book-search company track me down a copy of everything van Vogt ever wrote.
In a moment of rashness I gave all but one book to a charity shop - all gone the same day.
I kept the one book because it has my all-time favourite story in it (a short story). I first discovered that story when I was nine - 48 years ago, and still my favourite.
Fungus can't build rocket ships. It is our duty to seek out the heavens, Earth changes constantly and one day she may just well decide to flick us ticks of her back. Not for a long time I hope, but I'd like to think we gave it our best shot to survive.
Suspended? Same as a few of my pals. And one had a warehouse! Had arthritis though, bless him.
Tough on crime, blah blah blah lol
Didn't the hippy John Lennon (PBUH) coin "Ten for Two" over a fellow hippy's decade incarceration for possession of two joints? How times change.
If only they had did the same to GW Bush!
Still, you see where I'm coming from with the new farming methods... I know it sounds like fancy stuff, but come on, this is the nation that built Crystal Palace.
We invented the games of Football and Rugby, can't apologise enough about the cricket though.
And above all, more important than Parliamentary Democracy, the Rule of Law or Simon Cowell, World-Class Comedy!
The World's Governments will never forgive us Britons, for they owe us too much! to paraphrase Sir Winston Churchill
We cannot strive without dreams and ideas.
Sci-fi usually becomes sci-fact sooner or later. Computers, mobile phones and even jet aircraft were once the things of imagination.
Any particular A.E.Van Vogt book you suggest starting off with as there are quite a few to choose from?
http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=van+Vogt&x=9&y=15
Amazon has a collection - it's a blessing and a curse sadly but again, being in London, the last thing you want to do is swap books with fellow 'londoners'!
I'm considering becoming a fully paid up member (the cheapest subscription mind, I'm a Sarf Londoner, money runs through my fingers like water). Again, with so much bloody collusion on the pary of the Establishment, I don't need the hassle of being 'exposed'. For my family's sake at least.
I'm planning on attending the victorious party that is sure to be had at the RWB this year though (again, the cheapest ticket and I'll bring my own can of beans lol). Need to meet some more compatriots in a relaxed setting instead of having to translate everything in Peckham ;p
Videophones - that's the one that hits me. Sci-fi when I was growing up - these days I just use a webcam and speak to my brother in Australia.
As for van Vogt, almost any will do. Most are books of short stories - my favourite of which is called "The Monster", or "Resurrection" in a couple. The "Monster" is the human in the story. My copy is in a book called "Destination Universe".
van Vogt used to claim that no one could read one of his books without having their mind altered ... I tend to agree with that.
A good set of books are "The World of Null-A", "The Players of Null-A" and "Null-A Three".
He died about six or so years ago - shame that.
Another good set is "The Weapon Shops of Isher" and "The Weapon Makers".
His books really do alter your mind.
I forgot to mention, when I first saw that picture on that link, it reminded me of the school queue when I was a tearaway!
15 days to go - fingers crossed the Establishment suffer political wipeout.
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