Implenting Case Lacoon I & II after Oyster Bay

Star Knight wrote:I dont believe for a second that our own little planet can sustain 7 billion humans, consuming the food what we are consuming in the first world.
The ressources just arent there.

Really? So when we add another 127 million people to the plant what exactly do you expect to happen to prevent their getting food?

namelessfly wrote:An interesting calculation. Only problem is that you don't get multiple grain crops each year in most locations. Among the few exceptions is Israel because it is close to the equator. Nile valley also. However; most land close to the equator is tropical with intense rainy seasons that making farming utter hell.

Waste heat from the fusion reactors will fix that. ;-)

Sorry, dont have the time to answer all.

kzt wrote:

Star Knight wrote:I dont believe for a second that our own little planet can sustain 7 billion humans, consuming the food what we are consuming in the first world.
The ressources just arent there.

Really? So when we add another 127 million people to the plant what exactly do you expect to happen to prevent their getting food?

sigh
This is not about feeeding people. This is about meeting demand for food in a developed society.
All this arguing about whether or not it is possible to grow enough grain for billions of people is beside the point.
You dont feed billions of people in a developed society with grain. Look at the real world. Some hundred million people in the first world consume the food they want to. From all over the world. If all 7 billion people on this planet would do so there would be no way to come up with the neccessary quantities of food.
But this isnt the case in the real world. Most of mankind eat anything they can get there hands on. Thats why we are able to feed almost everybody.

And no please take North America or Europe with their consuming habits however to the honorverse. Where its 3000 years later and everybody is richer. And no please explain why it should be remotely possible to meet the demands of 20 billion Americans or Europeans on good old Earth alone. With another 2 or 3 trillion humans living next door.

Just on figure: The average meat consumation of an American today is 123kg every year. Worldwide its 39kg.
Lets say its 100kg in the Honorverse.

Today there are roughly one billion pigs and one 1.5 billion cattle on the planet used for food production.

So we need at least ten billion cows and pigs to get the neccessary meat in the Honorverse. For Earth alone.
And of course there are many other animals you need.

Please explain how you want to make that possible.
This is not about growing grain. Human beings will not be satisfied with bread.

Star Knight wrote:Just on figure: The average meat consumation of an American today is 123kg every year. Worldwide its 39kg.
Lets say its 100kg in the Honorverse.

Today there are roughly one billion pigs and one 1.5 billion cattle on the planet used for food production.

So we need at least ten billion cows and pigs to get the neccessary meat in the Honorverse. For Earth alone.
And of course there are many other animals you need.

So 2.5 X 2.5 = 10?

This ignores minor details like the meat consumption in Japan is significantly less (like 1/4) of the US average, which suggests that there is a mechanism more complex than what you are suggesting.

Anyhow, the percentage of land in the US devoted to farming has dropped continually since 1950, while both population, food production and standard of living have continually increased.

Sorry, SF fandom isn't where you find people bowing down to the Club Of Rome's "Limits to Growth" or "The Population Bomb". I find your assertions as unconvincing as their assertions, like these quotes:

# The battle to feed humanity is over. In the 1970s, the world will undergo famines. Hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now.”

# “Four billion people—including 65 million Americans—would perish from famine in the 1980s.”

namelessfly wrote:An interesting calculation. Only problem is that you don't get multiple grain crops each year in most locations. Among the few exceptions is Israel because it is close to the equator. Nile valley also. However; most land close to the equator is tropical with intense rainy seasons that making farming utter hell. Dryland wheat farming in the Columbia basin you get only one crop of may be 40 bushels per acre every other year because of the rotation to accumulate water.

Odd I found this looking for wheat yields per acre.

Yields of Washington winter wheat are predicted this year to reach about 65 bushels per acre, up from 59 bushels in 2009, while the spring wheat harvest is projected at a record 56 bushels per acre, according to a forecast by the U.S. Department of Agriculture's National Agricultural Statistics Service.

Total wheat production in Washington, Oregon and Idaho is projected at 310.2 million bushels, which would be a 10-year high, said Glen Squires, vice president of the Washington Grain Alliance.

Yields of Washington winter wheat alone are forecast to be 111.8 million bushels, up from 96.7 million bushels in 2009, according to the USDA. The bulk of the state's wheat is exported.

They were later upped another 2 bushels per acre.

Corn on the other hand is running around 150 bushels per acre, up from about 20 bushels 100 years ago.

I'm a very hard core technology optimists but even I don't believe that population can icnrease indefinatelyw ithout some severe problems.. We are feeding our current population of six plus billion people. We will be able to feed the probable peak population of 8 billion people and even the improbable peak population of 10 billion people. However; SLN core worlds were settled almost 2,000 years ago. Assuming that they've maintained modest, positive population growth (if they are europeans they are extinct) doubling only once per century, then their populations would increase by a factor of one million during that time. A world with only 10 million people ends up with a population 10 trillion after 2,000 years! This obviously hasn't happenned. However worlds with tens of billions of people are likely to exist in the core. These are worlds that had to be terraformed so their environments are probably marginal.

I thought that there was a mention of populations of Earth and other core worlds somewhere. The only mention I found was 12 Billion when the Graysons left.

It is mentioned that Haven couldn't feed its population, but they had 2/3 of the population on the dole. So how much of that was inefficiency or lack of farmers, and how much is just not enough land is a question.

kzt wrote:So 2.5 X 2.5 = 10?

