The Techology that saved four billion lives

why is the Malthusian ïdea "we're all gonna die" being pushed by the elites? 

Because there is money in them there hills.

 Indeed, even though these predictions have been going on for centuries, Ehrlich continues to push the idea that to get rid of poverty, get rid of poor people. 

The Population Bomb, written with his wife Anne Ehrlich in 1968, predicted “hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death” in the 1970s

 – some thing that never happened, but never mind: he is still a hero and his ideas of getting rid of excess people is still popular today, 

of course, no one wants to admit they want to get rid of the people or how they plan to do it: it is usually phrased as lowering the population, something that could take decades. Unless they let people starve and/or die of disease. 

place covid lab conspiracy theory here.

Starving people because the plan needs fewer people to implement their utopia has been done before, as the Irish and the Ukrainians can tell you.

Yes famines still occur: climate problems in history have led to major famines, and of course, some are due to war, displacing civilians, disrupting the supply chain, or when some farmers who lose their crops and no one helps them survive this temporary famine.

But the main reason for hunger is war.

https://www.wfpusa.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/60-percent-hunger-1.png

Now, the UN could stop war, but never mind. 

Another problem is NGOs so busy pushing old fashioned methods of farming in the name of a "sustainable green future"; never mind that using traditional methods of agriculture would not be able to feed today's population.

For example, NGOs hate GMO crops, 

How much do they hate GMO crops? Well, when Zimbabwe was having a famine (because the most productive white farmers were chased out of the country, leading to a food shortage), Mugabe refused to accept American grain, because he said it might contain GMO seeds, and his experts told him these seeds, if planted could contaminate the local crops. 

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But when I worked in Africa, many NGO's also opposed newer high yield hybrids because they meant buying seeds, using fertilizer and herbicides to grow the food.

hopefully, as China invests in agriculture in Africa, these technologies will increase the amount of food grown

I am old enough to remember hunger in post war Europe and the various Chinese famines...in contrast, the main problem right now in Asia is.... obesity.

The reason fewer starve: modern agriculture.

A lot of this was thanks to Norman Bourlag, and the green revolution of crops that produced more grain. from Encyclopedia Brittanica

 

Borlaug began his agricultural revolution in Asia. With India and Pakistan facing food shortages due to rapid population growth, the importation of Borlaug’s dwarf wheat in the mid-1960s was responsible for a 60 percent increase in harvests there, helping both countries to become agriculturally self-sufficient. His work in developing countries, especially on the Indian subcontinent, is estimated to have saved as many as one billion people from starvation and death.

italics mine 

The increased yields resulting from Borlaug’s new strains empowered many developing countries, though their use required large amounts of chemical fertilizers and pesticides. These high-yielding crops raised concerns about cost and potentially harmful environmental effects,

italics mine.

The same experts who predicted famine now were lamenting the fertilizer run off in streams etc... These problems can be solved, of course, and are a lesser evil than a hundreds of thousands of dead peasants. But the experts see only the problem, and are pushing old fashioned organic farming as the way to go. 

Now, we grow organic rice, but the dirty little secret is that it is more expensive, more prone to disease, and produces a smaller crop.

But don't take my word for it: Just read what happened when SriLanka took their advice and tried to grow green

and if you think they hate hybrid crops, just read the hysteria over GMO organisms. 

But it is not just new hybrids that resulted in people being fed: another reason is fertilizer.

One reason for the fertilizer shortage is the war between Russia and the Ukraine.

But today's big virtue signaling is anti fossil fuel protests.

Uh, did any of these bozos ever hear about  Haber-Bosch process that uses fossil fuel to make fertilizer?

What brought all this to mind is this article in SciTechDaily Transforming Fertilizer Production: True Mechanism of Ammonia Catalysis Revealed

about a more efficient way to produce fertilizer and use less fossil fuels to do so.

Good news if this pans out.

a technical article: so why is this important?

Ammonia, produced in the Haber-Bosch process, is currently one of the most essential base chemicals for the world to produce fertilizers, with an annual production of 110 million tonnes. The journal Nature proposed in 2001 that the Haber-Bosch process was the most critical scientific invention for humankind during the 20th century, since it has saved around 4 billion people’s lives by preventing mass starvation. An estimation of the nitrogen content in our bodies’ DNA and proteins shows that half of the atoms can be derived from Haber-Bosch.

italics mine.

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