Well yes. 15-20 billion people with 100kg each.
Not 7 billion with 40 kg each.

kzt wrote:This ignores minor details like the meat consumption in Japan is significantly less (like 1/4) of the US average, which suggests that there is a mechanism more complex than what you are suggesting.

Yes they eat more fish ;-)
So they need fishfarms.
Of course their are cultural differences. But on average its save to say that meat consumption will skyrocket.
Just like it did allready in RL. Look at China for example.

kzt wrote:Anyhow, the percentage of land in the US devoted to farming has dropped continually since 1950, while both population, food production and standard of living have continually increased.

Yes. But their is a limit to that. Just like their is a limit in making faster CPUs for example.
Then you have the enivroment and the health of the animals to consider.
Of course you can do cheap mass production. But many people dont want to eat meat produced under such conditions.

kzt wrote:Sorry, SF fandom isn't where you find people bowing down to the Club Of Rome's "Limits to Growth" or "The Population Bomb". I find your assertions as unconvincing as their assertions, like these quotes:

Thats too bad.

The technology to feed any number of people doubtless exists in the Honorverse, but it can't be implemented instantly. If the core worlds do import a significant percentage of their food, and the supply is cut off it is likely that many people will starve before the authorities realise that there is a real problem, plan, allocate resources, build orbital farms and hydroponic skyscrapers, wait for the food to grow, and then distribute it. Most of today's modern cities only have a few days' food reserves in store, and anyone who has had a vegetable garden knows that it seems to take forever for produce to grow.
High intensity farming has its own risks as well, as cross contamination and disease control become more difficult as you concentrate operations. The last foot and mouth epidemic in the UK came from feeding contaminated meat commercially to herbivorous stock.

I fail to see how three wormholes contribute to feeding the entire population of the SL. That would be stupid. Do they get all their food from Manitcore? Or from Silesia? Or the Andermani? I would say that if the SL had to import most of their food then why don't the other star systems import their food? Where would all this food be coming from?
If every planet in the SL need to import food then those planets would have never become planets with millions.
Most of those planets had to have a thriving agriculture to become that big when they were colonized. Other wise they could not have supported themselves in an age where there space travel was not near as fast.

Dane Dryss wrote:I fail to see how three wormholes contribute to feeding the entire population of the SL. That would be stupid.

Well DW says that with Manticore closing the wormholes, transit times will increase twelvefold.
That means that the economy collapses (and DW says so) and nobody will be able to ship food to anywhere in time.

Dane Dryss wrote: Do they get all their food from Manitcore?

No, but to make the closing of the wormholes worse, a majority of solarian trade goods are transported in Manticoran freighters (at least for some time during the trips). So with Manticore going to war against the League the Royal Manticoran Merchant Marine will stop shipping Solly goods.

Dane Dryss wrote: Or from Silesia? Or the Andermani? I would say that if the SL had to import most of their food then why don't the other star systems import their food? Where would all this food be coming from?

Doesnt matter where it comes from.
The issues are:
Nobody can get it to another world in time.
Nobody has the neccessary cargo space when the RMMM (?) quits.
Nobody will have the money to buy goods after the economy collapses.

Again, your a looking on only one factor of the the greater desaster.
You cant fix it, cause the hole economy will implode.
Food shortage will be one problem out of many and no independet systems or sectors will be able to do anything about it.

Dane Dryss wrote:If every planet in the SL need to import food then those planets would have never become planets with millions.

Wrong thinking. Look at the real world. Many countries could produce goods themselves but they import them.
Why? Cause its cheaper and others do it better. Called capitalism.

Dane Dryss wrote:Most of those planets had to have a thriving agriculture to become that big when they were colonized. Other wise they could not have supported themselves in an age where there space travel was not near as fast.

I dont think there were that many big colonies in those days.

Anyway, this discussion is pointless. Weber wrote in The Universe of Honor Harrington that there is food shipping in the Honorverse.
And if they ship cattle around the stars there is no reason why they shouldnt ship more basic stuff as well.

Dane Dryss wrote:I fail to see how three wormholes contribute to feeding the entire population of the SL. That would be stupid. Do they get all their food from Manitcore? Or from Silesia? Or the Andermani? I would say that if the SL had to import most of their food then why don't the other star systems import their food? Where would all this food be coming from?

You didn't notice two things. First, the Beowulf terminus is in the heart of the Solarian League Core worlds, those worlds that some are speculating have huge high-tech populations and import at least some food. Second, the Manticore Wormhole Junction connects those Core worlds not only to Manticore, the Talbott Cluster Haven, Phoenix, Silesia, the Anderman Empire, and Matapan, it also indirectly connects those core worlds indirectly (through other convenient wormholes) to Erewhon, the Maya Cluster, Joshua, and other regions. Two thirds of the Verge is in reach of one of these wormholes, and the Manticore Junction means that the Core worlds can import from all of them. Importing through the Junction means travel to those regions is 12 times as fast, and multiples the potential suppliers by a factor of dozens.

If, as some suggest, the Core worlds do import food, they presumably would have to import it from agrarian worlds. That means importing from the Protectorates, the Verge, or beyond. Beowulf is forty light-years from Old Earth. The Protectorates are 300 light-years away, the Verge 400, and other potential suppliers might be 500 to 600 light-years away. That is the premise of the argument.